Nowadays, New York City isn't the only city that never sleeps. With "OPEN" signs still gleaming in the window of the mattress store at 2 a.m. (they can’t really be open then, can they?), it’s an oddity if a town shuts down before 10 p.m. The 24/7 business phenomenon owes its origins in part to the discovery and implementation of neon signs. In a series of watercolor paintings of these relics of the not-so-distant past, Alison LaMons explores the allegory, irony, and metaphor hidden just behind the façade.
Neon is an art form in its own right (more prevalent in the Northwest), and the artist depicts designs fancier than your typical “Cold Beer” light. Advertisements tend to toy with semiotics (signs and signifiers), something that LaMons both exploits and subtly mocks because there’s no doubt that her paintings are beautiful. Yet, she capitalizes on the pull of beauty to poke fun at these signs' strangeness.
“Overcoat of Shame Dry Cleaners” is a particularly weird sign; you don’t know whether to be offended or drawn to their services. A man in an all-white suit holds a coat gloriously up in the air, hinting that you won't have to look like a hot mess if you bring your dirty clothes to the cleaners. The wear and tear of life has caught up with the metal man’s clean suit; it's marred by rust stains and holes. The glowing splendor of the sign calls out our inadequacies, but it is falling into a state of decline itself.
The propaganda of advertisement is overt and unashamed, accentuated by LaMons’s buzzing color palette. The format of her paintings is not unlike what you would see on a vintage postcard, but the addition of glittery iridescent paint speaks of the American preference for a gaudy outward show to reality. While most marquees include a business name, “Joy” says only that. Similar to that person who tells you to smile even though you’re feeling less than awesome, it depicts life as perpetually peachy-keen. Aiming to be inspiring — though it may be rubbing life in your face — it trivializes good times by shunning the imperfect and forever lighting up the sky with its immutable message.
Playing off the psychology of fulfillment, ads bank on FOMO (or the “fear of missing out”) and create an expectation of a good time, because how can the sign lie? But I’m not quite sure what “Whole Hog Gospel Bar B Que” is trying to sell me, with Porky Pig promoting live blues and real pit barbecue. Where exactly the religious and Looney Tunes references come into play is beside the point: The iconographic language is enough of a draw. Instead of perfecting the pig’s face, LaMons makes visible the nuts, bolts, and wires that seem to barely hold the monstrosity together.
LaMons captures each poster of light at twilight so you can see the sign in the transition period between day and night. Fully blossomed flowers and leaves burst from around the signs, teasing the advertisement’s own game of imbuing the plentiful, the luscious, and the perfect — everything that the broke-down signs were meant to embody.
Many pieces reference nature while emphasizing the streamlined flawlessness of industry. A pack of stallions freely splash in a river in the “Wild Horses Car Wash” sign that’s perched on top of a brick building. These wild beasts serve as a symbol for power, masculinity, and progress (and more specifically reference the exploration and conquest of the West). Glamorizing the yesteryears, these symbols tap into our anxieties about human imperfection by advertising what could be ours but is always just barely out of reach.
It’s been known that the light produced from tweeting at 2 a.m. stimulates the brain, so it’s a no-brainer that neon, its electrodes zapped by voltage running through bent tubes, would produce similar effects . LaMons captures the electricity of these cultural artifacts that seem to declare that sleep is unnecessary and the day isn’t over just because the sun goes down.
LaMons isn’t the one that’s nostalgic in this exhibition. Instead, it’s the neon signs themselves that seem to long for the greatness of the past — ironically insinuating there is something missing in our lives as the rust slowly eats away at their colorful veneer.
Neon Nostalgia: Watercolors by Alison LaMons
Through March 12. Polk Museum of Art. 800 E. Palmetto St., Lakeland. polkmuseumofart.org.
This article appears in Jan 5-12, 2017.