Hollywood Panorama

Hollywood Panorama Karen Pinkus On a rundown strip of Hollywood Open limited hours for a small its interim use as a travel agency, Boulevard, at the confluence of two suggested donation, it bore an when Velas moved in, a worn sign neighborhoods recently baptized uncanny resemblance to those (prin- with a golden crown still enticed Thai Town and Little Armenia, the cipally European) nineteenth-century passing drivers to stop for pizza and artist Sara Velas rented an abandoned structures that housed a succession ice cream. fast-food stand with a domed ceiling of proto-cinematic spectacles. The As an icon of local “exotica,” the in 2001, and painted a 360-degree rhetoric, typography and imagery Rotunda had long served as a land- panorama titled Valley of the Smokes. adapted by Velas also referred to mark for motorists. Yet, despite its For about three years, until 2004 this strangely “democratic” period visual prominence, its milieu typified when she lost her lease to a proposed of peepshows, magic lanterns, zoe- the largely bypassed nature of East redevelopment, the “Velaslavasay tropes, and other visual marvels. Hollywood. Adjacent land was par- Panorama” stood as a found object in The building that accommodated tially filled with weeds and rusted car the landscape of Hollywood. Velas’s Panorama, the former South parts. A prop rental agency—Jose’s Seas-themed Tswuun-Tswuun Art Yard—occupied another part of Rotunda, provided an unusual com- the property, displaying Aztec gods plement. Built in 1968 in the exuber- and Rococo fountains cast in plaster. Above: The former site of the Velaslavasay Panorama ant Googie style, it was roofed with Behind was a rather down-and-out at 5553 Hollywood Boulevard. Photo courtesy of the faded sky-blue shingles and capped bungalow court, of a sort common in Velaslavasay Panorama. with a glowing orange ball. Despite the area. 58 Pinkus / Hollywood Panorama Research and Debate Amidst this jumble, the Rotunda appeared to hover like an ultra- modern spaceship, mirroring the form of the Art Deco Griffith Obser- vatory in the hills above. This was no accident, since the Googie style, in celebration of Los Angeles’ euphoric car culture of the 1950s and 60s interpellated the driver rather than the pedestrian.1 In its roundness, the Tswuun- Tswuun also owed a formal debt to the drive-in restaurant. According to Alan Hess, round or octagonal shapes “…allowed carhops to glide from kitchen to car fast enough that the barbecue stayed hot.”2 “Roundness” also created a sense of panoramic, ver- tiginous openness, as customers arriv- ing by car could look in on three sides ciated with geognosy (the produc- building in which a painting referred to see their food being prepared.3 tion of knowledge about the earth), it to as a panorama is exhibited, that In its particulars, the Rotunda developed in a reciprocal relation with is to say painted on the inside wall could be seen as a more modest, surveying tools and techniques. of a rotunda, covered by a cupola or anonymous variation on a recog- Stephan Oetermann has argued cone-shaped roof.”8 nized icon of the style, the 1953 the modern use of the word to repre- During the nineteenth century, McDonald’s in nearby Downey.4 sent a broader pattern for organizing before the advent of commercial This building was rescued from visual experience only developed, cinema, painted panoramas achieved demolition and listed by the National “…when the technical terms coined significant popularity. Yet their pro- Register of Historical Places in 1984 to denote a new type of round paint- duction provoked a certain tension, (an outcome that was, however, ing came to be applied generally to and some panoramas were criticized never seriously considered for the mean ‘circular vista, overview’ (from as pandering to the masses, in spite Rotunda).5 an elevated point) of a real landscape of—or perhaps precisely because In theory, then, the Velaslava- or cityscape; this was very soon fol- of—the great skill and artisanship say Panorama might have opened lowed by metaphorical use to mean a involved in their creation.9 itself to ironic critique based on the ‘survey’ or ‘overview’ of a particular Panoramic painting also raised a paradox of low-tech effect in the field of knowledge.”6 series of ethical questions about truth capital of hyperreality. Yet, against all From its beginnings, panoramic and vision that would become better odds, it managed to inhabit the pecu- painting was also conflated with the elaborated in early film criticism. In liar geographical space of East Holly- built container. Robert Barker’s his 1807 Handbuch der Aesthetik, J.A. wood in a natural and affective—one patent application in 1787 read: Eberhardt criticized the panorama might even say, democratic—way. “There must be a circular building for evoking nausea and vertigo, and or framing erected, on which this for the lack of freedom to escape the An Artwork drawing or painting may be per- The word “panorama” is pieced formed; or the same may be done on together from the Greek roots pan (all) canvas or other materials, and fixed Above: The Panorama gardens contained such and horama (view). As a painterly form, or suspended on the same building “supplementary attractions” as a mock Avian Alcove, 7 the panorama originated in England or framing.” A late-nineteenth- a mobile camera obscura, and furniture salvaged from during the industrial revolution and century dictionary of building terms a Polynesian-themed restaurant by Armét and Davis. spread rapidly through Europe. Asso- similarly defined panorama as “a Photo courtesy of the Velaslavasay Panorama. Places 18.3 59 painterly illusion.10 Thus, viewers of used artificial devices such as an into a calm sky. It was quite moving in seascape panoramas sometimes com- “Alberti’s veil,” a square frame with its sparseness, and it made no effort at plained of seasickness, and the pan- string stretched across it, or even a glitz or glamour. oramic experience was said to provoke camera obscura. The invention of Velas’s painting was decidedly hysterical reactions in female viewers.11 daguerreotype allowed naturalism unironic. When viewed in context Before setting out to produce her to be achieved at considerably less of a work like Mike Davis’s City of own work, Velas, a one-time intern expense. But for her part, Velas worked Quartz, one might wonder what it at the Museum of Jurassic Technol- from preliminary charcoal drawings did not say about the lived reality of ogy in Venice, California, studied that she stretched over the rounded early Los Angeles as a space of labor the great painted panoramas still in wall as she developed her ideas. struggle, racism, and genocide toward existence: Alpine landscapes in Austria The visitor to Velas’s Panorama the indigenous population. But, fun- and Switzerland, sweeping battle first navigated a semi-dark corridor. damentally, Valley of the Smokes was scenes in Scandinavia, and so on.12 Inside, her low-key, earthy Valley of about the land, about Los Angeles as a To achieve the proper perspectival the Smokes offered a fantasized, natu- collection of sparsely inhabited micro- illusion, early panoramists frequently ralist view of the Los Angeles basin climates or ecologies. in the nineteenth century. The work An interesting sidelight to many Above: Installation view of the panoramic painting depicted a series of hillsides, with of the early panoramas was that they Valley of the Smokes. Photo courtesy of the Velaslavasay native plants and small brush fires offered adjunct spectacles for the Panorama. emitting curls of smoke that faded price of admission: gardens, statuary, 60 Pinkus / Hollywood Panorama Research and Debate costumed ushers, simulated meteoro- A Building modern architecture down from the logical conditions, sonorous effects, Viewing Valley of the Smokes— mountains and set ordinary clients, or appropriate odors diffused into the which appeared rather squat, espe- ordinary people free.”16 Like the air. A “visit to the panorama” might cially compared with its apparently “dingbat” homes scattered around have included a variety of different infinite width—one couldn’t help Hollywood, it was meant to be widely sensory experiences not limited to think of the various technologies accessible: inexpensive, a bit ludicrous, contemplation of the painting itself.13 of wide-screen cinema. In fact, the an exciting antidote to the boredom In a sweetly parodic register, the Velaslavasay Panorama explicitly of the postwar office inhabited by the Velaslavasay Panorama paid homage referenced the Cinerama Dome man in the gray flannel suit. to such supplementary attractions. on Sunset Boulevard in its public- Googie represented a freedom to It boasted an Avian Alcove, where ity materials. Even more resonant, consume joyfully, and pluralistically. “exotic birds,” some painted on a however, were the associations pro- And in the case of Southern Califor- backdrop, some sculpted or stuffed, duced by its execution inside a promi- nia, traces of such freedom can still be emitted calls recorded on a lo-fi nent Googie building. found—as can a few extant remnants soundtrack.14 Pet rabbits could be Googie, also known as Coffee Shop of the style—in overlooked areas, seen hopping around the yard. And Modern, was a style often character- small corners of underdeveloped space Velas and her friends often sat outside ized by “Mesozoic” (“Flintstone”), such as that once occupied by the on wrought-iron furniture, where space-age or atomic details, vibrant Tswuun-Tswuun Rotunda. the landscaping included elements colors, and tropical vegetation set off salvaged from a Polynesian-themed with floodlights. Although Googie A Neighborhood building by Armét and Davis, the was related to organic forms, it was Shortly after I completed a first supreme masters of Southern Califor- deliberately not supposed to look draft of this essay, Velas announced nia kitsch.

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