There’s an interesting-looking art show at the ArcLight Cinemas multiplex opening tonight that caught my eye in David Ng’s post over at the LA Time’s Culture Monster blog. L.A. artist Rachel Schmeidler takes celebrity mug shots and renders them in a Warholian style. The results are simultaneously amusing, thought-provoking and chock-full of schadenfreude!
Included in the show are mug shots of Charlie Sheen, Paris Hilton, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Lenny Bruce, Jimi Hendrix, Jane Fonda, George Carlin and the Godfather of Soul himself, James Brown. Quite a (literal) rogues’ gallery.
I’m glad to see that my favorite celebrity mug shot, that of David Bowie (above), has made it into Schmeidler’s show. Have you ever seen a more elegant and sophisticated mug shot in all your life? If it were not for the intrusion of the Rochester Police Department placard he’s holding, this particular mug shot might be mistaken for an outtake from his “Station to Station” album cover art! Most mug shots, even those of big Hollywood celebrities, tend to look like Nick Nolte’s “portrait,” right? Not the Thin White Duke’s, baby!
What’s fun to consider is how these pieces will acquire greater and greater “camp” value over the years. Charlie Sheen’s mug shot (shots?) as seen on TMZ and Perez Hilton today will gain, in time, the same sort of arch, kitschy excess as, for instance, a mug shot of disgraced silent era comedian Fatty Arbuckle has.
Stated differently, a mug shot of Twiggy, say, would have a higher kitsch quotient than one of Naomi Campbell, although the Campbell mug shot might well surpass it in the camp sweepstakes at a later date. What would Susan Sontag make of this post-camp fare, I wonder?
—Richard Metzger
Cross posting this from Brand X
Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.04.2010
05:55 pm
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