Blowhard, Esq. writes:
On a recent trip to Las Vegas, I visited the Neon Museum, where the ghosts of the city’s golden age haunt the Nevada desert. It’s a wonderfully photogenic, melancholy place and an essential stop the next time you’re in the city.
Click on the photos to enlarge.
The museum’s visitor center is located in lobby of the former La Concha Motel. An example of the Googie style, it was designed by Paul Williams, the first black architect admitted to the American Institute of Architects. The motel was located further north on the Strip, so the building was cut into pieces, moved, then reassembled in its present location.
Related
- Many of the signs were designed and manufactured by Young Electric Sign Company.
- The museum offers tours of restored Las Vegas neon signs, some of which I photographed on a previous visit.
- Las Vegas resident Lloyd Fonvielle on the Boneyard, including a short film. I thought of Shelley’s “Ozymandias”, too.
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
The first time I went to Vegas at 18, we stayed at the La Concha. It had what I like to call “1800s hooker rooms.” Everything was red — bedding, lampshades, everything — and the walls and ceiling were covered in red-and-white ornately flocked wallpaper. It was fantastic. I still marvel at WHY we stayed there — how did one even find hotels in 1993 without the internet at age 18? I do not recall, but I managed it.
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My first time there was around ’87 or so, back before the kid-friendly and luxury-hotel boom. We stayed at the Gold Coast. I really wish I had pictures of the Strip and Fremont street from that time.
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How long until the artworld recognizes this stuff as genuinely Great American Art? Or is this whole thing I’m sometimes prone to — griping about the establishment and its stuffy views of what’s art and what’s not — just totally irrelevant in today’s world?
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So long as the Establishment and its Official Narrative exists, I think it’s helpful and necessary to point out how narrow and provincial their views are. Sure, you won’t convince the High Priests and their acolytes, but poking, prodding, and nudging the conversation to be more open will surely influence others.
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There’s a difference between “Art” and some things that are artful. There’s also a difference between art and design.
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As a convenience, so everyone knows what’s being talked about, sure. But can it really be maintained in any serious way? The blues, movies, comic books and pulp fiction were all looked down on in their early years as trash — now they (or some, anyway) are recognized as first-class American art. The Metropolitan Museum is full of suits of armor, posters, rugs, and bowls. Even so far as “design” goes … Toulouse-Lautrec’s best-known works are his commercial posters. The ads he designed, in other words. Why shouldn’t we realistically expect that a lot of what we don’t consider to be art today — tv commercials, website design, porn blogs, gifs, blog comments — will one day be in some future Met or Library of America? Isn’t it clear from art history itself that this kind of thing often happens?
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