Making real art from fake elements

Neon is emblematic of Las Vegas glitz and glamour. Once a symbol of falsity, flash-in-the-pan hopes and garishness, neon is now a popular component in installation art, and its patterns and colors an inspiration to painters. Obsolete neon signs, once discarded, are now treasures to be preserved in the Neon Museum. Meanwhile, as neon has been anointed worthy and serious by the arts community, the Strip resort developers have opted for neonless theme-park evocations of the Old World. Happily for the tourist industry, these two modes can coexist, but for the people who live here, especially artists, the need to put down roots and receive nourishment sometimes requires making a choice: Which is more real, the flashy but homegrown neon, or the time-honored but mock treasures of the world? Two exhibitions demonstrate how this need plays out in the hands of two individuals—one a painter and gallery owner, the other a photographer and ad agency creative director.

Neon has defined Las Vegas for over 50 years—what subject matter could be more authentically rooted in Las Vegas? Jerry Misko, Las Vegas native and co-owner of the Dust Gallery, has specialized for years in distilling the essence of neon into large acrylic paintings. Over the years his interpretations have become mellower and more abstract. For the works in Smoke & Chanel, at the Fallout Gallery, he still uses reds and yellows, but juxtaposed with smoky grays and browns. His use of icy blues, arctic whites and “electrochemical pastels,” as Tom Wolfe dubbed neon colors in the 1960s, is particularly effective. I love the way he uses a diptych format to repeat a bold arched pattern to create a pleasing symmetry. But my favorite was “Pile On,” a small, narrow, vertical diptych. Willful in its antisymmetry, its severely cropped explosion of color in the lower half and almost complete darkness in the upper half gave me the alone-in-a-crowd feeling. I was told by the Fallout gallery co-owner Rick that Misko’s paintings are much in demand on the local market, and I think their appeal attests to the desire of local art lovers to have work that reflects where they live and who they are.

The creation of illusions as an escape from everyday reality also defines Las Vegas. The city’s faux architecture, another iteration of that strategy, may have long-term positive consequences, having brought talent here from all over the globe, in crafts both old and new. As the architect Robert Venturi, one of the authors of Learning From Las Vegas (a 1972 celebration of the commercial Strip), put it, “Historians aren’t going to come back and put fragments in a high art museum, but they would put it in a craft museum.”

Creating the illusion you’re in Paris, Venice or Tuscany is difficult, because no matter how exact the replica, each simulation is within sight of an equally clever simulation. Glenn Larsen, whose photographs are all in black and white, thinks these borrowings from the “world’s greatest art and architecture”—even though most are carved in Styrofoam, not marble—don’t get the attention they deserve. As demonstrated by the works in Faux: Art and Architecture in the New Las Vegas, at the Clark County Library, his remedy is to swoop down with his camera and zoom in on a particularly beautiful detail, eliminating the background of high-end shopping malls, tourists and slot machines. His strategy works; his subjects look beautiful and authentic. A gondola really looks like it’s floating in the Grand Canal, and a skyscraper seems to scrape the gray New York sky, not the bright sky of Nevada. Statues at the Monte Carlo and Caesars Palace that look cheesy in person look authentically classic in Larsen’s photographs. Even a creation that does not correspond to any real-world site, like the Disneyesque volcano waterfall at the Mirage, looks convincing in his photograph. The Elephant Shrine at Mandalay Bay, a pastiche of Asian art, looks like an ancient ruin uncovered in the jungles of Burma.

Larsen may also be doing an unintentional service to the arts in Las Vegas by calling attention to the skilled work of its artists and artisans, many of whom have elected to stay here. Some artisans have already found work in private residences. Some, like Marilyn Phillips, a sculptor, had never used Styrofoam until they came to Las Vegas, but are now keen on it. Maybe Styrofoam will become the new neon and inspire original works of art that will be identified as authentically Vegas.

Faux: Art and Architecture in the New Las Vegas

Photographs by Glenn Larsen

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Through February 6

507-3400

Smoke & Chanel

Paintings by Jerry Misko

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(Exhibit closed)

1551 S. Commerce St.