NY Times on the hidden art of Shamus Culhane at Lantz

Must-read article for today: The New York Times on animator Shamus Culhane’s secret art, hidden in Walter Lantz Cartoons of the 1940s.

The article examines the theory – discussed by Tom Klein in an article in the acedemic publication Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal – that Culhane worked experimental art into his Woody Woodpecker and Swing Symphony cartoons, produced by Walter Lantz, in the 1940s.

Be sure to click the video to see the slowed-down track Klein made of the “hidden images” in Culhane’s The Loose Nut (1945).

(Thanks to Tom Klein for the two images, above, from The Greatest Man in Siam (1944) with not-so-subtle suggested imagery, courtesy of Culhane and background designer Art Heinemann)