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But back up. Beneath the brouhaha of current events lies a racial and political backstory so clichéd it's tepid, but no less important because it is so. It's visible on the way to and from the gallery, embodied easily in this sight: An old black woman crouched on the sidewalk shielding her face from the wind with a piece of cardboard, yelling madly—one of dozens of homeless people here in the homeless corridor.
Drive west a wee bit, to the edge of the alphabet streets, West Las Vegas, the bright pink and green houses, and note the boarded windows and occasional bottle-in-bag carrier. You know these clichés. These are rote but real images that create our cultural language. Similarly, drive north a bit, through a few developments of beige stucco matchers, and absorb their meaning, consciously or not—they purport to show better living, the white suburban frame around the urban Vegas story. Park at an industrial-looking office building on Gowan west of Martin Luther King Boulevard, and upstairs is the art gallery.
It's quiet up there, but for the whispery voices of NPR on the radio and the woman who greets you on approach.
In the first room is an angry African mask that represented ancestors' spirits and was "used for social control" by the tribe, the placard explains. Overhead, NPR commentators discuss the impotence of the United Nations. A Zulu spear is displayed nearby; beyond it, two white women read about it, one with her hands clasped politely behind her back. Don't touch.
Soon, more than 300 people will be arrested in crimes related to the NBA All-Star weekend's rowdiness; the tone of gossip and media coverage will suggest race has something to do with it—visitors were reportedly disproportionately African-American; one shooting occurred at an event called Harlem Knights.
Around the corner in the second small gallery space, The Art of Politics' 24 paintings, mostly acrylic and bright colors, address race and issues such as the Iraq War. One painting includes the quote, "We Americans have no commission from God to police the world," and another has this not-so-subtle visual and written metaphor: the scales of justice weighed down heavily by the words "Fox TV's propaganda" as opposed to "truth."
Back outside, within days, Vegas will send 42 more Marine reservists to Iraq, some for their second tour.
The art in Left of Center asks us to consider the cultural context in which it exists. But somehow the exhibits push more for a reflexive commentary on art; on the challenge of freeze-framing current events in some meaningful way and insulating them from time without insulating them from relevance. In some ways, political paintings, like articles full of boundless clichés, remind us of a lack of social progress; in other ways, they remind us of a lack of artistic progress.
Back out on the street, we're driving through those blocks of two-story stucco matchers, on down under the Owens area bridge, where humans are squished up in the crevices of the underpass, blankets, beer bottles, piss—"We Americans have no commission from God to police the world" ... or our consciences, or our social and artistic growth, apparently. Over and over we choose propaganda over truth, staid symbols and phrases over fresh—frightening?—interaction.
Today the small collection of pieces at Left of Center has succeeded in ushering me to see the hard and angry masks perched on curbs at Owens and Las Vegas Boulevard. I'm just not sure whether I see an indulgent series of artistic ironies turned into clichés—here near Martin Luther King Boulevard, by the fattest, richest, sexiest, greediest city in the world—or, a good place for someone who isn't insulated by media propaganda or art to scream her head off at a reality we make art and articles out of. Someone like an old homeless black woman, shielding her face from the wind.