Latest news with #TheLastSupper
Local Italy
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Local Italy
Italy to mark Republic Day with free entry to state-owned museums
The Festa della Repubblica, celebrated every year on June 2nd, commemorates the birth of the Italian Republic as we know it today. It marks the date in 1946 when Italians voted in a referendum to abolish the unpopular, Fascist-aligned monarchy and establish a democratic republic. As the date falls on a Monday this year, people in Italy will be looking forward to a three-day weekend. And while a trip to the beach to take advantage of the expected sunny weather might sound enticing, if you're staying in the city, you'll be able to visit one of the country's many state-owned museums and archeological parks free of charge. These include some of Italy's best-known cultural attractions, which are featured in a list on the culture ministry's website. Those in Rome, for example, will have free access to the Colosseum, the Pantheon (which introduced an entry fee for non-residents in 2023), Castel Sant' Angelo, the Borghese Gallery, and the nearby archeological park of Ostia Antica. People in Florence will be able to visit the Uffizi Gallery and the Accademia Gallery, home to Michelangelo's David. Venice residents and visitors will have access to Palazzo Grimani and its Accademia Gallery, housing masterpieces by the likes of Tintoretto and Titian, free of charge. And Milan's Pinacoteca di Brera gallery and Cenacolo Vinciano museum, home to Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, will also open their doors for free. The initiative is related to Italy's free museum Sundays scheme, through which state museums and parks open to the public for free on the first Sunday of every month. That means visitors will be able to access the same sites for free on Sunday, June 1st – though you could miss out on special events or unusual opening hours being offered on Monday in honour of Republic Day. For some of the more popular sites, the ministry notes that you may need to book your place in advance; check the website of the attraction you plan on visiting to see whether this applies.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Archaeologists Find Secret Leonardo da Vinci-Drawn Tunnels
Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: An underground tunnel network long rumored thanks to drawings by Leonardo da Vinci under Milan's Sforza Castle are proven to exist. Ground-penetrating radar and laser scanning revealed that the historic passages made famous by a Leonardo da Vinci drawing is just one of multiple tunnel sections. Experts plan to create a digital twin of the castle's underground system for museum visitors. The artworks of Leonardo da Vinci are vast and storied. 'The Last Supper.' 'The Vitruvian Man.' The 'Mona Lisa,' for goodness sake. But even amongst such a storied and well-studied body of work, there can still be a few surprises left to discover. And recently, a team of researchers discovered one of those surprises—one drawing of a castle tunnel from a 1400s-era castle. See, the drawing was of Sforza Castle, and it included depictions of numerous underground tunnels—tunnels that had never been found. The team—which included experts from Polytechnic University of Milan, Codevintec, and Sforza Castel—teamed up to employ ground-penetrating radar and laser scanning that mapped multiple feet under the castle. In doing so, they discovered not only that the tunnels Leonardo alluded to in his drawings existed, but that they may only be a small piece of an intricate system weaving throughout the site. 'The ground-penetrating radar enriched the 3D model with data on known, but inaccessible, spaces, bringing to light unknown walkways and ideas for further studies on secret passages,' Francesca Biolo, researcher at Polytechnic University of Milan, said in a statement. The castle took on new life in the 1400s when the duke of Milan, Francesco Sforza, reconstructed an ancient site. He turned it into the Sforza Castle, complete with towers, courtyards, and frescoed-lined halls. In 1494, Francesco's successor, Ludovico Sforza, built on the castle's tradition and hired Leonardo da Vinci to create art for the castle. According to Art Net, in his effort to complete that project, Leonardo ocumented the castle's unseen tunnel system, as recorded in Codex Forster I. Experts believe the tunnels were once likely used for military operations, but other portions of the system could have included personal touches as well. One passageway, for instance, connects the castle to the Basilica of Santa Maria delle Grazie, a church built by Francesco that houses Leonardo's 'The Last Supper.' It is also the site of Sforza family burials, which may have afforded those living in the castle quicker access to the tombs of loved ones, such as Ludovico's wife, Beatrice d'Este. Nowadays, the castle complex is home to three different museums—Pinacoteca del Castello Sforzesco, the Museum of the Rondanini Pieta, and the Museum of Ancient Art. While the underground system may not currently be fully accessible, the ground-penetrating radar and laser scanning used to confirm its presence could still unlock a fresh perspective on the Sforza Castel's underground world. 'The goal is to create a digital twin of the Sforza Castle, a digital model that not only represents the current appearances of the castle but also allows you to explore the past, recovering historical elements that are no longer visible,' Franco Guzzetti, professor of geomatics at Polytechnic University of Milan, said in a statement. Adding augmented reality to the virtual paths could invite visitors to explore the underground environments and inaccessible historical places in a fresh museum experience. The artwork of Leonardo has enabled the delight of modern audiences yet again. You Might Also Like Can Apple Cider Vinegar Lead to Weight Loss? Bobbi Brown Shares Her Top Face-Transforming Makeup Tips for Women Over 50
Time Magazine
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
The Top 10 Iconic Paintings of All Time According to AI
This article is published by a partner of TIME. Art has always been a reflection of humanity's cultural, social, and emotional landscapes. Across centuries, painters have used their canvases to tell stories, capture emotions, and challenge perceptions, leaving behind masterpieces that transcend time. These iconic paintings are not merely artworks; they are symbols of human creativity and enduring expressions of beauty and thought. The most iconic paintings have achieved a universal appeal, admired not only for their artistic brilliance but also for their ability to evoke emotion and provoke thought. They have become ingrained in popular culture, often reproduced, parodied, and studied in schools and museums around the world. These works hold a unique power: they connect us to the artist's vision and to the historical moments in which they were created. This article explores the top 10 most iconic paintings of all time using research assistance from ChatGPT. They were chosen for their artistry, historical significance, and cultural impact. From the enigmatic smile of the 'Mona Lisa' to the dramatic emotion of 'The Scream,' these masterpieces continue to inspire and captivate audiences worldwide. 1. Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci Arguably the most famous painting in the world, 'Mona Lisa' captures the mystery and beauty of its subject, Lisa Gherardini. Painted during the Italian Renaissance, this portrait is renowned for its subject's enigmatic smile that has captivated viewers and sparked endless debate about its meaning. 2. The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh 'The Starry Night' is a mesmerizing depiction of the night sky over Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Painted from the view outside van Gogh's asylum room, this masterpiece is celebrated for its swirling skies, bold colors, and emotional intensity. 3. The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo da Vinci's 'The Last Supper' is a masterful depiction of the moment Jesus announces his betrayal. This large mural captures the reactions of the disciples, each filled with emotion and character, making it one of the most studied works in art history. 4. The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí Salvador Dalí's 'The Persistence of Memory' is a surrealist masterpiece featuring melting clocks draped across a dreamlike landscape. This work challenges our perceptions of time and reality, making it one of the most iconic pieces of the 20th century. 5. The Scream by Edvard Munch 'The Scream' captures existential angst like no other artwork. Edvard Munch's haunting depiction of a figure in despair against a fiery sky resonates with modern anxieties and emotions, making it one of the most recognized works in the world. Year created: 1893 Medium: Tempera and pastel on cardboard Location: National Gallery, Oslo, Norway Cultural impact: A universal symbol of existential dread and emotional intensity Key feature: The striking, wavy lines create a sense of chaos and despair Versions: Munch created four versions of this artwork 6. Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer Often called the "Mona Lisa of the North," 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' is an intimate and mysterious portrait. Johannes Vermeer's masterful use of light and color brings life and realism to this enigmatic subject. 7. Guernica by Pablo Picasso Pablo Picasso's 'Guernica' is a powerful anti-war statement depicting the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. With its fragmented and chaotic imagery, this large mural serves as a stark reminder of the human cost of conflict. 8. American Gothic by Grant Wood 'American Gothic' is a quintessential piece of Americana, portraying a stern farmer and his daughter in front of a modest farmhouse. Grant Wood's painting captures rural life while sparking discussions about societal norms. 9. The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo Part of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, 'The Creation of Adam' depicts God giving life to Adam. This fresco is one of the most iconic images of Western art, representing the divine spark of life and creativity. 10. The Night Watch by Rembrandt Rembrandt's 'The Night Watch' is a stunning example of Baroque art, capturing a moment of action and camaraderie among a militia company. Its dramatic use of light and shadow makes it a masterpiece of portraiture and storytelling. Conclusion on Top 10 Iconic Paintings The top 10 iconic paintings of all time demonstrate the profound power of art to inspire, provoke, and endure. Each masterpiece tells a unique story, showcasing the creativity and vision of the artists who shaped history. These paintings have become more than just artworks—they are cultural landmarks that transcend their medium. Through these works, we are reminded of the universality of human emotions, the richness of history, and the limitless potential of creativity. As they continue to captivate new generations, their legacy proves that art truly has no boundaries. Of course, opinions on what makes the best art or entertainment can vary, and everyone's perspective is unique and important. This list represents what ChatGPT has come up with, but ultimately, art is subjective, and each person's preferences and interpretations are what make the conversation around art so rich and diverse. Related Articles: About the Authors: Richard D. Harroch is a Senior Advisor to CEOs, management teams, and Boards of Directors. He is an expert on M&A, venture capital, startups, and business contracts. He was the Managing Director and Global Head of M&A at VantagePoint Capital Partners, a venture capital fund in the San Francisco area. His focus is on internet, digital media, AI and technology companies. He was the founder of several Internet companies. His articles have appeared online in Forbes, Fortune, MSN, Yahoo, Fox Business and Richard is the author of several books on startups and entrepreneurship as well as the co-author of Poker for Dummies and a Wall Street Journal-bestselling book on small business. He is the co-author of a 1,500-page book published by Bloomberg on mergers and acquisitions of privately held companies. He was also a corporate and M&A partner at the international law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. He has been involved in over 200 M&A transactions and 250 startup financings. He can be reached through LinkedIn. Dominique Harroch is the Chief of Staff at She has acted as a Chief of Staff or Operations Leader for multiple companies where she leveraged her extensive experience in operations management, strategic planning, and team leadership to drive organizational success. With a background that spans over two decades in operations leadership, event planning at her own start-up and marketing at various financial and retail companies. Dominique is known for her ability to optimize processes, manage complex projects and lead high-performing teams. She holds a BA in English and Psychology from U.C. Berkeley and an MBA from the University of San Francisco. She can be reached via LinkedIn.
Eater
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Eater
Welcome to Weird, Wild, Wonderful Nevada
To many outsiders, Nevada is just the desert landmass that surrounds the glamorous, neon-drenched dreamscape of Las Vegas — a state whose name is mispronounced as often as it's misunderstood (it's Nev- add -uh). Others know Nevada to be ghost country, not just for its literal ghost towns, but for the apparitions rumored to haunt its century-old hotels and saloons. The state is, of course, the backdrop to Area 51 and (allegedly) classified extraterrestrial activity. It's the collective memory of mushroom clouds blossoming over the Mojave Desert. It's the rootin'-tootin' Wild West. These images all coalesce into the tapestry of a state unified by the weird, wild, and wonderful. All of this to say, Nevada isn't just drawn to the strange — it depends on it. Its history, infrastructure, and identity have been stitched together in secrecy and by speculation, which, in turn, have shaped the state's appetite for the uncanny, the campy, and the downright surreal. I've lived in the Battle Born State since I was 14. Zak Bagans's haunted museum sits just down the street from my house. The bar where my friends and I regularly celebrate birthdays glows with Atomic Age memorabilia. My weekend road trips include renegade art exhibits of upturned cars and spectral recreations of The Last Supper , often bookended by stops at alien-themed gas stations and beef jerky stands. Here, roadside restaurants and watering holes serve as waypoints and mythmakers, where strangers trade ghost stories over hotel bar counters, gather in a restaurant near Area 51 to compare unexplainable night sky sightings, and refuel with cherry-steeped beer from a remote brewery that alone can justify an hourslong drive. My previous road trips throughout the state have featured stops at attractions that are pointedly bizarre — like artist Ugo Rondinone's psychedelic Day-Glo monoliths that comprise Seven Magic Mountains. I've journeyed to many geologically surreal destinations: Take, for example, the soaring spires and person-wide slot canyons that rise from the pale siltstone and clay shale of Cathedral Gorge State Park. For the past decade, I have been telling my friends that next year is the year that I'll join them on a silica-coated dry lake bed managed by the Bureau of Land Management for Burning Man, where some 70,000 people erect a city of tents, temples, and flame-spewing octopuses every August leading up to Labor Day. 'The West has long been a mirage — the draw of exploration, ambition, and self-invention shimmering like water: imminently ahead but just out of reach.' Nevadans may be uniquely predisposed to look for things that are weird , says Michael Green, chair of UNLV's history department. Consider the boom-and-bust mining towns of early Nevada and the resulting transience that lends itself to ghost stories. There's Area 51 and the patchwork of lore regarding what secretly goes on beyond its gates, just 80 miles outside of Las Vegas. Even today, more than 80 percent of the state's land is federally owned. 'There is some degree of secrecy associated with federal land; there is also a degree of secrecy associated with the mob,' Green says. Between the 1940s and 1970s, the mob — more specifically, the American Mafia — exerted sweeping control over Las Vegas casinos: It built them, ran them, and controlled the flow of money both on and off the books. The mob's goings-on were generally limited to verbal agreements and handshake deals, with documents minimally used and even written in code. 'There are so many things that have been done behind the scenes, under the table, that we figured there has to be more to the story,' Green says. Nevada's preoccupation with the weird isn't just about secrets; it's also about the inherent wistfulness of the American Southwest. There's the nostalgia shaped by the open road, Route 66, and cowboy iconography — all shorthand within pop culture for individualism and escape. For longtime Nevadans, that nostalgia may be more textured, based on yearning for a slower pace or the do-it-yourself era of Las Vegas before corporate monoculture took over the Strip. More broadly, the West has long been a mirage — the draw of exploration, ambition, and self-invention shimmering like water: imminently ahead but just out of reach. In April, I traveled 479 miles to see the weirdest and wildest lore-steeped sites in Nevada. Flying 80 miles an hour down the 95 — past sun-hardened rock faces and thorny desert scrub — I blearily had visions of making the same trip by foot and on horseback. In Tonopah, Nevada, I read an epitaph for a pair of brothers buried in the cemetery next to the Clown Motel: two boys who grew up in Montenegro, traveled to the shores of the Adriatic Sea, then boarded a steamship to journey to the United States — only to be killed by a runaway mine cart 200 feet beneath the desert town. I stood in the shade of the Mission Revival-style railroad depot in Rhyolite, now a ghost town, where fortune-seekers arrived by train in 1907 with the promise of building a life in the state's biggest mining camp — only to board that same train just one year later when the town began to decline. I traced my fingers over the bullet holes in the walls of Pioneer Saloon in Goodsprings, Nevada, and sensed the presence of the miner who lost his life over a poker game gone wrong. This highway-honed wistfulness has become an integral part of Nevada's folklore. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, when Nevada was in the thick of its mining boom, stories abounded of rich deposits gone lost. These narratives often took the form of an old prospector who emerged from the wilderness, unable to recall where he found the treasure, historian Ronald M. James writes in Monumental Lies: Early Nevada Folklore of the Wild West. Others involved 'a dog running off, leading its owner on an untrodden path, or a donkey kicking a rock that reveals the gleam of gold.' This trope is behind the apocryphal story of Jim Butler, the prospector whose accidental discovery of the Mizpah Ledge silver vein led to Tonopah's founding: One of his donkeys wandered off, and when he picked up a rock to throw at it, he was struck by the stone's unusual weight. If I wanted to better understand my state's fascination with the weird, I reasoned that I should follow Butler's path to what is now Tonopah, for a stay at the Mizpah Hotel. I want to be clear: I don't believe in ghosts. But that doesn't mean the idea of them doesn't scare me. So I passed on the opportunity to book the Mizpah Hotel's Lady in Red Suite — a room that had been the private quarters of a sex worker, known in thinly veiled misogynistic lore as the 'Lady in Red,' who was murdered by a jealous client more than a century ago and is rumored to wander the halls since. 'Visitors report seeing her. Some staff have seen her. She really likes to frequent the fifth floor,' says Chavonn Smith, the front desk manager of the Mizpah. 'She's not an angry ghost. But she does not like women very much.' Instead, I booked a room where my bed was an old-timey wooden wagon. Feigning bravery, I joined a ghost tour that began in the hotel's turn-of-the-century lobby — marked by burgundy patterned carpet, frosted-glass chandeliers, and Victorian camelback settees that seem made for collapsing onto should any of the basement's rumored inhabitants appear. Only when we reached the unfinished floor that once held the hotel's safe did our guide tell us the story of three enterprising miners who tunneled beneath the hotel and emerged through the bottom of the vault. After securing the hotel's riches, one of the miners turned on the others. The next morning, the hotel manager unlocked the safe to find the money gone — and two dead miners left in its place. Visitors still recount catching glimpses of the betrayed miners at the hotel bar, their heads translucent and capped with carbide lamp helmets. Sure, these tales are tall. But in Nevada, ghost stories are more than just marketing or tourism fodder. In Monumental Lies, James writes that from their earliest days, Nevadans have entertained the idea of ghosts. Long before mining towns spun tales of haunted saloons, Indigenous communities of the Great Basin — like the Paiute and Shoshone, and the Washoe near Lake Tahoe — shared stories of ghosts that warned of danger and spirits tied to sacred waters and ancestral places. As James notes, 'much was appropriated but then confused, while other traditions were imagined and projected onto the cultures of the American Indians' — a tangle that shaped the state's early folklore into a mix of belief, invention, and sometimes mockery of its earliest inhabitants. 'Tonopah has a population of about 2,000 people — 6,000 if you count the clowns.' What makes Nevada's ghost stories feel different — weirder, even — than those of other allegedly haunted states is how deeply they're rooted in its roads. In much the same way that cities like Tonopah, Goldfield, and Virginia City were built on the promise of silver, so too are they now buoyed by haunted tourism. 'For many today, a pivotal way to approach the past is by contemplating its spiritual residue,' writes James. Stories like those of the betrayed miners — tales of greed, ambition, and unresolved endings — are part of how Nevadans make sense of a landscape shaped by boomtowns, busts, and disappearances. In a place where so much has been hidden or lost, locals and travelers continue to try to conjure spirits that may or may not have reason to linger. Tonopah has a population of about 2,000 people — 6,000 if you count the clowns. The 33-room Clown Motel opened in 1985 with a modest personal collection of 150 clown statues. When former art director Hame Anand took over as the motel's CEO in 2019, he ran with the theme — adding thousands of clown murals, portraits, marionettes that probably come alive at night, masks that will almost certainly fuse to your face if you get too close, and one clown statue that I swear I saw wink at me. The whole thing is galling, baffling, deeply unsettling — and, naturally, a must-see tourist destination. The motel's property backs up to another supposedly haunted locale: the town's old cemetery. Here, century-old headstones are updated by the Central Nevada Historical Society to include causes of death. Wandering through the copse of wooden crosses and metal tombstones tells the story of small-town Nevada in the early 1900s — where the Marojevech brothers failed to halt a runaway mine cart in the Belmont Mine, where local hero Big Bill Murphy was killed rescuing others in a fire in 1911, and where the 'Tonopah plague' caused the deaths of 56 people in a four-month span in 1905. It's a ledger of early Nevada, an undercurrent of reality beneath the honky-tonk myth of the Wild West. Before hitting the road, I had lunch at Tonopah Brewing Co., where the walls are lined with awards for brewmaster Edward Nash's tart fruited sours. But the food here is a sleeper hit, far better than one may expect from a brewery in Middle of Nowhere, Nevada. A French dip sandwich piles tender roast beef onto a pretzel roll slathered with horseradish and flanked by a glimmering side of jus. Molten fried cheese curds beg to be dunked into their accompanying ranch dressing. A Nashville-style hot fried chicken sandwich gets topped with a stack of cooling pickles and coleslaw. It all paired well with a flight of beers — the Cherry 51 witbier, brewed with cherries, and the Honey Wheat ale stood out as my favorites. Driving back down to Las Vegas, I stopped in Goldfield (population: 231), with my sights set on the International Car Forest of the Last Church. Weird art in Nevada is hardly limited to the tech scion-curated display in Black Rock City. Dozens of junk cars, school buses, and ice cream trucks are half-buried like offerings, their hoods entombed in the hard earth, tail lights propped up like grave markers, chassis exposed like bodies after exhumation. These cars await wandering artists who will anoint them with spray paint. Is this a meditation on decay? A post-industrial necropolis? A bold indictment of consumerism's terminal velocity? Or — and stay with me here — is it just extremely funny to bury a minivan in the desert and hand out cans of Krylon like communion wafers? Art is subjective. Seeking more weird desert art, I ventured to Rhyolite (population: 0), a ghost town once so destined to be the largest mining operation in the state that a railroad was built in 1906 to connect it to Las Vegas. A Mission Revival depot soon followed, servicing the 50 freight cars that ran per day. But within months of its completion, more people were leaving Rhyolite than arriving, according to the Bureau of Land Management. Just downhill from the depot — and the crumbling remains of the bank and schoolhouse — lies the Goldwell Open Air Museum. Thirteen spectral figures, cloaked in gauzy white plaster, loom over the sand in a ghostly parody of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper . Rooftops peek out of the ground as if they're being swallowed by quicksand. A 25-foot woman made out of pink cinder blocks — with yellow brick accents to indicate both her blond locks and pubic hair — stares silently into the distance. Nevada's desert is part excavation site, part sandbox: a squared-off plot where some come to unearth buried histories, while others come to play — shaping odd monuments before the wind levels them flat. Nowhere is that tension more vivid than in Rhyolite, where past ambition and present-day absurdity share the same forsaken earth. Alongside its ghost stories and surrealist desert art, Nevada also deals its own brand of extraterrestrial weird. Driving south from Rhyolite into Las Vegas brought me to the Area 51 Alien Center in Amargosa Valley — a Brat -green gift shop/gas station/frozen yogurt cafe decorated in cardboard clip art aliens. It sells alien-face thongs; green-handed back scratchers; vials of soil allegedly sourced from Area 51; 'Interstellar Sandwiches,' including a triple-decker club and drippy 'Alien Burgers' with sauteed mushrooms; and, for $5, a turban-clad Alien Zoltar, who predicts that something lost will turn up very soon. This is the kitschy end of Nevada's alien fixation — part roadside spectacle, part intergalactic fever dream — joined by the E.T. Fresh Jerky bungalow in Lincoln County, the Outpost 51 Alien Museum in Boulder City, and the Alien Fresh Jerky compound just over the border in Baker, California, where a full-size UFO hotel is under construction. The next day, I drove up Route 375 — better known as the Extraterrestrial Highway. The official road marker bearing that name, perched atop two 12-foot-tall poles, had previously been stickered into illegibility. The highway winds past the legendary Black Mailbox, rumored to be a drop site for alien communications, and the arched, galvanized metal Alien Research Center fronted by a towering metal figure. (I'm pretty sure the latter is a gift shop, though it's never been open when I've passed through.) Follow the road and eventually you'll drive through the gates of Area 51. But about 25 miles before that, you'll arrive at the Little A'Le'Inn in Rachel, Nevada (population: 48). Little A'Le'Inn has become a haven for the alien-obsessed, but its namesake stems from a typo, not anything out of this universe. After buying the Rachel Bar and Grill in 1988, owner Connie West tells me that her parents intended to name the cafe the 'Little Ale'Inn' — a nod to the ales they served. But a printer's error on the sign — an errant apostrophe — turned it into a name that just happened to rhyme with 'alien,' West says, around the same time Las Vegas reporter George Knapp was breaking Bob Lazar's now-infamous claims about working on an extraterrestrial spacecraft near Area 51. For West, the name feels almost like fate. Before Matty Roberts' viral Facebook event, 'Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us,' thrust the Little A'Le'Inn into the national spotlight, the restaurant had already cultivated its own community — one made up of UFO chasers and roadtrippers, or, as West puts it, 'people who want to travel, to see places, to get off the pavement and the beaten path.' Visitors come with photographs of their own UFO sightings in hand. They mail West Polaroids and handwritten testimonials, many of which are taped on the restaurant's gallery walls. The photos make me think about the unwavering light I saw bobbing over Great Basin National Park last summer. If I had snapped a photo, would it have made West's wall? Beyond the displays of photos and Area 51 memorabilia is a smattering of mismatched tables and chairs, a bar where customers sign dollar bills to be suspended from the ceiling, and a gift shop filled with bumper stickers and shot glasses ('Believe,' one reads). Outside, the restaurant is bordered by alien statues. A light-up flying saucer was a parting gift from the Galaxy Quest home-video release party, which took place in Little A'Le'Inn's parking lot. A tow truck suspends a satellite dish-sized metal UFO — plastered with stickers from travelers who've passed through — donated by a friend of West's father, Joe Travis. West says that a visiting artist asked for permission to paint on a blank wall. The artist left a purple mural of dead-eyed aliens, some engaged with humans in an interspecies kiss, that glows under black light. Over 'Saucer Burgers' and buttery white bread grilled cheese sandwiches, customers who commute among the Southwest's national parks — Zion to Yosemite is a common trail — pick up easy conversation at Little A'Le'Inn, comparing stories of unexplainable sightings in the night sky. West says it's this sense of openness and shared experience that has allowed the restaurant to continue to thrive. 'We have a unique place where you're free to communicate with each other [without judgment],' she says. 'I think that's why we have been in business so long.' Over time, Little A'Le'Inn became a nexus for weird Nevada experiences. There's a warmth in the conversations that happen here, knitted among friends and strangers — of strange bright lights in the sky, of encounters in the barren stretches of Nevada's night, of government secrets they seek to uncover. 'I personally believe that if you look up and you look out, it's too vast,' West tells me. 'There are strange things in the sky, things I can't explain. Hopefully, there's something else besides us.' In the 1950s, patrons at Atomic Liquors in Downtown Las Vegas looked up and out, too. They would gather on the roof of the city's first freestanding bar with cocktails in hand and watch nuclear test explosions bloom on the horizon, as if they were fireworks instead of fallout. Back then, atomic tourism was part of the spectacle — proof of progress and power. Today, that bar leans into its strange past, its walls lined with Atomic Age paraphernalia and standees of Miss Atomic Bomb in her mushroom cloud swimsuit. It's kitschy, yes, but also quietly haunting — a reminder that Nevada's fascination with the unknown has revolved around the existential as much as the extraterrestrial. In Nevada, weird isn't an outlier, it's the vernacular. From atomic tourism to ghost hotels, alien sightings to art cars, and all the tall tales of the Wild West, the state doesn't just tolerate the bizarre: It builds around it, sells tickets to it, leaves the lights on for it. Maybe all the UFOs were just weather balloons. Maybe the ghosts were just creaks in the night. And maybe that clown never winked at me. The stories here are strange, and the sights often stranger. But they help make sense of a place long defined by what slips through fingers — silver, water, time, truth. 'From the earliest days, the West was wilder, harder hitting, harder drinking, harder ... everything ... than elsewhere. We know this to be true because legends confirm it,' writes James. Call it mythmaking or marketing, but out here, weird works. Sign up for our newsletter.
Los Angeles Times
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
‘The Last Supper': Paul Elie feasts on artistic ferment over religion in the '80s
In his gripping and essential new book 'The Last Supper,' Paul Elie captures a pivot point in 20th century social history, when certain ideas about religion, art and sex in the '80s crashed headlong into each other during an epoch that tends to be shrugged off by historians as a quiet interval between the gas shortages and political malfeasance of the '70s and the emergent technological revolution of the '90s. But it was in fact a breeding ground of artistic ferment, in which creatives grappled with what Elie calls crypto-religion, that 'liminal space between belief and disbelief' that produced a wealth of thought-provoking popular art. Elie's masterful survey is a group portrait of artists and their fellow travelers who participated during a bloody crossroads in American life, when Ronald Reagan's ascension to the White House in 1980 collapsed the walls between church and state, sparking a counterrevolution across the arts. It is this dialogue, this back-and-forth, that drives Elie's fascinating survey, placing the reader in the thick of a convulsive era when ideas about the role of religion in modern life were fighting it out in the public sphere in ways that we haven't seen since. Among these voters that swept him into the presidency in 1980, Reagan was a savior, wresting the country away from the unchecked permissiveness and aggressive secularism of the prior two decades into a new era of 'family values' that encompassed adherence to the straight and narrow, of which biblical scripture was the key text. Gathering up zealots like Jerry Falwell under his new revival tent, Reagan preached the virtues of heterosexual marriage, of preserving the life of the unborn fetus, of chastity and moderation. The Roman Catholic Church had Reagan's back. Pope John Paul II, who had ascended to the papacy in 1978, toured the world like a beatific rock star, preaching the gospel of this new sobriety in football stadiums across the country. This was Christianity leached of all nuance or moral ambiguity, a battering ram of religious doctrine. What emerged from this great leap backward was a diverse efflorescence of art that directly addressed the very things the church ignored. Elie calls it crypto-religion, in which artists negotiated the 'liminal space between belief and non-belief,' and in so doing, created a rich body of work that raised the question 'of what the person who made it believes, so that the question of what it means to believe is crucial to the work's effect.' Elie's cast of characters — an eclectic list that includes Andy Warhol, Sinéad O'Connor, Bob Dylan, Bono, Czeslaw Milosz, Martin Scorsese and Robert Mapplethorpe — were, to varying degrees, children of the church who had internalized its tenets at a time when religion was still a central fact of life in America and Europe in the '50s and '60s. As Elie astutely points out, even an artist as outwardly estranged from religious life as Warhol carried with him the lessons of the Polish Byzantine Order of his youth. 'He made silk-screen images of skulls, memento-mori style,' writes Elie. 'He dressed dolls as priests and nuns and photographed them.' As an adult, Warhol attended church, albeit sporadically, and accepted a commission to refashion Leonardo's da Vinci's 'The Last Supper' for an exhibition in Milan. What these crypto-religious artists shared was a vision of divinity shot through with doubt and wonder, weighing the desires of the flesh against the ephemerality of the holy spirit. It was necessary for these insurrectionists to embrace faith on their own terms, transmuting their internal theological dialogues into popular art. On his 1979 album, 'Slow Train Coming,' Dylan had come out in no uncertain terms as a man who now held fast to Jesus love. That record would have a profound influence on O'Connor, the Irish singer who wrestled with God like a scorned lover: 'Tell me, where did the light die?' she sang in her song 'Troy.' U2, whose lead singer Bono also looked to Dyan as an exemplar, turned the tropes of arena rock inside out, so that a garage-rock classic like 'Gloria' becomes a 'crisis of faith,' an 'anthem of self-surrender' in which the devotion Bono feels 'involves something larger than himself, and he's trying to empty himself of everything that's not in it.' As religion and crypto-religion were locked in mortal combat, the AIDS plague was sweeping across gay communities like a firestorm, to the complete indifference of the federal government and their Christian handmaidens. The gay artistic community was ravaged, many of its greatest creative geniuses felled by the disease. But a groundswell of protest art was answering the call with a new kind of ardent feeling that damned the false piety and hypocrisy of homophobic Christian doctrine. Peter Hujar, who would die from AIDS in 1987, used solemn, stark portraiture to create a new kind of crypto-religious iconography, while his compatriot David Wojnarowicz, another victim of AIDS, channeled his rage toward homophobic indifference into mixed-media pieces that restored his subjects' bruised humanism. Then there was Scorsese. The filmmaker, who had been raised in a strict Catholic household in New York's Little Italy and had in his prior films grappled with ideas of belief in a violent world, was obsessed with adapting Nikos Kazantzakis' 1955 novel 'The Last Temptation of Christ.' It took years to drum up the financing, but when the 1988 film was completed, the religious right did everything in its power to block its release. No wonder: Here was crypto-religious art writ large, a vision of Jesus who was all too human, plagued by doubt and a troubled inner life. It was, according to Elie, the 'Jesus of history more than the Christ of faith' — a man first, in other words. This dovetailed with the work of scholars such as Elaine Pagels, who were framing Jesus as a historical figure, rather than the 'Christ of faith.' Where has all of this crypto-religious practice left us in 2025? That liminal space that Elie describes between belief and disbelief has closed, at least for the time being. Yet even as 'the American population has become less religious and religiosity more diverse,' the idea of mainstream artists grappling with religion no longer exists, perhaps because such matters are irrelevant in an aggressively outward-directed, spiritually bereft time. Elie's brilliant book is a bracing reminder of art's far-reaching power in matters of the heart and soul. His expansive vision of the '80s rings out like a clarion call for a new era of rigorous artistic engagement with the unknowable and the unseen. Weingarten is the author of 'Thirsty: William Mulholland, California Water, and the Real Chinatown.'
