Washington DC Sunset Destiny's End
by Larry Darnell
Title
Washington DC Sunset Destiny's End
Artist
Larry Darnell
Medium
Painting - Photobased Painting
Description
This image of the nation�s capital was taken as the housing bubble was expanding to its maximum, America was distended in debt-based sleight
of hand prosperity the likes of which hadn�t been foisted on the public since the 1920�s. The composition, subject matter and date of the image
all create an ironic counterpoint to the image�s historical moment.
I was reminded of the western setting sun of the Manifest Destiny/westward expansion paintings of Gast and Bierstadt, promoters of the infection
American optimism and hubris of the times. The setting sun in my image is more of the closing of American expansion/exceptionalism these
pictures proclaim; the other bookend of the frontier of restless and inexorable growth.
Here the composition lays the interstate in the foreground: our petroleum based culture reaching increasingly difficult and expensive strategies of
maintaining a depleating resource out of our control. The next layer includes the ironic IKEA �Home� statement, which will soon become the
straw that broke the mortgage banking/wall street/home ownership nexus driving the world economy into a terrifying hole from which only the
perpetrators and the blind believe is behind us. The monolithic windowless building on which the cheerful IKEA banner lies is a windowless
monolithic building sporting microwave dishes, as much a dissonance to the happy slogan as could be imagined. There are townhouses, a few
other homes and apartments sprinkled amongst the government buildings, churches and a power plant. Most notably in the background is the
capitol building, its symbolic omnipresence in this allegory is significant.
Washington, D.C is an ironic place filled with the best intentions and the worst man can conjure. It�s just the kind of place that is filled with
conflicting contextual meanings that couldn�t represent the American people better. There�s a little for everyone to like and dislike, just like life.
The power plant, it�s chimneys and cooling towers are just off center and after the capital draw the eye. They drew my eye and memory for
Charles Sheeler�s painting of the Ford River Rouge plant: the geometries, the sky. The flat presentation in the late afternoon light both abstract
and simplify the buildings. The Sheeler painting was done in 1932 as the depression was gearing up to make life miserable for many; industry
was a hope and with world war 2 the engine to draw America out of the pit.
The last layer is the functioning government [the Ikea building is a GSA depository] of bureaucrats, museums and, of course, the promise of
Columbia, now potentially approaching the end of empire; the mounmental capitol smothered and diminished under its own success and
excess. The commonly accepted Sheeler �The Triumph of American Industry� meme at the maturing end of that period looks almost morose
compared to rosy Washington DC in the roaring 2000�s above.
Multiple digital shots were stitched to make the panorama. Photoshop 45&6 were used to adjust exposures and color and finally lightly
abstracted and painterly dry brush filters were applied. 1st printed 12 x 64 in March of 2011.
Uploaded
March 22nd, 2011
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