A fantastically mind-boggling post by renown visionary artist and architect Paul Laffoley regarding Walt Disney's obsession with Joseph Albers:
I will not comment at this time on the other five set pieces that constitute “Fantasia,” except to say that at the end of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” which Disney expected to be his only weapon of choice against Albers, Stokowski and Mickey Mouse meet as shadows, shake hands and congratulate each other. This scene seems to make no sense in the continuity of “Fantasia.” It was to act as the finale of Disney’s efforts to get back at “Black Mountain” college until he realized that “Black Mountain” was “Bald Mountain.” And the shadow meeting was the “bridge” between fantasy and reality, so that both entities can be experienced as ontically equivalent, giving credence to the principles of prayer, meditation, and magic. Of course, Disney knew this from his previous work that this was true.
In the end, therefore, Albers left B.M.C. in 1955, one year before the school failed, to become the chairman of the design department at Yale University. Disney, however, went on to found his self-styled cultural empire free of Eurocentric pretentiousness.
Paul Laffoley