From Publishers Weekly
In Popcorn Palaces: The Art Deco Movie Theatre Paintings of Davis Cone, the artist captures the paradoxes of these iconic showplaces from the perspective of the generation that inherited rather than created them; their tackiness, peeling paint, gaudiness and often neglect contrast with the cool assurance of their fantastical design in its futuristic optimism, lurid wit and irony. Architecture writer Michael D. Kinerk and archivist and art deco collector Dennis W. Wilhelm compiled the paintings and provided an informative text. Cone has been photographing and painting theaters for more than 20 years; the 86 images presented here convey the richness of his effort.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
"Davis Cone's extraordinarily realistic paintings of old movie theatres . . . [produce] a sharp ache of recognition of a kind of innocence that is somehow irretrievably lost. Or perhaps, because Mr. Cone's work represents these images of Americana so accuratelyóand with such a subtly elegiac quality-the emotion we feel is as of a distant memory suddenly recaptured."
-Peter Bogdanovich For more than two decades, in his widely collected paintings of America's old movie theatres, Realist artist Davis Cone has been preserving cherished memories from an era gone by. Cone's brilliantly precise paintings of the glittering Art Deco fantasy palaces that once lent magic to main streets across the nation recall the thrill of going to the movies in the days before malls and multiplexes. The text not only reveals much about Cone the artist but also covers the history and architecture of the theatres themselves. Sadly, many of the theatres painted by Cone no longer exist. But the spirit of all Popcorn Palaces remains alive in this evocative and nostalgic book.
