EXHIBITION
On a recent visit to my Southern California hometown, I found a new shopping development where I used to hike. A cineplex and an oversize strip mall were done up to resemble a quaint old European village, with stucco-walled buildings washed an Amalfi shade of ochre, an artificial babbling brook framing the parking lot, and Mozart concertos escaping from craggy rocks that double as speakers.
That same spirit infuses Let's Entertain: Life's Guilty Pleasures, an intriguing traveling art exhibition and accompanying catalog curated by the Walker Art Center's Philippe Vergne and assistant Olukemi Ilesanmi. Their exhibit and book are devoted to the ways commerce, public discourse, politics, and even our physical bodies have been folded into branded entertainment.
While there may be something smug about a couple of curators slumming in populist palaces, Vergne and Ilesanmi are as seduced as they are critical. Their public chats, built into the book's essays, interviews, and artworks, took place at San Francisco's Sony Metreon, and in the lobby of the Las Vegas Bellagio hotel-casino. At the latter, they witnessed an LED sign advertising the resort's triple entertainment bill: NOW APPEARING: HENRI MATISSE, VINCENT VAN GOGH, AND PABLO PICASSO.
The splashy publication - complete with lottery-style scratch-off cover and color-soaked interior pages - encapsulates the evaporation of distinctions between high art, pop culture, politics, and urban planning. An interview with iMac designer Jonathan Ive, for example, explores concepts of branding. UCSD professor Susan Davis details theories of urban theme parks such as Times Square. And an essay by communications guru Neil Postman argues that "in America, the fundamental metaphor for political discourse is the TV commercial."
Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, performance artist Leigh Bowery, and porno-manga artist Takashi Murakami lend the exhibition a seductively pop flair. Take a look at the boundary-blurring Web site - www.walkerart.org/va/letsentertain - that accompanies the show. Was that thing you just saw on your screen an advertisement, a work of art, a piece of propaganda, or just something pretty? The answers aren't getting easier, but the questions sure are entertaining.
Let's Entertain: Life's Guilty Pleasures: $29.95. Distributed by D.A.P.: (800) 338 2665. Exhibit: tour stops, through April 2001, include Portland, Paris, Mexico City, and Miami. Walker Art Center: www.walkerart.org/va/letsentertain.
STREET CRED
Interplanetary Dance Fever
Backhandheld Computing
Take Me to the Bridge
Rhyme Machine
Another Frame Job
Violent Type
Conference Call in a Bottle
ReadMe
Music
The Gift of Fear
Just Shoot Me
Better Red Than Dead
Just Outta Beta
Sound Switcher
Wingo-Rama
Password Snatcher
Palm Cam
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