Well, at least the article he links to in his CL is pretty good. Gee, I don't know why he didn't just link to TC....
Friday, September 15, 2006
Torch burns bright for Polynesian pop
By WINDA BENEDETTI
P-I REPORTER
Ever since the mid-1930s, the ultra-faux god of island hedonism -- he that goes by the name of Tiki -- has called to the working stiffs of America.
COMING UP
TIKI ART NOW!
WHERE: Roq La Rue, 2312 Second Ave., http://www.roqlarue.com
WHEN: Opening tonight, 6-9, with free gala party, with music by Lushy and DJ Selector Lopaka and with curator Otto von Stroheim plus Shag and other artists on hand to sign a catalog of their work; runs through Oct. 9.
With his promise of exotic drinks, girls in grass skirts and a taste of a life more unhurried than our own, this wooden-faced totem of leisure has lured our people into Tiki bars and Tiki restaurants, he has convinced them to throw off their pressed work shirts in favor of flowing Hawaiian print attire if only for an evening.
And though his pull has waxed and waned in recent decades, some say that Tiki is back and more powerful than ever.
photo
Zoom Meryl Schenker / P-I
Kirsten Anderson, owner of Roq La Rue, hangs Tiki t0ny’s "Wicksenburg Chicken," which uses recycled acrylic paint on carved driftwood.
Starting tonight, the Roq La Rue gallery in Belltown will play host to "Tiki Art Now!" a celebration of Tiki style art and Polynesian pop from the world over. Renowned California artist Shag will join Seattle artists Lisa Petrucci and Dawn Frasier and 14 others exhibiting work that explores this rather exotic corner of the lowbrow movement.
But more than just an art show, this exhibit is a peek into a larger cultural phenomenon a look at the modern Tiki lifestyle, a lifestyle in which people decorate their homes in retro tropical motif and host parties ornamented in the dreamy island trimmings of yore.
"There has been this mass realization that Tiki is cool," says Otto von Stroheim, the Bay Area brain behind "Tiki Art Now!" and one of America's foremost Tiki experts. "It's really out there in the world."
"I think it's more popular than it's ever been," says Kirsten Anderson, owner of Roq La Rue and a collector of Tiki art.
But what is Tiki exactly? To see it is to know it almost instinctually, and yet its origins remain murky.
Blythe in the Tropics
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Lisa Petrucci’s "Blythe in the Tropics"
According to Maori mythology, Tiki was the first man -- the islanders' Adam as it were. But Tiki as it developed over time had little to do with the Maoris or any other real-world islanders for that matter.
"Tiki is an American construct sort of based on the South Pacific," says Larry Reid, a Seattle Tiki aficionado helping to promote the Roq La Rue exhibit.
In the mid 1930s and '40s Americans began to fall in love with what little they knew about island life. In 1934, Donn Beach, a bootlegger during the Prohibition era, opened the first Don the Beachcomber -- what was supposed to be a Polynesian-style restaurant in Hollywood. He served rummy cocktails and Cantonese food and dressed up his digs in what passed for tropical decor. The people loved it and soon others followed in his footsteps -- Victor Bergeron with his Trader Vic's restaurants and bars and Bob Brooks with his Seven Seas establishments.
During WWII, soldiers returned home with tales from their adventures in the South Pacific. Their stories only fanned the flames of imagination. There was money to be made on this newest fascination and so "a cottage industry sprang up supplying the decor and the dinnerware and mugs," von Stroheim says. "By the time the '60s rolled around you could find a Tiki bar in any town across America."
Tropicali
Zoom
Brian Barneclo’s "Tropicali," gouache on paper is a modern work that looks like it arrived direct from the ’50s or ’60s.
Wooden masks, grass skirts and velvet paintings of nubile women -- this Tiki style had more to do with what Americans wanted the South Pacific to be than what it really was. There was a Disneylike faux reality to the Tiki trappings that spread across the states. They reflected our idealized vision of island life -- a place where days were spent sipping fruit cocktails beneath the whispering fronds of palm trees, where the women were dark, curvaceous, sensuous, their hair flecked with flowers, a place where the music of ukuleles and bongo drums filled the air with a jazzy beat.
In the Polynesia of our sweetest dreams there was no stifling heat or swarms of biting insects. There was no dysentery or poverty on this fantasy island.
And therein lies the persistent appeal of Tiki, says Shag (aka Josh Agle), perhaps the most celebrated Tiki artist. He'll be on hand at tonight's opening along with his work -- three 5-foot-tall brightly hued panels that mate the hallmark Tiki mask with '50s-style illustration.
"Initially the appeal for me was probably the same reason they built Tiki bars in the '50s and '60s -- it was a way to escape your humdrum life," he says. "It's just a fun, interesting way to embrace the savage if only for an evening."
Of course, like most trends, Tiki turned tacky for a time.
"By the late '60s and early '70s attitudes changed," von Stroheim says. "You had the Vietnam War, so being in the jungle wasn't as cool any more." And then came the '80s. "Everybody wanted to show that they were a wheeler and dealer stockbroker and the Tiki bar was not the hip place to do that."
Tiki aficionados call it the "decade of destruction." Chrome-choked fern bars replaced laid-back Polynesian pubs. Gone were the happy hula girls. But while bulldozers were leveling Tiki huts everywhere, von Stroheim was just diving into this retro world. In 1986 he began hosting what would become a legendary annual Tiki-theme backyard luau at his home in California.
The Tonga Room
Zoom Meryl Schenker / P-I
Davey Wong’s "The Tonga Room"
Then, out of the mid-'90s post-punk cocktail culture, Tiki got a fresh breath of life. What was old became new again as a younger generation fell in love with throwback fashions.
Von Stroheim says these days he's invited to Tiki-theme parties on a near-constant basis. Meanwhile, collectors are snapping up vintage Tiki accouterments like never before just as stores like Target and Walmart are giving new Tiki paraphernalia space on their shelves. Earlier this year in Bellevue, a new Trader Vic's opened its doors. And this weekend's festivities will include a tour of Seattle's own Tiki-decorated homes.
But what's most interesting about the revival of Tiki is what contemporary artists are doing with the aging motif. Take a gander at the work on display at Roq La Rue (the exhibit runs through Oct. 9) and you'll see that this take on Tiki is far from tacky.
"What you won't find here is a narrow minded style of art," says von Stroheim, who has curated two previous Tiki art shows at The Shooting Gallery in San Francisco. "They're going to find sculpture, velvet painting, acrylic painting, oil painting. Some of it is dark and moody, some of it is happy go-go-ey type stuff. Each artist has a little twist, a little interpretation of the genre. We've got 17 artists and nobody's doing things in the same way."
There's Brian Barneclo, a well-known muralist from San Francisco with his "Tropicali" and "Records Hut" gouache on paper. Here Tiki masks frolic in jazzy settings that make his modern work look like it arrived direct from the '50s or '60s.
Davey Wong's brooding and beautiful oil on canvas simply grabs the viewer by the throat. Monkeys are the subject here, heavy browed, born of shadows. The fez-hatted beast of "The Tonga Room" holds a wicked brew nightmarishly reminiscent of the rum drinks of yore. The savage chimp of "Tiki Beat" pounds a drum in the midst of what looks like some Tiki-fied vision of hell.
The wood-carved masks by Bosko and Wayne Coombs -- "Pablo" and "Kissing the Tiki Man" -- look like something Picasso might have dreamed up had he spent time lazing under a Polynesian palm with a hammer and chisel in hand. Meanwhile, Tiki tOny pushes the genre to a new place using recycled acrylic paint on carved driftwood to create his Dr. Seuss-like bird-head carvings -- two crazed hunting trophies who seem to following the viewer with wide eyes.
For a blast from the past, the exhibit also will include a mini-show featuring vintage velvet paintings by Burke Tyree, a former marine who served in the South Pacific during World War II. He became a velvet master, painting from the '50s through the x70s before dying of a heart attack in 1979.
Seattle's Petrucci presents two cute, kitchy and subtly subversive paintings on souvenir wood plaques -- images inspired by a love of collectible dolls and pinup art from the '40s and '50s.
"My own personal interest in Tiki is nostalgic," says Petrucci, who has a "Tiki room" in her home. "I grew up on the East Coast going to Polynesian restaurants as a kid. It was like a magical experience. They had fake waterfalls. It was in the middle of the suburbs and they had this tropical Polynesian environment they'd created."
"People really relate to this stuff," von Stroheim says. "It's pop art in the real sense, not in the Andy Warhol sense."
Anderson sums up the lasting appeal like this: "The thing about Tiki is, it's fun."
*P-I reporter Winda Benedetti can be reached at 206-448-8154 or [email protected] *
