Explore the relationship between Pop Art and Postmodern architecture in reference to Learning From Last Vegas and films/artworks produced in 1960’s/70’s.

Learning From Las Vegas, 1972, by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven

Izenour is considered one of the most significant works written on the development of

Post-modern architecture. The new architectural vision during the 1960’s became about

generating a convincing urban development that used a “richer language of architecture

based on metaphor and wit”1. Learning From Las Vegas, along with other of Venturi’s

works such as Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966) marked the start of a

new angle towards architecture; architecture that aimed to convey the values of the

American people. Venturi, Brown and Izenour analyse the vast landscape of Las Vegas

and how it began to address the drive to communicate effectively through architecture.

This communication was fore fronted by the growth of casinos, hotels and the mass of

neon signs in Las Vegas. The development of these new entertainment complexes and

refreshingly brash architecture grew in parallel to the rise of mass production and

consumer culture in America.

The economic prosperity during the 1960’s and 70’s marked the height of an immense

form of communication. Advertisements filled newspapers, television screens and

billboards, becoming increasingly more dominant and powerful. The impact of this imagery

provoked the emergence of Pop Art in the late 1950’s. This bold movement aimed to move

away from the dominant approaches to art and started to challenge the traditional

conventions of what art aimed to represent. Artists such as Claus Oldenburg, Andy Warhol

and Roy Lichtenstein used advertisements, product packages, comic books, music and

films as the focal point of their work. The expression of what they saw and experienced

1 Charles Jenks, Modern Movements in Architecture (London, Penguin Books Ltd, 1987) 374

represented the current culture of the US. The relationship between Pop Art and Post-

Modern architecture is addressed in Learning From Las Vegas. Both Pop and the Las

Vegas architecture highlight the importance of the sign in the urban environment. The

aesthetic similarities between the two disciplines mark the rise in commercialisation,

creating iconic landscapes and imagery.

Learning From Las Vegas was amongst the first writings to challenge the Modernist

architectural vision. Modern architecture focused on the order and structure of the city and

on a “constructional efficiency”2. In many of Le Corbusier’s writings such as Five Points of

a New Architecture (1926) the focus is on the technical structure of buildings rather than

any philosophical implications. In Le Corbusier’s unrealised project for Paris, 1925 (Plan

Voisin) aimed to completely replace the existing city and re-build a capital which consists

of an identical grid of skyscrapers. In contrast to

Learning From Las Vegas, Venturi calls for

architects to focus on “learning from the existing

landscape”3. The emphasis became on

enhancing the environment rather than changing

it, or in Le Corbusier’s theory, completely

rebuilding and starting again.

Against other Modernist principles of simplicity and rationality, the post-modern era was

influenced by the visually complex periods of Baroque and Rococo. The “messy vitality”4

started to dominate over the order of the official style of government, church and suburban

2 Magali Sarfatti Larson, Behind the Post-modern facade (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 43 3 Robert Venturi and others, Learning From Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form, Revised Ed (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1977) 3 4 Mark Gelemter, A History of American Architecture, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001) 285

Le Corbusier, Plan Voison, Paris, France, 1925 http://www.fondationlecorbusier.fr/CorbuCache/900x720_2049_1707.jpg?r=0,

buildings. Venturi believed that architects now lived in “a cultural heritage which not only

nourishes us but provides useful precedents upon which new design ideas can be

based”.5 Despite the great influence of Corbusier’s rationalist structures, Venturi states

“how damaging, modernisms break with the broader and deeper architectural culture

was”6. From this new perspective, modernist architecture was seen as sterile and dull, and

in turn no longer reflected the idealised perfection that it originally aimed to. Learning From

Las Vegas directly confronted the Modernist architecture; “not the robust Modernism of the

1930s, but the thin, stale 1960s version”7 as Brown refers to in a later interview. Las Vegas

embodied a new type of architecture. The

city became a low lying expressive

landscape rather than a “monotonous

repetitive grid of mass housing” 8. It started

a new language of communication without

sky scrapers or the standardised form of

buildings.

Originally established as a railroad town in 1905, the look and function of Las Vegas

quickly developed. Despite the collapse of the American economy during the Great

Depression in 1929, the introduction of the Hoover Dam in 1931 gave Las Vegas’

economy a needed boost. The electricity produced at Hoover Dam allowed for more signs

and buildings to be cheaply ran as well as providing employment for construction workers.

5 Ibid, 284 6 D.J.R. Bruckner, The New York Times Guide to the Arts of the 20th Century: 1900-1929 (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2002) 2935 7 Stephanie Salomon and Steve Kroeter, Still Learning from Denise Scott Brown, Designer & Books, http://www.designersandbooks.com/blog/still-learning-from-denise-scott-brown, January 2014 8 Jenks, Modern Movements in Architecture,79

Venturi and others, Las Vegas, Fremont Street 1960s, Learning From Las Vegas, 39

In the same year, the legalisation of gambling led to the increase of casinos and

entertainment complexes along both of the two key areas in Las Vegas. Venturi defined

the Las Vegas landscape as having two main scales of movements; Main Street

(Freemont Street) and The Strip. In Learning From Las Vegas, the values of gambling and

the role of the casino aren’t addressed. Instead the focus is on the symbolism that the Las

Vegas landscape represented.

Main Street and The Strip became lined with hotel and casino complexes. The Golden

Nugget (1946), Lucky Strike Club (1954), California (1975) were amongst the casino-hotel

complexes that opened on Fremont Street. Simultaneous development was happening on

the Strip with buildings such as The Flamingo Hotel (1946), Moulin Rouge (1955) and

Circus Circus (1971). During the 1960’s many hotel and casino’s like these began

remodelling with multi-story additions, going through several transformations over the next

few decades.

However the architecture along Main Street and The Strip doesn't define the city. Las

Vegas is dominated by the bold neon signs that advertise the numerous entertainment

sites. These signs, often independent of the buildings themselves, are visually powerful

and unmissable to those passing on the highways. The harsh visual order of the signs in

Moulin Rouge Hotel, Las Vegas, June 1955 http://fontscafe.com/sites/default/files/2080649875_fb1320711f_o.jpg

Golden Nugget, Las Vegas, http://fontscafe.com/sites/default/files/3094391302_8dfb5c

contrast to the order of street elements is discussed in Learning From Las Vegas and the

importance of the sign is heavily emphasised throughout.

This image above, taken from Learning Las Vegas, shows the amount of signs that lined

the side of the highway. Through these many commercial signs, the buildings and spaces

all become connected. The communication dominates “space as an element in the

architecture and in the landscape”9. In

some instances shown in Learning

from Las Vegas, the signs are the

actual buildings. The Long Island

Duckling, shown in Peter Blake’s God’s

Own Junkyard (1979), is a store

designed in the shape of a duck. This

building became to resemble a type of

architecture that became “submerged

and distorted by an overall symbolic form”,

9 Venturi and others, Learning From Las Vegas, 8

Venturi and others, Map of Las Vegas Strip showing every written word seen from the road, Learning From Las Vegas, 30

Venturi and others, Learning From Las Vegas, 16

knows as ducks. These ‘ducks’ are the symbols where as other structures known as the’

decorated shed’ applies the symbolism. Architecture like this began to question how not

only signs and advertisements could communicate, but how the actual building can.

The long vast highways between the buildings demonstrate the change in urban planning

during the 20th century. This was a result of the introduction of the automobile which

marked a revolutionary change. The advancement of machinery processes meant

productivity and consumption continued to grow since the first introduction of the first

automobile in the 1920’s. The twentieth century was now characterised as a “society

obsessed with speed and efficiency.”10 The high speed fluidity of the Las Vegas landscape

meant that the either the signs or buildings had to be striking. Signs advertise and

communicate a complexity of meanings, in a few seconds from far away. Without the

symbolism of the signs, the architecture itself wouldn't communicate in the same way. The

Vegas Vic Neon Cowboy or The Welcome To Las Vegas Sign, are landmarks of Las

Vegas just as much as the Empire State building is for New York City. Learning From Las

Vegas continually emphasises that the “sign is more important than the architecture” 11.

10 Streamling America (Michigan: Henry Ford museum and Greenfield Village, 1986) 7 11Venturi and others, Learning From Las Vegas, 9

Vegas Vic Neon Cowboy, Pioneers Club, 1951 http://www.inoldlasvegas.com/downtown/

Welcome to Las Vegas Sign, 1959 http://www.inoldlasvegas.com/downtown/

“Signs in Las Vegas use mixed media —words, pictures and sculpture to persuade and

inform”12. The aesthetic and purpose of the signs were parallel to that of the

advertisements that spread the mass popular culture even further. The communication

discussed by Venturi, Brown and Izenour became not only relevant to advertisements and

signs, but to Pop Art. Emerging in the late 1960’s, Pop artists focused on the symbolism of

the everyday American culture. The use of commercialised images, products, films and

celebrities represented a radical break from traditional subject matter. The underlying

concepts of the mass culture that defined the Pop artists were heightened by the new

approaches to techniques and style. Traditional painting techniques were replaced by

cheap commercial techniques that allowed the images to be reproduced multiple times.

Perhaps one of the most celebrated Pop Artist’s is Andy Warhol. Warhol’s work such as

Campbell's Soup Can (1962) shows every day products and advertisements. His paintings

12 Ibid, 55

Andy Warhol, Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1962. Synthetic polymer paint on thirty-two canvases, Each canvas 20 x 16" (50.8 x 40.6 cm) Museum of Modern Art, http://www.moma.org/wp/moma_learning/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Warhol.-Soup-Cans-469x292.jpg

Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych,1962, Acrylic paint on canvas, 2054 x 1448 x 20 mm, Tate, Purchased 1980 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/T/T03/T03093_8.jpg

evolved to using a silk screen which allows for rows of repeated images with only slight

alterations of colour or tonal aspects. This is executed in one of Warhol’s famous works

Marilyn Diptych, 1962, which uses an image of Marilyn Monroe taken from the popular film

Niagara (1953). Monroe’s face has become cartoon-like and the bright block colours are

distinctive of Warhol’s prints. Warhol references the highly publicised death of Monroe

through the contrast of colour to monochrome and comments on the “ubiquitous presence

in the media”13. The reproductions of the images brought question to authenticity and

originality as well as heightening the social trends and the idolised culture of the celebrity.

The commercial nature of Warhol’s work was also

apparent in the work of many other Pop Artists. Roy

Lichtenstein used the mechanised pattern of Ben-

Day dots that consists of repetitive dots placed next

to or overlapping that form a subtle illusion.

Lichtenstein selected popular imagery from comic

strips as his main influence, changing the images

only slightly. Through his works, he formed a

narrative that communicated the fast and perhaps

excessive way of life

James Rosenquist, another influential artist, formed assemblages that use various

products that had infiltrated through American society. I Love You With My Ford (1961)

draws attention to the production of the automobile and the new fast paced movement of

America.

13 Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, London: Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, 1981) 759

Roy Litchenstein, Image Duplicator, 1963, Oil and Magna on canvas, 61 × 50.8 cm, Courtesy Seattle Art Museum, http://lichtensteinfoundation.org/image-database

The juxtaposition of the car with the canned spaghetti and the role of the woman, all

become symbols of the middle-class American future. Rosenquist’s clever assemblages

follow the Pop Art concept of commenting on the modern culture and the ultimate

American dream. Robert Indiana’s abstracted signs USA 666 (1964-1966) and God is a

Lily of the Valley (1961) attempts to visual one aspect of the American dream; “easy life

and death”14. The idolised future of the US was no longer about political freedom but

instead was “measured by the number of commodities citizens could require”15.

The intent of Pop Art was so similar to that of the communication of the Las Vegas sign.

To promote, persuade and be a constant reminder of the commercial and entertainment

that was part of society. Visually, there are clear connections between the landscape of

Las Vegas and the style of Pop Art; the bold typography, vivid colours, abstracted images

and simplistic forms. The artworks and signs both easily draw the viewer’s attentions, just

as advertising aimed to do. Learning From Las Vegas repeatedly draws comparison

14 Lucy R. Lippard, Pop Art, 3rd ed (London: Thames & Hudson, 1970) 123 15 David McCarthy, Pop Art, Movements in Modern Art Series (London, Tate Publishing, 2002) 29

James Rosenquist, I Love You with My Ford, 1961, Oil on canvas, 109.23 cm x 57.5 cm. Moderna Museet, Stockholm. http://www.guggenheim.org/images/content/arts_curriculum/thumbs2/rosenquist_L1_1_l.jpg

Robert Indiana, USA 666, The 6th American Dream, 1964, Oil on canvas 105 x 105 in. http://robertindiana.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/The-Sixth-American-Dream-USA-666-600x593.jpg

between Pop Art and architecture, signifying the influence of both disciplines on the other.

Postmodern architects and the Pop artists approach hold many similarities:

“…creating the new may mean choosing the old or the existing. Pop artists have relearned

this. Our acknowledgment of existing, commercial architecture at the same of the highway

is within this tradition”16.

According to Learning From Las Vegas, modern architects abandoned the overlap of

architecture and art but this crossover between the two disciplines during the 20th century

introduced a new language of symbolism. It is argued by Venturi and Scott Brown that

other architects and urban planners focused on poverty and the inner city, but that their

research extended to the new epoch and folk art.

Whilst reflecting on Learning From Las Vegas, Scott

Brown comments on Pop arts “sense of fun and its

impure vision”, which “influenced how we saw and

documented Las Vegas”17.

Andy Warhol also talks of the iconography of the

landscape during the early 1960’s; “the farther west

we drove, the more pop everything looked”. Other Pop

artists directly looked at the American landscape. Allen

D’Arcangelo’s prints such as US Highway 1, Number 5

(1962) show commercial highway signs as silhouetted graphics. These works give the

perspective of driving along the vast space of the highway. In Learning From Las Vegas,

D’Arcangelo arrow print illustrates the “paradoxical subtleties”18. His prints also are similar

16 Venturi and others, Learning From Las Vegas, 6 17 Stephanie Salomon and Steve Kroeter, Still Learning from Denise Scott Brown, Designer & Books, http://www.designersandbooks.com/blog/still-learning-from-denise-scott-brown, January 2014

Allen D’Arcangelo, Highway 1, Number 5, 1962, Acrylic on canvas 48 x 55 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=79360

to the ‘movie sequences’ shown in Learning from Las Vegas on the journey through The

Strip and the highway. Ed Ruscha’s Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966) creates a

sequence through his photographs of the visual stages along the highway. Again, the

attention is towards signs and space in relation to the high speed culture and the visual

experience of the highway.

Another prime example of the connection between Pop Art and the Las Vegas landscape

is Claes Oldenburg’s 1978 commission for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Oldenburg was an artist that used everyday objects in a similar way to that of Warhol or

Rosenquist but executed them through physical forms. In collaboration with his wife,

Coosje van Bruggen, the pair created a large-scale sculpture titled Flashlight that stood in

the middle of the university campus by the performance centre. Expected to stand out both

day and night to audiences, “a subject suitable to both darkness and light was required”19.

18 Michel J Golec and Aron Vinegar, ed. Relearning from Las Vegas (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008) 144 19 Claes Oldbenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen, Flashlight, Large Scale Projects Image Gallery and Case Histories, http://oldenburgvanbruggen.com/largescaleprojects/flashlight.htm

Venturi and others, Learning From Las Vegas, 32

The flashlight also came to represent the lights and illumination

of the Strip. After undergoing various changes, the end design

sees an 11 metre non reflective black sculpture. The coating

resulted in an intense black, taking an element of the night into

the day. During the night, only a small fluorescent glow circles

around the floor as the sculpture was upturned instead of the

light showing into the sky. The innovative approach to the

object creates a bold unmissable statement in the landscape,

just like the statements created by signs along the Las Vegas

Strip.

The crossover between popular culture and architecture was

resembled not only through Pop art paintings or sculpture, but in

many films during and after the 1960’s. Iconic films such as

Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Oceans Eleven (1960), Viva Las

Vegas (1964) and Corvette Summer (1978) all use Las Vegas

as the setting, whether a backdrop of the Strip or inside a casino. The gambling resorts

and neon signs provided a powerful visual that emphasised the current society. The

posters and adverts for films such as these share many visual qualities than that of Pop

artwork.

Claes Oldenburg, Flashlight, 1978, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Steel painted with polyurethane enamel 11.73 m high x 3.2 m diameter shttp://media.lasvegasweekly.com/img/photos/2010/11/10/oldenburg_flashlight_by_sam_morris_gmg_t1000.jpg?c76bf34eada957f64a0b14990027a576ff9bf379

Main Street, Las Vegas, Nevada, Car Chase scene taken from Diamonds are Forever, James Bond Film Series, Directed by Guy Hamilton, 1971 Ocean’s Eleven, Reproduced Film Poster, 1960,

http://www.filmposters.com/product-detail.cfm?id=12986

Despite its clear attention to the relationship between Pop and Architecture, there are

some criticism of a sense of irony and contradictions throughout Learning From Las

Vegas. It was seen as a celebrating the landscape but statements such as “self-

dramatising entrepreneur” and “fabricated corporate advertising”20 hints at negative

aspects towards the popular culture. The ideas of Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour are

analysed in several essays from Re-Learning From Las Vegas. One of the writings, Signs

Taken For Wonders by Dell Upton, reiterates the architectural symbolism discussed in

Learning From Las Vegas. Upton also draws attention to how the narrative of the book

“repeatedly starts down one path then turns away from it”21. There is also the question

between high and low art which is addressed in Signs Taken For Wonders. Before the

release of the first edition Scott Brown talked about a resistant again Pop, stating “we are

part of a high art, not a folk or popular art22. Yet Venturi and Scott Brown’s immersion

within popular culture ironically came to create a new direction for high art.

Even when acknowledging some of the contradictions, Learning From Las Vegas was able

to create a new insight into not only architecture, but Pop Art and the symbolism of signs

and 20th century culture. The close relationship between Pop and Architecture is

repeatedly identified. The process of using every day values and influences, the visual

qualities and the break from traditional conventions show the huge overlap between the

two disciplines. Pop arts pictorial irony and the selection of mass produced imagery

expressed the culture, just as much as the signs of casinos, hotels and strip clubs did on

the Strip. The parallel work of Post-modern architects and Pop Artists had a huge

influence on each other and ultimately a huge influence on the future of the American

aesthetic. Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour recognised this influence and change, daring

20 Dell Upton, Signs Taken for Wonders, in Relearning from Las Vegas, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008, 334 21 Ibid, 335 22 Michel J Golec and Aron Vinegar, ed. Relearning from Las Vegas, 333

to criticise the boundaries previously set. By using Las Vegas as their focus, they were

able to highlight a new language of communication. A communication that uses growing

technology, media and advertisements that has become ever more apparent in the 21st

century. The neon signs of Las Vegas have become globally recognised and was perhaps

the first city to symbolise the direction towards a new age of society.

Word Count: 3218

Centerfold spread from Learning from Las Vegas (2nd edition, 1977), MIT Press, http://www.designersandbooks.com/sites/default/files/centerfold-710.jpg

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