Heike-Karin Föll

The series of three 3-D-animations Tangled is referring to the dynamic of a brushstroke, along with the gesture of throwing around incredibly long hair like Rapunzel. In the Brother Grimm’s folktale Rapunzel is kept in a mysterious tower by her mother. Rapunzel is a teenager with a magical power: 70 feet of long hair.

Walt Disney Pictures changed the title of the 2010 3D computer-animated musical from Rapunzel to Tangled, trying to market the film with an at least gender-neutral title. Animating Rapunzel-like hair as a brushstroke was technically difficult as my 3D skills are very basic, but these formal obstacles made the work fun. Another footnote is Lichtenstein‘s Brushstrokes-series. It projects a single brushstroke as a signifier onto the canvas in repainting its contour. It reflects that the apparently irreducible uniqueness of the spontaneous and the ‘handwritten’, the brushstroke, and the idea of a direct painterly act (as AbEx’s leading aesthetic premise) is both: at times démodé and exiting. This is another magic power.