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| Cloudcuckooland Today wishes you a Happy Memorial Day from Forest Lawn. |
The Forest Lawn Museum is running a fascinating free exhibit on the history of panoramas and cycloramas. In other words, visionary gigantism. After enjoying the visionary gigantism on display at the Broad, this exhibit, "Grand Views," embiggened my understanding of the trope of visionary gigantism in LA, and its role in LA's outsized artistic identity.
The technical solutions to building structures that showcase the art is a central theme of the exhibit. Real estate plays a big role in visionary gigantism; traveling exhibitions and World's Fairs do, too.
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| A panorama attraction built in LA in 1883. (That's St. Vibiana's, the old cathedral, in the background.) Below, the Panorama is glimpsed in a wide shot from Third and Spring, possibly from the Van Nuys Building. |
Jeremy Bentham's visonary-gigantic philosophy of the happiness of the masses led ineluctably, insidiously, to his Panopticon -- the All-Seeing Eye of surveillance. Which, in turn, became the construction design model for the immersive, virtual-reality panorama palaces of the 19th century. The central watch tower of the penitentiary became the central viewing platform of the panorama. Visitors thrilled at the chance to become, for a few minutes, at the cost of two bits, the All-Seeing Eye.
The Parthenon, the Bayeux Tapestry, the Sistine Chapel, Bayreuth Festspielhaus, Mt. Rushmore... religion, war, and patriotism attract big audiences and call forth the big structures. But art that offers simple escape, travelogue or brief moments of mystic contemplation, can find audiences with a little space and a bit of creativity.
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| A 2010 recreation of an 1853 traveling cabinet cyclorama, portraying a Gold Rush Argonaut's trip 'round the Horn. Theatrical rigging, scrolling images. Motion pictures! |
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A diorama of a panorama that ran for a few years in the 2000's. The proprietors adapted an old Hollywood Blvd. Chinese restaurant into a mini-panopticon. I wish I'd seen it! It exhibited Sara Velas's haunting "The Valley of the Smokes," a sepia-hued panorama of the LA Basin as it might have looked before the Spanish arrived. The view (my best guess) could be from Fort Hill? Or Griffith Park? Smoke obscures the landscape of native plants and dry hills. Genius. The gift shop sells it in a pocket panorama: an irresistible point-of-purchase.
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| Photo-recreation of a cabinet cyclorama with scenes from the life of Christ that toured the Midwest in the 1850s. The canvas had so deteriorated that it could barely be unrolled; in 2014 conservators took a chance and opened it to take digital photos of the whole thing, frame by frame. They found that the angelic presences were trimmed with bits of gold leaf, as in a Medieval illumination. |
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| The primitive but tutored folk-style of the images struck me as being uncannily like the mysterious "Indigenous Stations of the Cross" at San Gabriel Mission, also thought to have been painted in the early-to-mid 19th century. Is there a connection? Artistic influence? Just a market-driven convergence of styles? Anyway it invites the consideration that the devotional re-enactment of the Stations of the Cross, a Franciscan innovation (You Were There! with Christ in his agony) greatly influenced the development of cyclorama. |
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| Bits of a recent panorama that offers a chilling dreamscape. The illusion was enhanced with bits of 3-D flotsam, allowing viewers to be immersed for a moment in surrealist or Jungian contemplation. |
The exhibit makes the remarkable point that panorama is in no way a defunct Victorian art form. There is a direct line from panorama to theatrical scenery to tableaux-vivants, to motion pictures, to the cyclotron movie backdrop, to Cinerama, to IMax, to virtual reality goggles and the ever-elusive dream of a "Metaverse." Follow the impulse of visionary gigantism, and you follow the money.
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| Mid-century movie studio backdrop |
Forest Lawn Itself as Visionary Gigantism
Of course, the reason this exhibit is at Forest Lawn at all is because of the history of Hubert Eaton's own visionary gigantism.
"The Crucifixion," Jan Styka's 1894 blockbuster panorama, had been stranded for years in a St. Louis warehouse after the Louisiana Purchase Exposition closed. Eaton bought the picture in 1925, restored it, and constructed a massive auditorium for it at his innovative, over-sized cemetery.
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Three visionary gigantists contributed to"The Crucifixion:" Jan Ignace Paderewski, the pianistic superstar-turned Premier of free Poland who commissioned it; panoramist Jan Styka; and Eaton.
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| Styka's palette, blessed by the Pope |
In 1951 Eaton commissioned a companion piece, "The Resurrection," for the Hall, now called the Hall of Crucifixion and Resurrection. This is one of three studies in the exhibit:
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God, the original visionary gigantist; He really got the ball rolling.
Poor Robert Walker, the hireling artist, seemingly had to put up with a great deal from Eaton, his visionary employer: |
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| "Also, Bobby bubbie, there's no girl in the entire picture! Plus Jesus looks short. Maybe a horse?" |
The "Grand Views" exhibit runs until September 10, 2023. But the museum's fine permanent sculpture collection also shows Forest Lawn's commitment to the art of visionary gigantism, such as fragments of the old "David" reproduction, which toppled in an earthquake and had to be replaced with a new replica; Gutzun Borglum statues; and a head from Easter Island.
Of course, the reason this exhibit is at Forest Lawn at all is because of the history of Hubert Eaton's own visionary gigantism. 
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