Felix: Economies and scale

Liberated from the confines of both the 20th century and the 2-dimensional screen, Felix the Cat sports a new scale in Leckey's work, crunched into a gallery - his dominating presence being his achilles heel. The cause of his scale is unknown - is it to represent his popularity? Is it to emphasize his inflation and eventual deflation?




Felix was borne at a time when America's greatness, the sort that countless white men would speak of later, was burgeoning. He was on the vanguard of animation, and a fixture of silent films, as his presence and recognition was such that he drew crowds - he was the original Shrek (ya I went there). His existence in American culture mutated, evolved, and expanded into color television, jazz, World War II planes, and student doodles. Unfortunately, though, his silent-movie fame petered after Mickey Mouse entered the American conscious. Attempts at Felix revivals were attempted but unsuccessful.

Enter the decline of the US and Felix: the Great Depression and Mickey Mouse, respectively. While the economy sank, new technology allowed for talking cartoons, and Mickey was the animal for this job (in another light, could Tom and Jerry be a groundhog day-esque metaphor of Mickey stealing the Cat's job?) And so, Felix's prominence deflated to a silhouette of his former glory. And soon he vanished. And twenty years later he returned, a muted version of his former self.

As Felix's story is almost an allegory of American capitalism, Leckey's is an adaptation for the gallery space. And at this scale, we see how a symbol, a cartoon, an illustration can become inflated with our infatuations. And we can see how bizarre it is when something that is over-inflated with cultural notoriety and popularity tries to meet the people on their own turf (although the gallery is hardly a space for the people, but this is another issue). As such, we catch Felix in an intermediary space - he is inflated, but not reaching his potential as he shrinks, crunches, and creases himself to fit into our world. His scale does not meet ours - our expectations are misaligned. To stand in front of Inflated Felix, you feel his scale, his size, his prowess - it is humorous.

Leckey's Felix picks up on the theme of Felix's life and death, but also on that of Felix's (disputed) creator - Pat Sullivan. Sullivan was an animator who arrived in the US from Australia (via London) at age 23. He began as an illustrator's assistant before taking over one of his mentor's studios after his death. Felix came from either Sullivan or Otto Messmer, his top animator, or from both, but Felix's career halted with Sullivan's death in 1933. Prior to his death, Sullivan had fallen into an alcoholic depression, and was a noted racist and pedophile. Still, the image of Felix remains as a hallmark of early American animation. The dissonance between Felix's prominence and his creator's degradation is collapsed in Leckey's work. In effect, Leckey's Felix is a sort of memorial for Sullivan.

In this, Leckey has created a portrait of the American system of capitalism as it effects our culture and as it is affected by "innovators." Their prominence, their power becomes their ending piece. Their environment deteriorates them.