A Beautiful Deep Dive Into Our Worldwide Arts + Culture
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A Beautiful Deep Dive Into Our Worldwide Arts + Culture |
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DEFINING THE LAS VEGAS ARTIST |
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An unexpected email asked me to reflect on the “Las Vegas artist.” In all my twenty-four years in Las Vegas, the term has irked me, like poor stitching inscribing your skin. So, I have no answer to what makes one a Las Vegas artist today, but I have some questions. Does the label describe someone who mines the Strip and Downtown for visual inspiration, creating formalist mimicry? That trend hit its peak in the 1990s. It’s already in a third generation. Most of those first-generation formalists were transplants; most have left. This art, while often great, is reactionary; it can be visually stunning but rarely offers new information. Maybe someone can be a Las Vegas architect or designer, making work that simply doesn’t happen outside this city. But the formalist art that happens here doesn’t necessarily originate here. Except for a few unique sources, it’s the same as art that arises from our mid-mod past that is made in Los Angeles or Palm Springs. Does it apply to one who engages with the conceptual elements of Las Vegas history? The first known inhabitants, Bugsy and the Rat Pack and showgirls, whatever the 80s were here. Anyone with access to the UNLV Special Collections digital repository can do that. A lack of Las Vegas residency does not disqualify one from such a project. Which leads to the question: Can someone in Cleveland with a web browser also be a “Las Vegas artist?” Rock band The Killers, to great success, consciously chose this city as their content. But does Las Vegas fundamentally shape my experience of Slaughter, another popular “Las Vegas band?” Plenty of musicians fly in for videos and seem to describe Downtown life well. Hootie and the Blowfish’s video for “Sad Caper” might be as emotionally accurate as the movie “Leaving Las Vegas,” and more accurate than even The Killers’ “Shot at the Night.” But spoiler: people behave badly at 3 a.m. in other cities, too. We just have better settings than most. Leaving the Strip, does it refer to artists confronting the expanse of the Mojave Desert? Peacefully conveying the beauty of the Great Basin? Or exploring the numerous facets of the American Southwest? In those categories, Las Vegas is a prom night pimple, an uninvited intrusion. Calling that person a “Las Vegas artist” should induce hives. Does the label imply a belief in unseen cosmic forces that exercise their will on unsuspecting inhabitants? Forces unique to this valley, different from those on the other side of Mount Charleston? Do these forces respect our political boundaries? Do they conjure the specter of having to define the Henderson artist, the North Las Vegas artist, the unincorporated Clark County artist? Does the label apply to someone born in Vegas? Ascribing qualities to the vagaries of birth always seems lazy, uncouth, and dangerous. In a city that benefits from national and international immigration, the requirement to have been born here is gatekeeping (at the very least). Being born somewhere doesn’t impart a person with special knowledge that is inaccessible to others. I was born in southern Virginia but was shuttled to Germany within the year. Ask me about being a Virginian artist.... Does the label apply to someone working in Vegas? Sure. But what does introducing an artist as a “Las Vegas artist” do but define them as provincial to anyone living in a city with more than three million people? The label exhibits narcissism. It implies that others should know the qualities that make one a Las Vegas artist. I feel no shame in admitting that being introduced to someone as a “Twin Cities artist” would tell me nothing about them other than they probably have heard more Prince than me. But can I infer their opinions on minimalism or maximalism or the snow? Ditto Atlanta, Boston, Charleston, Denver, etc. Is the world today even this hyperlocal, as the label implies? Maybe it meant something to be a Parisian artist in the 19th century, but it seems too small now. News comes to us from all over. I barely know anyone who subscribes to the Las Vegas Review Journal (I’m on Sunday delivery only). Living here, in the jail of the mountains, escapable only by going up and over, or straight through, in a few select places, is unlike almost anywhere else. A row of over-scaled, glowing buildings is always in view, some of them shockingly strange (though not enough of them anymore). The city is hostile to pedestrians; you experience the city at an unnatural speed. These features (and bugs) of Las Vegas must affect the artist living here. Perhaps. But to the core of an artist’s work? To the point where all their content and form can confidently be reduced to the sawtooth horizon or the neon hum (now simply the silent LED)? Do critics look at the work of an artist from Manhattan and ask how the Statue of Liberty plays into this? Do they consider the psychic effects of living in proximity to both the Chrysler and the Empire State Buildings? New York has the mob, too. We have a history, but way fewer ghosts than other haunts. Place has at least some effect on the people inhabiting it. Still, it’s bad armchair psychology to posit that it has an inescapable effect, an effect that deserves to be the primary introductory descriptor for an artist, with their permission or without. I understand in a world of art fairs and biennials, we need labels to make artists seem exotic to the potential collectors of their work. “And get this, they are a Las Vegas artist. Isn’t that just wild?!” But I see no valuable application of the term here, in this fabulous city, full of incredible artists. Let’s be artists who eschew unhelpful labels, labels that place stereotyped preconceptions and erroneous expectations on our art. When pressed to be a Las Vegas artist, let’s be artists who live in Las Vegas.
SEAN SLATTERY Slattery is the Associate Professor in Residence, Painting & Design at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is formerly a Bann artist, a Denton artist, and a Dallas artist. He is currently a Las Vegas artist. ----------------------------------- This project 'Defining the Las Vegas Artist' is currently open to all high desert creatives. For more info, Click Here to send an email. ----------------------------------- Artist and writer GORDY GRUNDY is the Editor-in-Chief of Art Report Today
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