My prior Art posts can be found HERE.
How do we move away from being a civilization that produces art that causes comments like, “my five year old could make this,” back to being one that creates beauty and inspires deep questions? We must reject modernity and embrace tradition. To embrace tradition, we must first learn about it.
Let’s study art history together.
Alien Statue (Hiko, Nevada)
| Artist | Unknown / undisclosed |
| Date | 2001 |
| Medium | Metal |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 35 ft (height) |
| Location | Alien Research Center, Hiko, Nevada |
There are forever long stretches of Nevada that feel completely uninhabited. You might look out toward the horizon, in all directions, and see nothing but desolate desert. But if you’re in that barren nothingness long enough, you might begin to feel as though you aren’t alone – like someone or something is watching you.
Is it paranoia? Or is something looking at you, not from some spot on one of the horizons, but down on you from above?
Nevada is the famous home of ‘Area 51’ which is (allegedly) a U.S. military base wherein American humans study and develop extra-terrestrial technology. Some whistleblowers claim that the E.T.s are there, too.
This is the sort of spooky thing you might expect to find its way into the world of art and indeed it has done so. One of the closest inhabited towns to Area 51 is Hiko, Nevada, which is home to the Alien Research Center (which is more of a gift shop than a hard science place of learning.) This thirty-five foot tall metal alien is there to greet you when you arrive.
What do we make of this type of art? Some might call it kitschy. Perhaps it is. On the other hand, it’s not abstract. It is an attempt at providing an accurate (albeit large) visual representation of humanity’s great other. I would argue that it’s not too dissimilar to Medieval gargoyle art. It’s not beautiful or uplifting. It’s an artistic avatar of a large-scale societal trepidation and fear. Old maps of the ocean used to have phrases on them, in the uncharted parts, saying thing like hic sunt dracones (“there be dragons here.”) In the sky, our modern dragons look – at least until we learn otherwise – like this figure in Hiko, Nevada.
I’m no art critic…but it looks to me like something you’d see in front of a carnival spook house… or maybe by South of the Border on I-95 on the NC/SC border. 😎 Perhaps a few more scientific displays like near-earth planets, Webb telescope, declassified govt reports on UFOs/UABs would make it seem more legit 🤷♂️