Attached to the Mouse

For at least a half-century Mickey Mouse, ears and all, has served as one of the most potent icons in contemporary visual culture.…But however much that (deceptively) ingenuous face and unique silhouette turn up in Pop paintings, social-commentary cartoons, and even abstract sculpture, writers and historians have let Mickey's ubiquity pass without substantial comment. Until now. Defying the perils of post-modernist close reading, pop-culture fetishism, and the fabled wrath of Disney Corp., Holly Crawford proffers an exhaustive documentation, classification, and analysis of Mickey's many appearances in the visual art of our time. Her study fills a gap in the critical history of recent art, not to mention in Mouseology. -- Peter Frank, Critic and Curator
Enjoyable, brilliant, readable, and enormously informative. The seminal study of how mass media institutions-Disney and Art-function in our culture, written with flashes of humor. It's likely to be a premier resource for years to come. -- Manuel Alvarado, Professor, Arts & Media, City University, London
Attached to the Mouse is a result of painstaking research into this history and penetrating analysis of the psychology behind the phenomenon.... For the first time, an art historian has chronicled the artists' use of Mickey as a personal language....Remaining impartial with the issues she raises in order to embrace the tension contained in this holistic vision, Crawford tackles the present-day crisis of art criticism at its core....Attached to the Mouse will prove to be an essential resource underpinning the foundation by which this search for holism comes into form. -- Lisa Paul Streitfeld * NY Arts Magazine *
In her innovative book Attached to the Mouse Holly Crawford examines the appropriation of the iconic images of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck with thoughtful scholarship and spirited humor. -- Peter Selz, Professor Emeritus, History of Art, UC Berkeley