LUAU - 1973
Although no available photograph depicts all twenty concrete panels of Luau, images indicate they depict more than seventeen figures in the process of preparing and consuming a feast. Some, mostly female, can be seen holding up bowls and observing events; others, mostly male, are shown slaughtering a bound pig. One of the female figures has her head bent and her hand over her ears as if trying to block out the sound of its squeals.
Evidencing a level of simplification, narrative clarity, and idealization that owe much to Egyptian and Assyrian relief sculpture, all the figures are youthful, slender, straight-haired, and all but one is shown in profile.
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Checkpoint #3
Honolulu International Airport, Honolulu, Hawaii
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1973 according to Van Sant’s records. The Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts identifies 1972 as the date of completion.
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Ossipoff & Chang
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Exposed aggregate concrete.
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13 ft. x 80 ft.
The Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts identifies the length as 882 in., or 73.5 ft.
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Unknown
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Unknown.
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In 2004, “Laura Gorman of the Western Association of Art Conservation monitored the removal and relocation of twenty huge concrete mural panels by artist Tom Van Sant at the Honolulu airport." [1]
“The large concrete mural is at checkpoint #3 at HNL. It’s part of our public art collection... All are in good shape." [2]
[1] Western Association for Art Conservation Newsletter, Volume 27, Number 1, January 2005, p.4.
[2] Email between the author and Jonathan Johnson, Arts Administrator, State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, September 12, 2023.
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TVS digital records.
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Unlike Indigenous Inhabitants(1968) and Industries of Hawaii (1972), for which the sculptures were cast in place during the construction of the architecture, the panels of Luau were pre-cast and attached to a wall; originally in the lobby of the Honolulu International Airport, now by checkpoint #3.
“In Van Sant's own words: “The subject of the luau, dealt with in a contemporary manner, embodies the symbolism of much of the Hawaiian spirit, past and present. The luau is not a subject to become dated, nor will it disappear or lose its symbolism. It can reflect the ethnic image, movement, patterns, music, dance, floral forms, foods, and above all the sociability and rustic grace of contemporary Hawaiian culture." Van Sant strove for boldness and innovation in this commission, free from the sentimentality and cliché of traditional Hawaiiana images." [1]
AN OBJECT OF ITS TIME AND PLACE?
Although the artist may not have intended such date specificity, the luau he depicts must have occurred between 1819 and approximately 1900. For in 1819, Hawaii’s royal rulers lifted the kapu, a system of taboos that forbad “women of all classes from eating meals with males;” while it was twentieth century tourist propaganda that firmly embedded hula dancing within luau events. [2]
As described by Jane Desmond in Staging Tourism, Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World: “The literal consumption of Hawaiiana is laid bare most dramatically in the large commercial lu’au, the centerpiece of which is the dancing hula girl." [3]
Van Sant took a complex approach to “Hawaiiana” in Luau. On one hand, in depicting a Luau without a Hula dancer, he refused a central element of Hawaii’s “destination image” – the “set of visuals and ideas associated in the tourist’s mind with a particular locale." [4] In addition, far from the voluptuous and seemingly available women that were prevalent in mid-century Hawaiian tourist imagery, the girls depicted in Luau are as slender and unshapely as reeds that bend in the wind. [5] On the other hand, as demonstrated by examples as diverse as Paul Gauguin’s Spirit of the Dead Watching (1892) and Marlon Brando's love interest in the movie Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), such a suggestion of pliant young “exotica” has long held a strong sexual appeal to the white male gaze.
For Desmond, “what distinguishes Hawai’i from competing beach destinations”...[is] “a set of feminized pleasures (sensuality and a non-threatening soft primitivism key among them) represented in embodied fashion by female dancers.” [6]
Having rejected the embodiment, in a further twist on his theme, Van Sant depicted the hard violence that would rarely if ever be present at a tourist Luau: the moment “the victim pig had his throat slit with a machete [and] the ground became a sea of blood.” [7]
Non-sensual and suggestive, non-threatening and redolent with violence, Luau largely avoids the traditional sentimentality and sexualization of Hawaiiana. Instead, it augmented the “colonial fictions that still shape our social imaginaries” with alternative clichés of the “primitive.” [8]
[1] Art in Public Places Collection, Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts,https://dags.hawaii.gov/sfca/app/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=1&page=1. Last accessed December 20, 2023.
[2] Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum, “History of a Luau,” November 9, 2021.
[3] Jane Desmond, Staging Tourism, Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World, Chicago, UC Press, 1999, p.20.
[4] Ibid, p.5.
[5] See, for example Pan Am ad. at: https://chicagovintageposters.com/products/pan-am-hawaii?variant=37708404883636. Last accessed December 21, 2023.
[6] Jane Desmond, Staging Tourism, Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999, p.5.
[7] Peter Dohan, “Visiting Kauaii years ago...,” Medium.com, September 22, 2021
[8] Cristina Bacchilega, Legendary Hawai'i and the Politics of Place: Tradition, Translation, and Tourism, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
