'Art People: The Pageant Portraits' Opens At Laguna Art Museum

LAGUNA BEACH, CA—The art colony by the sea was buzzing on Saturday, June 26. Laguna Art Museum held a press preview of an exhibit that celebrates one of the town's beloved festivals: The Pageant of the Masters.

Postponed a year due to COVID-19, Matthew Rolston's "Art People: The Pageant Portraits" is finally open, and it was truly worth the wait.

The installation itself is as stunning as the art. Rolston’s art-direction skills were beautifully executed to display his portraits of everyday people portraying "gods and goddesses, paintings, sculpture, tomb figures—even the occasional art collector."

Rolston guided the media, his gallery representatives and friends, and museum staff through the show with a calm charm. His lifelong enthusiasm for the Pageant was evident throughout, but especially when he queried the locals, keen to know the level of their Pageant fandom.

The Angeleno revealed that one of his favorite pieces in the exhibit is "Da Vinci, The Last Supper" (archival pigment print on Canson, 100% rag paper). The piece stretches for 30 feet and consists of 26 panels—13 people, and the 13 Styrofoam heads bearing the exact makeup design for each disciple.

The players will be painstakingly painted to replicate the colors and brushstrokes on the faces of Da Vinci's original tempera on plaster from 1495-1498. The heads are labeled: "Last Supper #1" all the way to "Last Supper #12," with the middle one identified simply as "JC."

To fulfill 2021's theme of Made in America, the Pageant's traditional finale of "The Last Supper" will be preceded by two projections: Rolston's "Da Vinci, The Last Supper (Saint James the Less)" and "Da Vinci, The Last Supper (Saint Simon the Zealot)." Rolston's own work is now integrated into the Pageant itself—at least for this year. The layers of art about art at work here multiplying exponentially.

The artist was humbled by this honor since seeing the tableaux vivants at age 8 was instrumental to his career path. Rolston expressed particular gratitude to longtime festival director Diane Chaliss Davy, who championed his idea to the Pageant's board "not once, not twice, but three times" until they finally approved the project.

All the subjects look superhuman, Rolston says, because he shot them from a bit below. The vertical portraits rise to 8 feet in height, imbuing the volunteers with heroic stature. While the high-resolution, glamour-free technique Rolston employed reveals what he calls a "touching level of imperfection."

The famed photographer has redefined the term "art people." No longer does it refer exclusively to the monied, jet-setting world of dealers and collectors. His art people are the volunteers who devote their summer evenings to being transformed into living images of famous art—and the volunteers who make that happen. And to the Pageant creative team, which allowed him to take the photographs backstage in 2016.

Seeing the "Art People" exhibition and the Pageant of the Masters are a 2021 summer must.