The Vatican to Vegas: A History of Special Effects

by Klein, Norman M.

• ISBN13: 9781565848030
• ISBN10: 1565848039
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-03-01
• Publisher: PERSEUS

Summary

A richly illustrated journey through five centuries of optical illusions and other wonders. Special effects...are coup de theatres, thunderclaps that shock you: a burst; an eruption; something small, like an insect down your back; a wall dissolving suddenly.from The Vatican to Vegas A guided tour through special-effects environments from 1550 to the present, Norman Klein's The Vatican to Vegas: The History of Special Effects demonstrates how Renaissance and early Baroque artists pioneered interactive, cinematic, and even digital environments. As in our era, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century illusion serviced a global culture and even relied on "software" of a kind: solid geometry for architecture, optics, sculpture, painting and theater. As if from a cryonic thaw, these forms have reemerged very clearly in recent decades. And to manage all this friendly disaster, modern special effects have evolved a unique grammar as precise as the rules of film, theater, and music. Klein reviews this syntax and demonstrates how special effects are not only a barometer for politics, myths of identity and economic relations, but an instructive parallel for understanding where our civilization may be headed next.

Author Biography

Norman M. Klein is a professor at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Vatican to Vegas	1	(18)
PART I SCRIPTED SPACES AND THE ILLUSION OF POWER, 1550-1780	19	(114)
1 Baroque Immersion, Baroque Artifice	27	(24)
2 Perspective Awry	51	(16)
3 Masques	67	(30)
4 Happy Imprisonment: Labyrinths	97	(19)
5 Burning Down Vesuvius: Late Baroque Gizmos and Fiery Illusions, 1750-1780	116	(17)
PART II BUILDING THE UNEXPECTED: INDUSTRIAL FABLES AS SPECIAL EFFECTS, 1780-1964	133	(72)
6 After 1780: The Baroque Imaginary into Science Fiction	141	(20)
7 Aloft: Jules Verne; Felix Nadar; Edgar Allan Poe	161	(12)
8 Oz	173	(7)
9 Panoramas: A Crow's Nest Over London; Walking Through Gettysburg	180	(11)
10 The Virgin and the Dynamo: World's Fairs, 1851-1964	191	(14)
PART III ALIEN THRILLS: EPIC SHOCKS ON SCREEN, 1895 TO THE PRESENT	205	(94)
11 Movie F/X: Making Heads Roll	213	(16)
12 2001 to 2001: Immersion into Deep Space; Baroque Reincarnation	229	(18)
13 Animation as Baroque: Fleischer Morphs Harlem; Tangos to Crocodiles	247	(22)
14 Panoramic Chases into Nowhere: From Tex Avery to Independence Day	269	(14)
15 The Sim Future of the Cinematic City	283	(16)
PART IV THE ELECTRONIC BAROQUE: 1955-2050	299	(64)
16 Noir Disney	307	(14)
17 Scripted Spaces: Navigating the Consumer-Built City	321	(9)
18 Outside the Labyrinth: Architainment in Las Vegas	330	(22)
19 The Disappearing Nineties: Jerde Cities	352	(11)
Conclusion: Easy Credit: Driving Two Hundred Years a Day in Los Angeles	363	(16)
Afterword: Bush as Baroque Special Effects (December 23, 2000)	379	(16)
Appendix: Search Engine for the History of Special Effects	395	(12)
Notes	407	(74)
Index	481