[SOUND FX: Demolition]
NARRATOR
Richard Artschwager’s Destruction V depicts the Traymore Hotel, a once-lavish seaside resort in Atlantic City at the precise moment it crumbles to the ground. It was March 1972, in what was the world’s largest-ever controlled demolition. Images of the imploding building were splashed across newspapers all over the east coast. Joanne Heyler.
JOANNE HEYLER
One of the beauties of Artschwager’s very eccentric technique is that there often is this kind of affinity between the texture that he chooses for his paintings and the imagery that he’s depicting.
NARRATOR
That texture is created by applying paint to Celotex, an industrial tile, which Artschwager often used. The dappled texture makes the image look soft and faded like a charcoal drawing or an old picture on newsprint.
This is the fifth painting in a series Artschwager created from newspaper images capturing different moments of the demolition. It’s also a fine example of the artist’s unique practice: he reveals rifts in perception and representation as images move across media and back and forth from two-dimensions to three.