Movie Palace

David Beck, Movie Palace, 1990, mixed media construction, 84 x 40 x 22 in. (213.4 x 101.6 x 55.9 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Ken and Judy Siebel and museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2000.27

Artwork Details

Title: Movie Palace
Artist: David Beck
Date: 1990
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: 84 x 40 x 22 in. (213.4 x 101.6 x 55.9 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of Ken and Judy Siebel and museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment
Mediums Description: mixed media construction
Classifications: Sculpture
Assemblage
Subjects: Architecture Exterior — civic — theater
Object Number: 2000.27
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2000.27

Artwork Description

Movie Palace is an elaborate kinetic sculpture that combines Hollywood escapism with the innocent pleasures of windup toys. Beck remembers moviegoing as a social experience that is disappearing from American culture today. Crafting this lost world in miniature creates the kind of magic that films once had, when they transported audiences to distant lands and improbable adventures. The building combines the Renaissance, Moorish, and Egyptian styles that movie houses shamelessly borrowed in the good old days. Reliefs on the outside of the dome represent film noir, Westerns, musicals and other genres from Hollywood's golden age. Inside, animated figures talk and eat popcorn while King Kong swats at biplanes from the mast of the Empire State Building. The fantasy world of film may no longer be what it was, but Beck's Movie Palace reminds us of the pleasures of pretending.

Works by this artist (6 items)

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Study for Mural, Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania Post Office

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Lee Gatch

Date1941

oil on canvas mounted on fiberboard

Herodiae

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Lee Gatch

Date1960

oil, ink and collage on canvas

Sketch for Greenhouse

Artist

Lee Gatch

Date1950

charcoal, brush and ink, and ink wash on paperboard

Image Not Available

Sketch for Greenhouse

Artist

Lee Gatch

Date1950

charcoal and ink on paperboard

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Movie Palace is an elaborate kinetic sculpture that combines Hollywood escapism with the innocent pleasures of windup toys. David Beck remembers movie going as a social experience that is disappearing from American culture today. Crafting this lost world in miniature creates the kind of magic that films once had, when they transported audiences to distant lands and improbable adventures. The fantasy world of film may no longer be what it was, but Beck's Movie Palace reminds us of the pleasures of pretending.

DAVID BECK: I made the “Movie Palace” because I really like to go to the movies. If I wasn’t making this stuff, I would probably just live in a movie theater. I like sitting in the dark – it's more fun to go with somebody else and sit in the dark with them, but I like the whole experience of being surrounded by all that stuff.

This piece is like a temple, in a way. I wanted the grandness, so it has that spire in the back. There are a lot of different finishes and surface treatments on the movie theater. There’s some horn and some bone around the top. There’s a lot of gilding. It’s water-gilded, which is a very old process. There’s a ticket box in the front – you see those more on the west coast than you do on the east coast, but I like that sort of booth thing. Wayne Thiebaud did a painting called “Booth Girl,” and I used some of his colors, and actually, the woman who’s the ticket person has his wife’s haircut.

The people in the audience are just everybody I see in the movies. There’s the guy that’s looking for his date; he’s holding a giant tub of popcorn and sodas and stuff like that, trying to impress her, and she’s in the front row waving, “I’m down here, come down here”. There are people that are smooching because that’s what you do in the movies. And then I’ve got a pituitary giant that always sits in front of you so you’re constantly trying to look over his shoulder. You know, everybody retreats into these little private worlds even though they’re in a public space. Maybe it’s just because the lights go out or something like that.

The biggest challenge in the animated part of the “Movie Palace” was, King Kong is actually down below in the base, and there’s a light that flickers on him, but it’s bounced up onto a mirror that’s at an angle. It’s actually kind of a weird little projection thing that’s happening. So the hardest thing was to figure out how to do all of that stuff.

I wanted to make something kind of precious, because I have strong feelings for those kinds of things. It was a thing about getting away from art being precious. I never liked that idea. I thought, “Why shouldn’t it be precious? Why shouldn’t it be something that’s taken care of?”