This Easter, my brain feels split in two: with one part warbling In your Easter bonnetttt a la Judy in Easter Parade, and the other part researching the Easter eggs in Beyonce’s newest album Cowboy Carter (hello Dolly! hey Willy! Wait, is that a Beach Boys sampling??).
Either way, finding my way through this pop culture landscape has me tired and weary. I don’t know how to feel about anything… and you know it’s hopeless when I waffle back and forth on Sarah Sherman’s latest Weekend Update foray as Central Park’s beloved owl Flaco’s grieving widow (say that five times fast). Here it is for you to ponder as well:
OK it is pretty funny, but also who? Anyway, the Chair will be back next week, Beyonce and Judy still in tow, and new pop culture and politics to consider and reconsider. Or we just give it all up like Lizzo (what is THAT about?). Till then…
One of the things that’s great and maddening about creating anything artistic is you never know what might happen with it.
Something, nothing or anything in between.
A script for a play, movie or television series can sit in a drawer.
A song might never be heard.
A painting or photograph might never be seen.
A novel might never be…
never to be seen again
Well, you get the idea.
Of course, all of these things meet the eyes or gaze of at least one person, the artist. And usually a bunch more. But after that, it’s anyone’s guess. The number could be in the hundreds, thousands or millions.
This weekend I went to something pretty much indescribable. Though, not really. Simply put, it was…
An amusement park.
Weeee!
Well, an art installation that featured parts of an amusement park that was last seen in 1987 for a few months in Hamburg, Germany.
Actually, that’s the only time it was EVER seen.
But now there were fun-houses, Ferris wheel rides, painted backdrops, sculptures, ornate masks, vintage posters, games and T-shirts, as well as merry-go-rounds, mock enchanted trees, a shooting gallery and even a fake wedding chapel.
Sounds a bit… juvenile?……pretentious? ….Avant garde?
You could say that…
Or something that some of you might be interested in but likely nothing most of you would get up and out of your homes in order to go see.
Now, what if I told you that:
Drake (Note: Yeah, that guy. The rapper) and his production company spent about $100 million to get this thing out of storage and refurbished in order for it to be displayed until mid-May in Los Angeles?
OK I’m listening
And then, what if I added that the designers of these colorful, life-size amusement park doo-dads, stuffed into shipping containers and crates and stored in a 50,000 square foot warehouse in Germany and then Texas for three-and-a-half-decades, unseen by anyone, were designed by such renowned artists as:
Salvador Dali
Keith Haring
Jean-Michel Basquiat
David Hockney
Roy Lichtenstein
Head explodes
As well as:
More than a dozen others of European and American renown?
And…
Featured original music from both Miles Davis and Philip Glass.
Would it now suddenly all seem A LOT more interesting???
Yeah, it did to me, too.
It made me want to go.
Here I come
Having spent several hours there, feeling like a kid again, it all made me wonder about….
Actually, let’s just say it made me wonder. Created wonder. Prompted cynical ole’ me, after a few hours, to leave there in
Wonder.
Try not to be charmed
I can’t begin to tell the tale of how all this stuff got locked away for 35 years while a single painting from any one of the artists I chose to feature on separate lines above has sold in the mega millions.
Though it did prompt me to ask this question:
If the work of great KNOWN artists can be so easily packed away and forgotten, can you imagine how much other INCREDIBLE stuff has been locked away, not displayed, or has been left lying around or unnoticed right in front of all of our collective societal eyes???
huh!
And just when I thought it was impossible for me to be left in any more WONDER.
You can’t reference Luna, Luna without giving credit to Viennese multimedia artist Andre Heller, who came up with the idea and spearheaded a way to assemble the concept and players all those decades ago:
And another to the refurbished ORIGINAL, NOW ON DISPLAY IN DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES, and how to see it.
Click here for more info
You might not believe an amusement park like this can actually exist, or has ever existed, but it does.
Nor —
Can you believe that you will only get to see it after 35 years because of Drake, but that is also true. (Note: No, it does NOT matter if you don’t listen to his music, or hate his music, or don’t like him, or are somehow morally annoyed by his recent online D pix going viral (seriously?). Here is merely a conduit here).
Drake meme appropriate here
It’s not yet official, but if you can’t get to L.A., a guy who worked there told me it’s likely the whole thing is headed up to San Francisco, and then to New York, in the next year.
Here’s some photos of me and my friend Neil goofing around:
notes from a chair 