Uncanny Unease: The Digital Eye at the Henry Art Gallery

The digital eye is an uncanny one, at least as it stands in the Henry Art Gallery’s exhibition The Digital Eye: Photographic Art in the Electronic Age. Although this is not true of every work of art included in the show, a substantial number of the images create the distinct sense of unease that defines uncanniness through not only the subject matter depicted, but more often through the overtly disjointed way the photographic imagery appears within the frame.

Simen Johan. Untitled #83 (from the And Nothing was to be Trusted series). 1999. Toned gelatin silver print. Collection of Marita Holdaway. © Simen Johan. Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York.

The doll-like baby captured in Simen Johan’s Untitled #83 (from the And Nothing was to be Trusted series), with a menacing expression and a devil-like crown of black hair, would be disturbing independently. However, the image takes on a hyperreal quality through its heightened contrast: the fire burns with a radiating intensity that makes its innocent role atop a birthday cake lost in exchange for the threat of imminent danger. Likewise, the toddler becomes a ravenous, cyborg-like figure that belongs squarely in the uncanny valley, its eyes more robotic than human, its face shrouded in shadows, staring into nothingness.

Sigmund Freud presented one of the earliest and most longstanding definitions of the uncanny: a frightening instance that bears a relationship to the familiar. Occurrences such as prosthetic and severed limbs, ghosts and the dead, cyborgs, robots, doppelgängers and automatons fall within this understanding of the uncanny valley.  The arm that is a part of the human form seems so normal when attached to a person, yet becomes something else entirely when detached. The Addams Family took advantage of the latter’s affect through the “Thing” character, a natural fit within the show’s comically repulsive tropes.  Likewise, a prosthetic arm on an otherwise natural body can also be an jarring visual experience when unexpectedly taking the place of the skin and appendages we expect.

Still from The Addams Family. Image from addamsfamily.com

Many of the standard items included on the uncanny list appear throughout The Digital Eye.  Wendy McMurdo’s Helen, Backstage, Merlin Theater depicts a child and her doppelgänger posing as though there were a mirror between them that disappeared.  Herbert Bayer’s Lonely Metropolitan incorporates disembodied eyes and arms. Takeshi Murata’s amorphous form from a photographed film still in 001 and Jason Salavon’s Every Playboy Centerfold, The 1970s both create ghostlike-forms from their otherwise (relatively) ordinary subject matter.  When viewed in its entirety, The Digital Eye encompasses a fairly complete index of the uncanny valley.

Image: Wendy McMurdo. Helen, Backstage, Merlin Theatre (The Glance). 1995. Pigmented inkjet print. Courtesy of the artist. Image from henryart.org.

However, the more interesting relationship between the uncanny and this exhibition manifests more subtly, through the techniques employed within some of The Digital Eye’s most captivating works. Like many manmade objects, a particular fascination comes along with a photographic spectacle that is not immediately decipherable; the same way one stares from atop the Hoover Dam and attempts to fathom how mid-century technology enabled this sublime structure’s production, a similar curiosity arises when staring into a photograph that appears too composed to be real. Although the increasing prevalence of Photoshop may have dulled this effect in recent years, a fascinatingly unknown quality remains beneath the surface of a digital photograph that seems too composed to be true.

Julie Blackmon. Powerade (from the series Domestic Vacations). 2005. Pigmented inkjet print. Courtesy of the artist and G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle. Image from henryart.org

In The Digital Eye, Julie Blackmon’s pigmented inkjet print Powerade (From the series Domestic Vacations) makes this effect its focal point, integrating otherwise mundane imagery into a disturbing image that commands not so much a look as a blatant stare.  A mere glance at the photograph would suggest a boy playing in a yard. However, with any closer inspection, the red ball, the boy’s back and the blue bottle of Powerade ensnare the on-looking eye, naturally pulling its attention towards these objects existing on an overtly distinct plane from their surroundings.  Looking more closely reveals the “yard” as an estranged garden of sorts, more likely to house gnomes or the Fountain of Youth than the swing set and bicycle that one would expect to find in an ordinary boy’s world.  A sense of uncertainty pervades the entire image; what initially seemed familiar appears strange and hyperreal.  Despite the absence of an object of decided uncanniness, Powerade belongs in the valley as much as any disembodied appendage.

Although psychoanalytic theory has become largely dismissed as irreverent in contemporary society, the prominence of the uncanny within this photography show is not without significance: feared uncertainty prevails in our present moment. The indecisive politics, government upheavals too complex to read from afar, and an unpredictable economy only offer stability in their constant presence; every week similar stories surface in the news, but with conflicting endings. In this sense, The digital eye is also a reflective one, offering a mirror into a state of being less defined by its subject matter and more acutely understood through an inexplicable composition of elements that creates unease without resolution.

Electric Blue Oasis: The Las Vegas Pool as Sign

Tourists en masse pause to photograph the Bellagio’s outdoor courtyard from a stylized, concrete balcony designed to evoke Northern Italy. Below them, five pool courtyards cover the landscaped expanse in a set of varietals: ambient fountains, lap pools with floors covered in contrasting tiles, hidden jacuzzis walled away behind the foliage. Guards eyeball the key card of all pool entrants, leaving the balcony-only visitors to the wishful thinking the Bellagio’s romanticized imagery is designed to inspire.

Pool at the Bellagio, Las Vegas

Emblematic of relaxation and luxury, swimming pools across America dress-to-impress with waterfalls, floating bars and palm tree clusters. The Las Vegas swimming pool goes farther, embodying a highly constructed destination, attitude or theme: replicated Greek and Roman statuary surround “The Garden of the Gods” at Caesars Palace; the Southeast Asian-themed Mandalay Bay’s “The Beach,” offers sand and a wave pool; lush landscaping, faux grottos and cascading waterfalls line the Mirage’s oasis-like space. The city’s known excess sets expectations high for architectural elements, but almost every “pool experience” now goes beyond the standard hotel pool, creating a total environment.

Despite Las Vegas’s penchant for relentless change, a consistent set of elements persevere throughout the Strip’s structural history: casino, hotel, retail, sign, grounds, porte-cochere, parking and pool; Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour’s 1972 Learning from Las Vegas incorporates an extensive categorization of such features, all of which continue to be found in Las Vegas today. The most notable component to change from definitive to inconsequential is the property sign. LED lights and digital screens extinguished the neon sign’s artistry and impact; themes previously realized through multi-story signs shaped into pink, atomic clouds, stylized minarets and billowing plumes now manifested as sculptural architecture across the Las Vegas skyline, dwarfing the signs that never grew to the Strip’s new scale.

Stardust sign and casino, Las Vegas. Image from playle.com

In contrast, the Las Vegas pool amplified its size and function since the neon era. When casinos began opening along Las Vegas Boulevard South in the 1940s and 50s, the property’s sign was the dominant promotional outlet.  Taking the lead from the classic motel structure, Strip casinos targeting drivers on US Highway 91 used the sign to represent their contents and themes, while the modest, postage stamp pools offered the tempting contrast of glimmering water against the stark desert. Some hotels, such as the El Rancho, positioned their pools as secondary billboards, supporting the property sign out front: the classic desert mirage materialized for drivers as they emerged from the empty desert.

El Rancho sign and swimming pool, Las Vegas. Image from unlv.edu

Although this oasis effect reflects a promotional aspect of the early Las Vegas pool experience, thirty years later, that role transitioned from architectural element to complete representation. A shift in visual cues occurred as the pool’s value to the overall casino image increased and the outdoor sign diminished. The opening of the Mirage in 1989 initiated the trend of entertainment as a significantly more prominent aspect of casino revenues, largely realized through amplification of the casino’s theme; the “mirage” literally became Steve Wynn’s entire, 3,000+ room resort.  The keystone of this tangible fantasy is the pool,  a winding lagoon of electric blue, surrounded by lavish landscaping, a tiki-themed bar and splashing waterfalls. By adopting the iconic desert oasis as its theme, the Mirage built an image with the pool at its core.

Mirage pool., Las Vegas. Image from thedubaipie.wordpress.com

The immersive pool trend initiated by the Mirage spread quickly throughout the 1990s, the pool’s role as sign increasingly strengthened while hotel themes proliferated and expanded; the Excalibur’s fairytale castle, the Luxor’s glass pyramid and Treasure Island’s pirate ships replaced the standard “tropical” and “old west” iconography historically dominant on the Strip. Exterior and interior architecture reflected the new themes at maximum volume, yet little innovation was put towards the property sign, its promotional power diminished by the shift in vistors’ arrival method, from the road to the airplane.

Booking a hotel upon arrival in Las Vegas is a ritual of the past; instead, travel search engines such as Orbitz and Kayak.com represent the new drive-by. Following a series of clicks, the Las Vegas-bound traveler finds the Strip in digital form; here, the property sign is insignificant. Rather, price, availability, and desirable amenities exert comparable power over the internet searcher’s desire to stop. In order to compete in this marketplace, a casino needs a virtual edge that fulfills the old role of the sign. As a component of the casino well served by glossy imagery and barely-clothed sex appeal, the pool became a natural solution.

The new “destination”  theme common throughout the Strip by the late 1990s effectively translated into matching pool environments. In 1998, Steve Wynn transformed an image of the Italian Bellagio resort into drizzling fountains and “historic” two-story building facades, while in 1999, Circus Circus Corporation realized the Mandalay Bay’s Southeast Asian theme by bringing in 2700 tons of a sand. While the more resort-friendly pools instigate total immersion in the “resort experience” as much as they represent the casinos’ themes, the 1997 New York New York casino’s “Park Avenue Poolside” demonstrates one of the most complete embodiments of its place.

Small, grassy mounds, scattered trees and a yellow volleyball net stretched across the NY NY pool visually cue a condensed Central Park encircled by a line of brick restaurant facades; this is standard Las Vegas pool themeing.  Beyond the constructed details, standard chaises cover concrete pool deck, so densely packed that in the absence of aisles, loungers awkwardly crawl across the chairs to place their towels, Offering space for 840 pool-goers in a hotel that houses over 2000 rooms, the chairs are at a premium reminiscent of New York apartments; once finally situated, the New York New York guests find themselves crammed into the claustrophobic, Manhattan lifestyle, as close to the “New York experience” as many Americans from less occupied areas of the country may get.  The pool, in this respect, offers more immersion in the resort’s theme than the hotel’s purple, art deco-inspired bedspreads or the beer guzzling Lady Liberty sign could ever hope to instigate.

New York, New York pool, Las Vegas

“Park Avenue Poolside” offers little of the traditional experience affiliated with resort swimming pools; relaxation ultimately is not its purpose.  Rather, the Las Vegas pool has become a representation of the hotel in the way the property sign once was, to the point that it inherently embodies the casino’s essence.  In a landscape where every business is selling the same thing, for extreme profits, convincing an audience of business individuality is difficult, and ultimately a deception.  The pool effectively played the role of the sign during the 1990s and early 2000s, becoming a place for immersive signification within the hotel premises. As the most current casinos begin to de-theme their approaches, the next signifier of choice is still unclear but can be expected to create an equally elaborate spectacle.

From the House of Lords to Rehab: Celebrity in the Las Vegas Landscape

“There was a time in fabulous Las Vegas when Hollywood starlets mingled with world class entertainers, when comedians gathered after shows to laugh, drink and dine the night away, when brandy and wine flowed and succulent steaks were cooked to perfection and served not only with a smile, but a meaningful conversation. It was common to see Frank, Dean, Sammy ad Peter singing to guests while the sound of champagne bottles popped and the feeling of good times filled the room.” -Plaque at the Entrance to the House of Lords, Sahara Casino

Sahara Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas.

The Sahara’s House of Lords restaurant discretely inhabits a corner of its disintegrating casino. If the restaurant were representative of the Sahara’s present state, the casino’s closure in less than one month would be surprising—the House of Lords stands in pristine condition, its subtle fountains circulating beneath a shimmering, faux night sky, surrounded by a circle of booths backed with golden minarets. A more recent incarnation of the restaurant that originally opened in 1954, this House of Lords avoids the dire fate of the rest of the casino, which suffers from abandoned towers full of severely aged rooms, a swimming pool surrounded by empty fountains and a row of shops pushing sales of discounted halter tops and rhinestone flip-flops.

The House of Lords, Sahara. Image from vegastripping.com

The Sahara represents one of the last casinos on the Las Vegas Strip with ties to the city’s past image as a haven for celebrities and Los Angeles’s elite to escape Hollywood . Outside of their stage time, performers were known to frequent the casino floors and restaurants, providing an image of Las Vegas as a place uniquely accessible to the stars. The long defunct, tiki-themed Don the Beachcomber restaurant was the best known restaurant in the Sahara for celebrity sightings during the mid-century era, more so than the original House of Lords.

The current House of Lords integrates aspects of its own history with that of Don the Beachcomber to create a constructed time capsule aimed at an audience nostalgic for “old Las Vegas” and its celebrity-filled associations. Its overtly dark lighting, small number of tables, and seclusion within the casino communicates exclusivity, while the circular positioning of the booths creates the sense of intimacy often absent from contemporary Las Vegas restaurants. Photo murals of the casino’s original architecture and the stars who frequented the Sahara surround the room, offering a meager substitute for the unsurprising absence of celebrity presence at the present-day, modest casino.  The mid-century Las Vegas Strip was a place to become glamorous by association; the House of Lords attempts to bring back that moment as best it can within a vastly different Las Vegas landscape.

Postcard image of Don the Beachcomber restaurant, Sahara. Image from hmdavid on flickr.com

In contrast to the more observation-based celebrity experience valued by the Baby Boomer generation, the current Millennial generation now coveted by the Las Vegas Strip casinos integrates participation with their concept of celebrity; these Americans want to be the celebrity. The Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, located several miles from the Strip, embodies this newer attitude, beginning upon arrival at the casino’s porte-cochere. Since the 1970s most casinos have amplified the porte-cochere feature of their entrance: the MGM Grand maintains an enormous, bulbous cover loosely referencing its overblown Art Deco décor, the tropical Mirage incorporates a thatched roof-like texture and oversized flowers, and seventeenth century oil painting reproductions hang salon style from the ceiling of the Venetian’s roundabout.

Hard Rock Casino, Las Vegas. Image from handycrafuniqe.com

Entering the Hard Rock through the back taxi entrance, in contrast, evokes the Hollywood red carpet arrival: shining mirror panels cover the porte-cochere surfaces, accented with white incandescent bulbs that suggest the  camera flashes of paparazzi at-the-ready. The hotel’s website describes the rooms as “designed with the discerning rock star in mind.” Once per week, guests can engage in tabloid-worthy activities at Rehab, the Hard Rock’s enormously popular pool party that initiated a city-wide trend of young adult-oriented pools and pool night clubs. The most prominent image throughout the casino is the Hard Rock’s trademark celebrity memorabilia. Worn jackets, sparkling costumes and floating instruments fill museum-like display cases every several yards: Shaun White’s flag-print jeans from a Rolling Stone cover shoot, Gwen Stefani’s pink, rhinestone halter top, Kurt Cobain’s signed guitar. Famous objects live here, devoid of their owners, the celebrity role open for casino guests to fill.

Hard Rock Casino interior, Las Vegas.

Mr. Lucky’s 24-7 resides in an alcove off of the Hard Rock’s circular gaming area, posing as a “retro” diner from an indiscernible era. Aged signs from motels and restaurants and motels line the walls, interspersed with archival photographs of Elvis, the Rat Pack and the other mid-century Vegas icons seen on the walls of the House of Lords. The most recent incarnation of MTV’s series The Real World, the reality television show in which a cast of seven unknowns become instant celebrities while their lives are filmed for six months, the cast inevitably inhabits the Hard Rock Hotel; countless scenes of these readymade celebrities take place inside Mr. Lucky’s 24-7.

Mr. Lucky's 24-7, Hard Rock Hotel and Casino.

In the background of several shots of the show hovers vintage “H” and “R” neon signs, abbreviating “Hard Rock.” Anyone familiar with the Las Vegas landscape would recognize the letters’ distinctive font; they came from a sign once spelling “Sahara.” The signifiers of celebrity in Las Vegas have been similarly changed: reorganized, restored, polished and painted. Ultimately, indicators of celebrity, both past and present, represent a fascination still ever-present in the American fantastical landscape.

Diamond-Coated Vulgarities: The Wynn Esplanade and Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God would be at home in a window on the Wynn Las Vegas’s Esplanade. The Esplanade is an oversized arcade of designer stores, flanked by flowers and butterflies, bulbous chandeliers and draped satin, all created in highly saturated hues and an oversized scale.  In line with the tone set by the resort-casino’s brand, nearly every store and restaurant is merely a name: Louis Vuitton, Stratta, Dior, McQueen, Bartolatta. The Wynn Art Gallery was fittingly replaced by a Rolex store in 2009, due to lack of attendance.

The change of the resort’s name to Wynn aptly demonstrates its relationship to art: originally to be called Le Rêve after casino developer Steve Wynn’s famed painting by Picasso, Wynn changed the name to something more recognizable by his clientele.  As a resort intended to shed the themed environments characteristic of the 1990s Las Vegas Strip,  “luxury” became the focus of the new casino. This form of luxury differed from the version Steve Wynn created for his earlier Bellagio, which evoked the eighteenth century Grand Tour and included art as one component of the luxury experience though its art gallery (more on the Bellagio in a forthcoming post).

The new Wynn, in contrast, rebranded luxury as name cachet, created for those knowledgeable enough to have an understanding and association with the names comprising the stores, restaurants and hotel itself. Paul Verhoeven’s Las Vegas-based Showgirls  (1995) showcases the difference between the various Las Vegas audiences though the lower class character Nomi’s initial mispronunciation of Versace and lack of awareness of celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck’s Spago restaurant, in contrast with lead, affluent dancer Cristal Connors’s “in the know” disposition.

Wynn’s reconstruction of luxury’s signifiers was effective in both enabling his new resort to become one of the costliest on the Las Vegas Strip, and contributing to the “de-theming” future resorts, as seen in more recent casino constructions in CityCenter Las Vegas and the Cosmopolitan.

Damien Hirst. For the Love of God. 2007. Image from wikipedia.org.

Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God would be the ideal for the Wynn Esplanade because of its parallels to the developer’s own history and role as a constructed status symbol within the contemporary art field. The sculpture’s surface appearance alone aligns with the overstated opulence that characterizes the most expensive hotels on the Las Vegas Strip; however, the Wynn’s Esplanade supplies the most concentrated collection of high-end, designer shops that serve as status symbols within American society. The inclusion of a Ferrari dealer and gallery in the Wynn brings this brand of luxury to a visual pinnacle, an American status symbol recognizable by almost anyone who walks into the casino; similarly, Hirst’s use of 8,061 diamonds as an artistic medium and noted £14 million in production costs to construct an art object that immediately bestows a status of wealth and extravagance upon it purchaser. The Ferrari dealership makes high-end vehicles instantly available for the Wynn’s high rollers to purchase with their newfound winnings; how fitting it would be for For the Love of God to be on hand for a similar whim.

In reality, For the Love of God resides far away from the Las Vegas Strip, supposedly purchased by a consortium that included Damien Hirst himself, in a performative display of art market manipulation. Reportedly sold at its projected value of £50 million, the purchase of For the Love of God was covered by news outlets worldwide as an authentic sale, despite the questionable lack of documentation and public details surrounding the sale. This maneuver bears strong resemblance to Steve Wynn’s performance-like implosions of historic casinos on the Las Vegas Strip.  The casino developer’s demolition of the Dunes in 1993 included coordination with the pirate-themed Treasure Island, then also a Wynn property. The implosion’s constructed narrative included the image of a cannonball shooting from Treasure Island to detonate the Dunes. Unlike many closing casinos, Wynn also opted to include the iconic, 18-story sign in the destruction, demonstrating an overt lack of reverence for the earlier hotel’s cultural significance and clear statement of his view on the future of Las Vegas.

Wynn attempted to solicit footage of the Dunes implosion to cinematic studios, to no avail. Ultimately electing to shoot the footage himself, the filmed explosion afterwards became sought after and sold for use in multiple Hollywood films. Martin Scorsese’s 1995 Casino featured one of the most memorable inclusions of Wynn’s footage, in which the implosion represents the Las Vegas Strip’s transition from control by organized crime figures to the corporate branding of casinos.  As a result of Casino and other media portrayals of Las Vegas’s shift towards family oriented experiences in the 1990s, Wynn’s filmed representation became the reality; his themed casinos replaced “classic,” adult-oriented environments, and Americans bought into the rebranded city enough to start bringing their children to indulge in the pirate ships, tropical waterfalls and oversized castles of the “new” Las Vegas, thus making Wynn’s imagery a reality.

The new Wynn Las Vegas differs significantly from the initial version of Las Vegas he set out to create though the Dunes implosion; the influence the casino developer established through his performative destructions allows his powerful image to proliferate, to the point that his name alone is now enough to attract thousands of individuals to his casino daily. Likewise, Damien Hirst’s performance surrounding For the Love of God brought his name the forefront of the media and American consciousness through a similar medium and a comparable level of success within the contemporary art field. The value of a diamond is only a small fraction of the value of a name; it is safe to assume both Hirst and Wynn know this all too well.

Every Signifier on the Las Vegas Strip: Fifteen Days, Endless Simulacra

This week, I begin a fifteen day trip to Las Vegas, Nevada, to seek and document art experiences within the notorious mecca of American popular culture. While turning a critical eye to Sin City and its cacophony is far from novel (someone else also happens to be doing a similar project at this exact moment), the motivation behind this trip is to document the art, architecture and visual culture of the current Las Vegas Strip more comprehensively, and with greater reflection, than is possible in the standard three-day visit.

Over the past several months, I have selected and booked fourteen of the most culturally significant casinos on the Las Vegas Strip,* based on their relationships to American history and culture. As I work my way through this experience, Peripheral Vision be turned over to the documentation process, returning to its regularly scheduled programming after April May 29.

Image from wildnatureimages.com

*The “official Las Vegas Strip” refers to the 4.2 mile portion of Las Vegas Blvd. South between Sahara Ave. and Russell Rd.

Beyond the Beautiful Parking Lot: Lewis Baltz’s Prototypes and the Las Vegas Studio

In Chicago there are two exhibitions of late 1960s architectural photography approximately two miles apart: Las Vegas Studio: Images from the Archives of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown is on view at the Graham Foundation while Lewis Baltz: Prototypes/Ronde de Nuit is presented at the Art Institute. Comparing Las Vegas Studio’s documentary photographs to Baltz’s “Prototypes” seems like it should be a straightforward endeavor. The two sets of images focus on commercial architecture of the west, including signs, parking lots, roadways and building facades. Elements of the New Topographics movement strongly affiliated with Baltz’s practice can also be found among Venturi and Scott Brown’s photographs of the automobile-focused architecture of the Las Vegas Strip. Yet, instead of highlighting these similarities, viewing both exhibitions in rapid succession more clearly highlights the visual distinctions between a group of artistic images posing as documentary photographs and a body of archival photographs presented as conceptual works of art.

Lewis Baltz’s forty Prototypes hang single-file, in numbered order, around the perimeter of a single gallery in the Art Institute’s Modern Wing. Rigid uniformity dominates the space: each silver gelatin print is identical in size and frame, all titled according to the city in which they were taken. The persistent sunlight, stark commercial buildings and absence of people in the images definitively allude to the weather, sensibility and sprawl characteristic of the west coast. Other than this the Prototypes provide minimal details that distinguish the individual California cities from one another.

Lewis Baltz. "Laguna Niguel." 1970. Gelatin silver print. Laguna Art Museum Collection, Anonymous gift, in memory of Beula Prince © Lewis Baltz. Image from artblart.wordpress.com

The notation of arbitrary specifics as the works’ titles causes the images to be positioned as documentary in nature, but this stylization is then contradicted by the way Baltz presents his subjects within the photographs. Each image appears carefully constructed with precise attention paid to the basic photographic elements of composition, contrast and clarity. In Laguna Niguel, a forgettable building shares the stage with an equally banal parking lot, causing neither to be shown it its entirety. Instead, the forms of the building and parking lot together create the work of art; the photographed objects dissipate into a two-dimensional construction as abstracted from reality as the man-made landscape that serves as this artwork’s medium. Through its deep contrasts, isolated lines and highly conscious framing, in Laguna Niguel, the real elements of a city turn into elements of art abstracted from reality.

In contrast to the minimalist installation of the Prototypes, Las Vegas Studio appears ornate in its hanging throughout the rooms and stairwells of the Madler House residential building housing the Graham Foundation. Although Venturi and Scott Brown primarily intended for the images in this exhibition to be used as documentation for their 1968 study of Las Vegas, seeing the photographs independent from the final study raises the question of how they function as works of art in their own right.

It is known that the group visited Ed Ruscha’s studio immediately prior to their arrival in Las Vegas; they also directly reference the artist’s empirical approach in the panoramic, street level series of images titled “Ed Ruscha” elevation of the Strip, an imitation of Every Building on the Sunset Strip. Despite the influence of Ruscha and the use subject matter similar to the pursuits of New Topographics artists, most of the photographs in Las Vegas Studio are overtly aesthetic and composed; highly saturated colors, strategically illuminated neon lights and unexpected juxtapositions between commercial elements suggest the architects aimed to accomplish more than merely document the landscape before them.

"Riviera Casino, Las Vegas, 1968." Students and Professors of the Las Vegas Studio. 1968. Image from johndan.com

Particularly in the context of being framed, matted and hung salon style for exhibition, the Las Vegas photographs appear as though they aspire become works of fine art, rather than documentary footage. Their titles are straightforward and factual like those of the Prototypes, but unlike Baltz’s approach, the meaning of the Las Vegas Studio pieces still gravitates back to the physical subjects; a photograph of the Riviera’s parking lot and sign is entirely about the Riviera’s parking lot and sign. Although this gleaming image is easily among the more beautiful photographs of a parking lot ever created, the work of art is signifier of the casino, more similar to the physical Rivera sign than to the the parking lot of Baltz’s Laguna Niguel. Hardly a failure, the fact that the Las Vegas Studio images aptly represent the landscape of Las Vegas at the time of Venturi and Scott Brown’s seminal study demonstrates the inherent success of the project; when viewed in tandem with Baltz’s Prototypes, the questions raised by each exhibition diverge but ultimately offer a more complete view of their place and time.

Obscuring the Wunderkammern: Figurehead in the Peabody Essex Museum

Installation artist Charles Sandison has coated the Peabody Essex Museum‘s East India Marine Hall in a dark, drifting sheath of digitized ship logs and journals .  Titled Figurehead, the enlarged strings of writings travel across the historical space’s walls, objects and visitors in disjointed paths that correspond with the weather of Salem, MA, via algorithms and data pulled from the internet. After adjusting to the visual overload of the installation in the same way one’s eyes adapt to a darkened room, the finer details began to emerge; the museum’s founding collection is also in this room, the paintings, figureheads and other artifacts absorbing the projected strands of text.  Physically overwritten by the ship captains’ perfected script and darkened to the point that many objects were unrecognizable, the East India Marine Society collection was transformed by Sandison’s installation into something distant and phantasmal that hovered above the otherwise conventional museum.

FreePort [no. 001]: Figurehead, Charles Sandison, East India Marine Hall, Peabody Essex Museum. Image from metrowestdailynews.com.

The Peabody Essex is the oldest museum in the United States currently in operation.  As its complicated name might suggest, the institution has gone through various mergings and additions since it opened to the public in 1825 as the East India Marine Society Hall. The namesake East India Marine Society of Salem, Massachusetts was a group of individuals who “…navigated the seas beyond the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn, as masters or supercargoes of vessels belong[ing] to to Salem,” as was outlined by the Society’s 1870 bylaws.  This group of sea travelers convened in order to share information about exploration of what they referred to as the East Indies; part of this mission included sharing the objects accumulated during their travels as the public collection that ultimately became the museum. It was though this effort that Society members created a particular asset: an authentic, American wunderkammern.

“East India Marine Hall and General View,” H.P. Ives, 1859-1885, stereoscope, image from New York Public Library.

The image of the original Peabody Essex, alongside that of Charles Wilson Peale’s collection, comprises what popular culture has taught us us envision when we hear the phrase, “curiosity cabinet:” a wide assortment of aged cases and shelves filled with items that now would fall into specific museum genres, including natural history objects, historical artifacts and fine art. Most curiosity cabinets resulted from a particular aristocrat’s personal holdings of taxidermy, decorative objects and man-made wonders. Yet with roots in a collaborative founding rather than an individual’s point of view, the brand of wonder found in the East India Marine Society cabinet was also collective; as objects gathered by a group of entrepreneurs traveling trade routes in the 18th century there was a uniquely American aspect to this artifact compilation.

Charles Sandison’s Figurehead interacts with this original wunderkammern by projecting directly on top of its objects; figureheads from the Society’s ships absorb the glowing text most prominently but it also infiltrates the case containing a deteriorating, taxidermied penguin and floats across the paintings and busts of nineteenth century gentlemen.  Figurehead obscures all objects in the East India Marine Hall to the point that it is hard to even know for certain what one has seen while visiting this room; the pervading sense uncertainty characteristic of foreign environments has been created within one of the country’s most American spaces.

FreePort [no. 001]: Figurehead, Charles Sandison, East India Marine Hall, Peabody Essex Museum. Image from the Peabody Essex Museum.

While visiting the installation, other visitors I encountered in the space found the experience entirely frustrating; labels for the objects were impossible to find in the darkened room, as was often the case for the objects themselves.  The only readily available context was the reference to life at sea provided through the projected nautical jargon of the ship logs; the East India Marine Hall had been transformed into a place that could only be understood by viewing the objects extremely closely and deciphering the collection through the perceptions allowed by the conditions of the room. In this regard, Figurehead is  itself a total representation of the wonder to be found on an exploration.  While this affect is created by a media-based experience, it is also one that cannot be communicated through digital media alone; physically being in the East India Marine Hall is required.

Immediately outside the East India Marine Hall, the streets of Salem are flooded with commercial mini-museums, capitalizing primarily on the Salem Witch Trials and other clichéd urban legends connected to the region. These places are intended to appear wunderkammern-like without owning any objects that would be found in a true curiosity cabinet. One such place is the 40 Whacks Museum, which focuses on murderer Lizzie Borden and houses collections of skulls and hatchets, among other things.  The space is branded to look more or less like a wunderkammern, with aged props, elements of the grotesque among the collection and traditional cases much like those in the East India Marine Hall. Yet essentially all objects in the museum are reproductions, replicas and creative interpretations of historical objects, conceived of and arranged for the purpose of selling Lizzie Borden merchandise to tourists.

The 40 Whacks Museum, Salem, MA

Commercial museums like the 40 Whacks attempt to conform to the image pop culture has created for curiosity cabinets in order to capitalize on the public’s affinity for wonder. In contrast, Charles Sandison’s Figurehead is a contemporary version of a wunderkammern. Unlike commercial imitations, the artist has rethought the wunderkammern in terms of both the history of this concept and the Peabody Essex museum’s own history.  In this regard, Sandison distilled the essence a curiosity cabinet: the uniqueness of the individual museum in which it resides. Figurehead’s true medium was the historical context of the Peabody Essex Museum reconfigured into a representation that bridges the digital and physical roles museums now play. Poignantly, the relationship between physical and digital information is one museums still struggle to negotiate and fully understand; Figurehead‘s successful merging of the dichotomy suggests there is still something to be learned from the wunderkammern, even for the institutions built upon its foundation.

Pop Culture on the Rocks: Lost Guggenheims, Fallen Showgirls and the Liberace Museum

The last time I visited the Liberace Museum, an older woman invited me to try on a giant, patchwork coat. Providing the requisite opportunity for participation the way almost all American museums now do, this coat allowed visitors to feel the added weight Liberace experienced while parading across the stage in one of his elaborate garments.  The woman overseeing the coat was a museum volunteer and clearly a lifelong Liberace fan.  As I tried on the 40 lb garment and posed for the camera, she let us know the coat’s cacophony of shimmering  fabrics were handmade by another volunteer and consisted of fragments from the ensembles of former showgirls.

The room in which I tried on the coat was the highlight of the museum: the costume gallery. Spread across two buildings in a strip mall on east Tropicana Avenue, the Liberace Museum showcased five primary collections; biographical photographs, a handful of vehicles, and a melange of pianos were displayed in the building nearest Tropicana Avenue, while the space on the other side of the parking lot housed the costume collection and selections of Liberace’s Baroque home furniture.

Costume gallery, Liberace Museum, 2008

This week, the Liberace Museum closed indefinitely. While many news sources have reported on this closure since its announcement in early September, I suspect few people under the age of fifty actually visited the physical space.  Dave Hickey’s seminal essay “A Rhinestone as Big as the Ritz” in 1997 book Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy provided incentive to visit and reconsider the value of Liberace to American society’s acceptance of the gay community. Likewise, Lady Gaga’s popularity and overt derivations from the piano star’s approach to celebrity suggest Liberace remains relevant to contemporary audiences (see Eric Felten’s “Lady Gaga and Liberace: Separated at Birth?”). Yet, the two instances I visited suggested there was not an enormous body of Las Vegas visitors clamoring to get into the modest space so far east on Tropicana Avenue that the museum ran free, hourly shuttles to and from the hotels on the Strip.  The one occasion I took the shuttle back to the Strip (as opposed to taking a $30 cab ride or renting a car; public transportation is reportedly not for tourists) the only other party enjoying the footage of Liberace performances shown on the shuttle’s TV was a group of three from Australia visiting Las Vegas for a week.

Liberace Museum, 2008

In general, Americans do not visit Las Vegas for the form of culture found in museums. Some have suggested that the closing of the Liberace Museum might be attributed to its isolated location, away from the tourist areas of the city. While the free shuttle was one solution to this concern, the closure of museums throughout Sin City over the past decade demonstrates that its site was not the only reason for the Liberace Museum’s demise.

In some ways, museums seem a natural fit for Las Vegas between of the constant flow of people in and out of the city and the high concentration of resident performers, architects, designers and other creative individuals required to support the entertainment excess for which Vegas it is known. Considering how the shopping, dining, sexual opportunities, spectacle and general branding as a place where one can do anything without regret play a significant role in Las Vegas “culture,” it is easy to forget that gaming is the single reason for the city’s position as a destination in America.  Gambling makes all other things Las Vegas is known for possible, and ultimately, all roads in the city’s tourist districts lead to (and are paid for by) gaming.  This situation creates an interesting relationship with culture, particularly because Las Vegas has spent so many decades creating a culture around gambling that makes it appealing to a mass audience, as opposed to only those who consider themselves “gamblers.” Contemporary popular culture is essential in Las Vegas’s ability to sell itself, and hence the city is designed to reflect the most present of moments in American consciousness.

In the 1990s Sin City capitalized on the public desires for “edutainment” and family friendly activities through the addition of cultural amenities to casinos.  A few remnants of this era still exist, including the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art and the Mandalay Bay’s American Zoo and Aquariums Association accredited Shark Reef. The Venetian Casino opened two museums affiliated with the Guggenheim and designed by Rem Koolhaas in 2001: the Guggenheim Las Vegas and the Guggenheim Hermitage.  The Guggenheim Las Vegas exhibited only The Art of the Motorcycle before its closure in  2002. The Guggenheim Hermitage lasted until 2008, showing works from the collection of its namesake Russian institution and the New York affiliate by big-name modern painters, such as Picasso, Lichtenstein, Mondrian and Kandinsky, among others.

Guggenheim Hermitage, Venetian Resort Casino, 2001, image from rex-ny.com

When the Guggenheims opened in the Venetian, they made sense in terms of the casino’s theme through their adherence to the American perception of Italy as a place for high culture and artistic mastery. Yet the permanence and preservation that  define museums are antitheses to the way visitors approach Las Vegas, as a place without a past, consequences or a future that is definitive; anything can happen with a roll of the dice. Likewise, museums defined by history struggle to find a place in the community (both tourist community and residential community) of such a place; here, “Las Vegas history” is merely a theme equated to the “French Riviera,” “Old West” and “Tropical Islands” represented within the casinos .

The role of Las Vegas’s history is made clear on the Zeigfield Stage in the Bally’s Casino, where Jubilee! continues as last remaining showgirl production on The Strip.  Similar to the fate of its museums, Las Vegas has seen a dramatic loss in the showgirl productions that once dominated the city, beginning most prominently with the closing of the Stardust’s famed productions in 1999 and the end of the Tropicana’s Folies Bergère in 2009. 

Jubilee! perseveres in an almost parodic production that includes an original “Titanic” number that borders on the absurd; when I attended a performance earlier this year I found myself surrounded almost entirely by tourists from Asia.  The vintage styling of the rhinestone costumes, pronounced smiles and homemade backdrops now appear more like the “living history” component of a historical museum than a contemporary performance. If the inclusion of former showgirl outfits in the participatory coat at the Liberace Museum isn’t evidence enough, the showgirl production’s relationship to museums is made even more pronounced by the opportunity to take a formal tour of the Jubilee!’s wardrobe and sets on select days of the week.

Jubilee!, Bally's Casino, image from nytimes.com

As a physical manifestation of popular culture and mainstream American interests, Las Vegas is known to exist in a state of constant flux. Even the community-based Las Vegas Art Museum shut its doors in 2009; hence while Liberace’s legacy may have suggested the museum he built would have an endless audience in Las Vegas, the city in which his career was cemented, a part of me was not surprised when the announcement came that it too would disappear. Las Vegas is not nostalgic, only temporal.  Popular culture does not remember; if it did, at least a portion of the hoards of Lady Gaga fans that visit Las Vegas annually could be expected to flock to Liberace’s pianos and costumes as a means for better appreciating their favorite star.  Instead, I suspect a very small minority of the Little Monsters even know who Mr. Showman was.

Ultimately, the outcry of the press regarding the Liberace Museum’s closure has been surprisingly pronounced for an institution that received relatively little notice when it was doing anything but closing. While there is a natural inclination blame the Las Vegas environment for its lack of recognition of the past, that would be the easy way out. Las Vegas, as a money-driven city, feeds from mainstream trends and culture.  In the case of the Liberace Museum’s closure, the question to ask is the following: what it is that prevented us, the Americans who created what Las Vegas has become, from remembering to visit, or simply remembering at all.

The Revolution Begins with a Trash Can

Exhibiting art created for city streets in a museum setting is a difficult undertaking. The interior of an institution can often be one of the farthest environments from an “urban landscape.” As gated experiences with limited hours, museums are tightly controlled in regards to everything from lighting and security to object placement and user experience. In contrast, art designed for the streets, following completion by its creator, is typically left at the mercy of its surroundings, at which point it may be added to, mangled or simply disappear.  The city street also adds a level of cultural context that a white-walled gallery is hard pressed to replicate, particularly when an opening or other event involving a chaotic mass of people is not taking place in the building.  Absence of control adds an element of risk to art, and without the risk, urban art can instantaneously be sucked lifeless.

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego took on the challenge of exhibiting urban art through Viva La Revolución: A Dialogue with the Urban Landscape, a group show of work by 20 international street artists.  Predictably, the MCASD attempted to mediate the dissonance between the urban environment and the museum enclosure by commissioning a number of works to exist outside of the exhibition in the gallery spaces, on the streets of San Diego. During the three days I visited the city, the only mural of the nine installed I had the opportunity to experience was a colossal, red societal critique pasted across the side of an Urban Outfitters by Shepard Fairey. The wheatpaste mural was comprised of layers of the iconic images (Angela Davis portraits, images of singular eyes) and social commentary (“OBEY CONSUME REPEAT”) typical of the artist’s work.

“Hillcrest Mural” by Shepard Fairey, 2010, image from sdurbain.com

In many ways Fairey’s Hillcrest mural is most interesting because of its siting on the exterior wall of an Urban Outfitters: “renegade” art on the side of the commercially mainstream clothing store. It is unlikely that a chain retail store would allow spontaneous street art to remain on the side of its building, were it not sanctioned by a museum exhibition. It is also widely known that this particular store sells mass-produced garments and home wares made to appear as though they are second-hand items and elements of genuine nostalgia, bringing out the somewhat deceptive quality of street art created for a museum exhibition. The commissions may be of the utmost quality but the conditions under which they were created are distinct from actual urban works: budgeted, somewhat protected (Fairey’s Hillcrest mural has been tagged and restored on multiple occasions since the exhibition’s opening) and with sites legally procured.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the MCASD’s inclusion of a city-wide element in this exhibition. It is more expected than innovative in the sense that museums have been noticeably more active about creating installations beyond their buildings as a regular practice, particularly in southern California this year; for instance, this past spring, UCLA’s Fowler museum sent Nick Cave’s sound suits out into the world through semi-unexpected “invasions” on campus and the MAK Center for Art and Architecture disseminated 21 artist-created billboards throughout greater L.A. Should the MCASD have not commissioned the street art projects for Viva La Revolución, there would have almost certainly been a noticeable absence in the exhibition and a missed opportunity to bring art into a community that had so much impact on the development of the medium as “higher” art.

But, the success of Viva La Revolución I found most noteworthy was the effectiveness of the street art exhibition in the gallery spaces. The MCASD downtown location housing the exhibition was previously luggage storage for the adjacent Santa Fe train depot. The building’s details already somewhat urban in their styling due to this prior use, upon entering the space there was a sense that this is the place for a street art show.  Yet the indoor version of Viva La Revolución was something of a quiet revolution, its fate determined by an unassuming trash can in a corner. Titled Busted Plume, artist David Ellis’s piece initially seemed  to be a mere container for brightly colored pieces of garbage that appeared too clean and without weathering, much like Fairey’s pristine mural outside Urban Outfitters. But momentarily, one, then multiple items in the can created a structured rhythm amongst themselves.

The clanking was as clean as the garbage itself. Ultimately a composition by Roberto Carlos Lange, the sharpest sounds had the assuredness of a symphonic staccato; as the garbage can crescendoed into its strongest controlled cacophony, the small work’s presence suddenly was in control of the entire gallery space. This was a significant feat, considering how most other works in the room were gargantuan. Swoon’s tower of abandoned furniture and ethereal figures towered over the gallery, nearly reaching the beams of the space’s lofted ceiling while Akay’s mass of graffiti tools occupied the length of the wall adjacent to Ellis’s trash can. But through its aural domination, Busted Plume maintained the largest presence, even as the sound faded into the periphery around corners or behind glass doors.

"Viva La Revolucion" installation view, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego downtown

The decision to tuck Busted Plume into the most prominent gallery of Viva La Revolución was a bold choice.  Many museum visitors resist what they fear to be disruptions of the traditionally tranquil museum experience. While those attending an exhibition of street art may be expected to have a higher level of tolerance, a curatorial trust in Ellis’s piece as a centralizing force was clearly necessary; in the end this was absolutely the right decision.  The wastebasket brings the absence of control over visual experiences from the urban environment to the otherwise highly controlled museum experience, thus introducing a definitive element of street art into the gallery. Although Shepard Fairey’s mural had the name recognition and star power as a spotlight piece physically on the street, the essence of street art was to be found most successfully in the galleries of Viva La Revolución, where a wastebasket subtly demonstrates how the world works.

Michael Jackson’s Unused Furniture

An essay I wrote on the Julien’s 2010 Summer Sale (a true wunderkammer of an auction) at the Planet Hollywood Casino in Las Vegas is in the fall issue of ARCADE, available online here.

COLOMBOSTILE MICHAEL JACKSON COMMISSIONED SOFA. Image courtesy of Shaan Kokin/Julien’s Auctions.

And my favorite of the named bergere chairs, “Wild Cat”:

"Wild Cat" COLOMBOSTILE MICHAEL JACKSON COMMISSIONED BERGERE, image courtesy of Shaan Kokin/Julien’s Auctions