This is not a volcano or The treachery of landscape…
The title of this series nods to René Magritte’s painting The Treachery of Images. On this careful, fastidious painting he has included the words Ceci n’est pas une pipe–This is not a pipe.
He poses the paradox that the painting is not a pipe but an image of a pipe. The critic and philosopher Michel Foucault wrote of this painting that the embedded meaning includes that—this is, as well as, is not—a pipe.
Las Vegas is a city internationally known for gambling, shopping and entertainment It exists as a kind of giant movie set. It is here that intervention in the landscape is taken to the extreme. Wandering the streets of Las Vegas you move from event to event-photo op to photo op. What is going on here?As the city has veered from their past of neon, showgirls, drinking and gambling, they have created a more family oriented resort. Using their expertise in staging, engineering and technology Las Vegas has created just the thing; the enter-landscape.
The sublime is reduced to human scale. Shopping malls have thunderstorms, complete with rain, on the hour. Stop for a quick picture in front of the largest manmade waterfall. Evenings you can stroll down for a volcanic eruption.
You can also experience Venetian canals, musically timed fountains dancing, or the sights and smells of a street in Paris or New York.On a visit to Costa Rica, I heard people complaining that Arenal Volcano was unpredictable. You could go all the way out there and not see the lava flow. In Las Vegas, you don’t have to worry about that as the volcano will perform on a nightly basis (barring technical difficulties). Americans are not willing to be inconveinienced by silly things like time, weather and providence. They want their expectations met and they want a landscape that performs.
Las Vegas delivers the lava, nightly, on time and you don’t have to run for your life.

Patty Arnold Home