Saturday, September 4, 2010

Landmark Hotel Implosion

In November of 1980, I did this plein-air gouache painting of the Landmark Hotel in Las Vegas.

At the time, I never would have guessed that less than 15 years later, it would be demolished. The event happened at night and was featured in Tim Burton’s 1995 movie “Mars Attacks.”


In this 3:40 minute video, you can see the hotel and its collapse (no sound).
Another video of the collapse on YouTube

7 comments:

Mario said...

I like gouache, it's essential, direct and "simple", and has a beautiful finish.

Pyracantha said...

They don't know how to spell the word "across" in the caption to this video.

António Araújo said...

Wake up, people! That's not a controlled demolition! It clearly was cut in half by a rogue transformer with a giant japanese katana! The government was behind the cover-up! :))

(insert other conspiracy theories after the fold :))

Antonio

Anonymous said...

It's really neat to see a painting of Las Vegas from this time period. I recently (2008?) did a pen drawing across from the Stratosphere in almost the same area - and it looks nothing like this.

T. Arispe said...

Watching that thing collapse was almost tragic, but fascinating at the same time. So strange to think that something that so many people put so much time and effort into could be destroyed in a blink of an eye like that.

John Fleck said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
John Fleck said...

In the footage (and angle) around 1:50 the hotel has the look of a model to me. In a Thunderbirds kind of way.