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72
Twenty Years Hidden in Plain Site
Ruby Carlson and Sara Velas
Co-Curators, Velaslavasay Panorama
Los Angeles, California, USA
ruby@panoramaonview.org, sara@panoramaonview.org
Abstract
Founded in the year 2000 on Hollywood Boulevard in Los
Angeles, the Velaslavasay Panorama (VP) repurposed the iconic
Tswuun-Tswuun Rotunda, originally constructed as a Chinese
food take-out restaurant in 1968. The panorama relocated in 2004
to its current site, the historic 1910 Union Theater on 24th Street.
Comparing the respective histories of these structures, including
their architecture, cultural use over time, and adaptation as sites of
panoramic attraction, shows that the Velaslavasay Panorama
project inverts the paradigm in which spectacular structures have
been purpose-built for visitors of immersive 360-degree
panoramas since the late nineteenth century.
This history connects the panoramic impulse to the linear
cinematic landscapes of Los Angeles as portrayed and imagined in
films such as Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood (2019) and
Boogie Nights (1997). The experience of cinematic techniques,
such as the tracking shot, are paralleled to the Velaslavasay
Panorama’s exploration of panoramic forms as visitors are guided
through levels of displacement in time, space and mind, street
exteriors to building interiors, and finally to the imagined realm of
urban representation in film and the painted panorama.
Keywords
Vernacular Architecture, Scripted Environments, Panoramas,
Cinematic Landscape, Lateral Tracking, Streetscapes,
Velaslavasay Panorama
Introduction
In 2017, Sara Velas and Ruby Carlson, Co-Curators at the
Velaslavasay Panorama, travelled to Shenyang, China, to
behold a spectacle typically reserved for nineteenth century
showmen. They came to inspect and review the newly
completed Shengjing Panorama by artists Li Wu 李武, Yan
Yang 晏阳 and Zhou Fuxian 周福先—legend has it the
painters applied the finishing touches just hours prior. After
15 years of studying the panorama phenomenon in China
and developing a friendship and bond over the medium,
Sara Velas and the Velaslavasay Panorama commissioned
expert panorama painters Li, Yan and Zhou to paint
Shengjing Panorama. Nearly six feet tall and over ninety
feet long, the panorama was suspended from a metal frame
that sat in the indoor basketball court of the Tiexi School for
Hearing Impaired Students (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1. “Shengjing Panorama” in Gymnasium of Tiexi School
in Shenyang, China, 2017 Photo: Ruby Carlson.
As the panorama hung against the rectilinear walls
beneath a basketball hoop, Velas, Carlson and a select group
of others attending this special event were able to
experience the panorama as though it were a scroll painting.
[1] As Yomi Braester writes, “In the beginning was the
scroll. A genealogy of panoramic imaginary in China...must
go back to the traditional scroll and, in particular, the long
horizontal paintings used to portray progressions through
the city.” [2] Because the painting was designed to be
installed against the curved walls of a 360-degree rotunda,
this was a rare glimpse of Shengjing Panorama not “in the
round” but “in the flat,” as if it were a two-dimensional
object. The painting, which depicts a realistic, histo-
geographically informed yet fictional view of Shenyang,
China, circa 1910-1930, would soon be transported to the
Velaslavasay Panorama in Los Angeles, California, where
it would be displayed as it was designed, in the round and
embellished with sculptural terrain, transforming Shengjing
Panorama into a three-dimensional work of art.
This transition, from the two-dimensional scroll painting
to the three-dimensional immersive panorama, is usually
only witnessed by panorama painters and technicians. As
installers, curators and collaborating artists, Velas and
International Panorama Council Journal, Volume 4
Selected Proceedings from the 29th IPC Conference
2020
ISSN: 2571-7863
www.panoramacouncil.org
73
Carlson took hold of Shengjing Panorama as a two-
dimensional representation that day in the basketball
court—noting its scroll-like demeanor and the way it
stretched out from one end of the court to the other. [3] The
painting depicts a cityscape, so streets stretched from one
end of the court to the other as well. To see the whole
painting, Velas and Carlson had to walk along it, moving
slowly along the perimeter of the gymnasium like
passengers riding in one of the 1920s cars depicted in the
painting (Fig. 2).
Fig. 2. “Shengjing Panorama” detail with automobiles, 2017
Photo: Sara Velas.
Although the painting was displayed indoors, the scenes
on the canvas were of the outside—a bustling city street,
clouds changing in the sky, leaves falling to the floor, and
fishermen on the banks of a river. Panoramas traditionally
play with the barrier between inside and outside as viewers
are ensconced in both simultaneously. Whether the subject
be a battle, a faraway city, or an Arctic terrain, panoramas
traditionally depict exterior landscapes. [4] Panoramas are
special in that their structure determines the architecture that
surrounds them, which is rare for a painting. The rotunda,
the spiral staircase and the long, dark, approaching hallway
(Fig. 3) are dictated by the panorama and they shape the
panorama viewing experience.
Fig. 3. Hall and spiral staircase entrance to panoramic viewing
hall at the Velaslavasay Panorama, 2017 Photo: Forest Casey.
Examining the relationship between interior-exterior
structure and interior-exterior imagery shows how the
curators of the Velaslavasay Panorama engineer a panorama
encounter informed not just by the dictates of the panoramic
medium but also by the subject matter depicted, the past and
future of the panorama phenomenon, the historic dialectics
of art acquiescing to architecture and vice versa, and the
very city of Los Angeles as the geographic site of Shengjing
Panorama. We go so far as to argue that whereas Shengjing
Panorama is a representation of Shenyang, the
Velaslavasay Panorama is a representation of both
panorama history and Los Angeles itself.
The Cinematic Frame and the Moving
Panorama
In the summer of 2010, the Velaslavasay Panorama
presented a theatrical staging of the Grand Moving Mirror
of California, a script and moving panorama written in 1853
by a “Dr.” L.E. Emerson that originally toured New
England (Fig 4). [5] A broadside announcement declared,
“CITIZENS! Improve this opportunity of beholding the
LAND OF GOLD” (sic) and invited all to enjoy “A Through
Ticket to the Americas” by way of a moving panorama—a
canvas scroll depicting a continuous landscape. Though the
Fig. 4. “The Grand Moving Mirror of California” 1853 script
photocopy. Collection of the Saco Maine Museum.
archival script served as the production’s guiding force, the
original painting had been lost to the ages, giving
opportunity for a new interpretation. Collaborating with
Sara Velas and others at the Velaslavasay Panorama, Guan
Rong painted a new 275-foot-long canvas taking inspiration
from American folk art, nineteenth century vernacular
engravings, and the linear works of self-taught artist Henry
Darger. Erik Newman and Oswaldo Gonzalez used
historical technical knowledge to create a period correct
wooden frame—a box structure that shrouded the spooled
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canvas on either end with a proscenium in the center where
the painting could be viewed by an audience (Fig. 5).
Fig. 5. Grand Moving Mirror of California, Guan Rong, Sara
Velas, Rosco Posada, Erik Newman and others, 2010. Photo:
Sara Velas.
In the nineteenth century moving panorama heyday, the
script was performed as the painting was advanced in its
wooden frame, typically in a lecture hall, theatre or church
accompanied by live music and foley sound effects. The
Velaslavasay’s production included a theatrical narrator
reading an adaptation of the script, crankers advancing the
painting, a pianist, foley artists and stage lighting
technicians. The show was performed on the Velaslavasay’s
theater stage and the moving panorama stood directly in
front of a silver screen. The positioning of the moving
panorama as such, obstructing cinema, creates a
conversation between the panorama as a precursor to
cinema and the act of the Velaslavasay Panorama (located
inside a purpose-built cinema from 1910), making a
modern-day mission out of giving panoramas precedence
over film—an act counter to the trend that played out when
cinema stole the show, so to speak, from panoramas in the
early twentieth century.
In The Painted Panorama, Bernard Comment claims that
the moving panorama “brought about a radical shift in
relation to the circular panorama, a shift that involved
another logic.” [6] This new logic set the stage for what was
to come. Borrowing Charles Musser’s phrase, Erkki
Huhtamo writes about the moving panorama as “screen
practice” working to establish dynamics of viewing inherent
in the moving panorama that segued into cinema—viewing
a succession of linear images in a fabricated frame, or
window, the industrialization of image-viewing, and the
commercialization of spectatorship. [7]
Urban cities, architecture, and landscapes were popular
subjects depicted in moving panoramas throughout the
nineteenth century. Voyaging or travelling were also
popular themes, as evidenced by the Grand Moving Mirror
of California and others like The Trans-Siberian Railway
Panorama, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the
Mississippi Valley, and London to Hong Kong in Two
Hours. [8] If moving panoramas can be seen as “screen
practice” for cinema viewing in general, it is reasonable to
argue that moving panoramas were also practice for the
cinematic frame and a particular technique in filmmaking—
the lateral tracking shot.
Lateral Tracking Shot and Vehicle
As Dr. Hunter Vaughn remarks in a paper on tracking shots,
“The cinematic frame is a most enigmatic character.
Perhaps because it never moves, yet is the site of all
movement; it never changes, yet is where all change takes
place.” [9] Dr. Vaughn could very well be speaking of the
moving panorama, so similar is it to the cinematic frame.
When discussing the Chinese scroll painting and its relation
to the panorama method, Braester writes, “the painting
employs a birds'-eye view, at a steady height and a constant
distance from the central axis. Maintaining the same
position, facing northwest, the scroll feels as if the viewer
engages in a high-angle tracking shot.” [10]
The lateral tracking shot, otherwise known as a “dolly
shot” or “travelling shot,” is a technique of the cinematic
frame achieved by placing a camera on a dolly and the dolly
on rails, like that of a train track. The camera moves
alongside a subject or a view and, similar to moving
panoramas, the most frequent images of a lateral tracking
shot involves cityscapes, landscape and architecture. They
are both techniques of depicting motion, movement and
travel. Their subjects are façades and exteriors and because
of this the visuals are sometimes flat, as if two-dimensional.
In fact, the first example of a moving camera was in a film
titled Panorama du Grand Canal pris d’un bateau (Promio
1896), a panoramic view and lateral tracking shot of the
Grand Canal in Venice, which one could imagine closely
resembling Samuel Waugh’s moving panorama Mirror of
Italy (1849). [11]
Fig. 6. Driving down Hollywood Boulevard in “Once Upon a
Time…In Hollywood” 2019. Quentin Tarantino, Director.
Renowned filmmakers have employed the lateral
tracking shot in some of their most iconic works—Orson
Welles in Touch of Evil, Jean Luc Godard in Weekend, Paul
Thomas Anderson in Boogie Nights (Fig. 8), Wes Anderson
75
in Darjeeling Limited, Jia Zhangke in Touch of Sin, and
Quentin Tarantino in Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood
(Fig. 6). In all of these examples, cars and locomotives are
leading figures in the scene, often serving as the impetus for
the moving cinematic frame.
Lynne Kirby, in the book Parallel Tracks: The Railroad
and Silent Cinema, describes how through the travelling
shot film doubles the act of train travel, highlighting the
condensation of space and time and customs of the
observation car. John Edmond makes the point that the
“mere movement of the travelling shot helped evoke the pan
of the panorama” while “the movement of the pan or the
tracking shot has become cinematic, abstracted from their
vehicular inspirations.” [12] Jakob Isak Nielsen notes that
the “train was the most popular camera support in the 19th
and early 20th century and two sub-categories of train
mobility already indicated a branching out of two functions:
mobile shots filmed from the side of the train were known
as ‘panoramas’ whereas mobile shots filmed from the
front of the train were known as ‘phantom rides.’” [13]
Shooting from the vantage point of a vehicle affords the
audience a visual metaphor for following the narrative arc
of a subject while creating space for the characterization of
the surrounding landscape. For filmmakers Paul Thomas
Anderson and Quentin Tarantino in particular, vehicle
tracking shots create an opportunity to highlight an often
overlooked character in their films—Los Angeles.
Los Angeles as Subject and Object
“The view through the windshield determines the
impression of the city’s image; it is characterized not by
church steeples but by neon advertising signs.” [14]
In 2018, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino turned one block
of Hollywood Boulevard—from Las Palmas to Cherokee—
into a film set for Once Upo n a Time…In Hollywood. As the
film took place in 1969, the project involved a complete
overhaul of storefront façades based on archival images of
the time (with some stretches of the imagination) including
recreating two neon signs and marquees for both the Vogue
and the Pussycat theaters, recreating bus and movie
advertisements and re-installing signs of former businesses
such as Peaches Records & Tapes (Fig. 7) and Larry
Edmunds Cinema and Theatre Bookshop. [15] As a result
of the detailed and extensive work, the block became a
portal into Hollywood’s past, offering LA tourists and
natives an immersive streetscape experience with a world
that no longer exists. When the film was released in theaters
viewers watched a series of tracking shots as Brad Pitt drove
down the block at night with neon and glittering signs all
aglow (Fig. 6). [16]
Fig. 7. “Peaches” recreated on Hollywood Boulevard for
“Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood” 2018. Photo: Chris
Nichols
Fig. 8. Cruising the San Fernando Valley in “Boogie Nights”
1997. Paul Thomas Anderson, Director.
In 1997, Paul Thomas Anderson restored a corner block
of Los Angeles’ Reseda neighborhood in the San Fernando
Valley back to its former glory circa 1977 for the film
Boogie Nights. The opening scene features a long tracking
shot (though not a lateral one) beginning at the Reseda
Theatre (Fig. 8), whose blue neon marquee had been
repaired for the film after sitting dormant for nearly a
decade, and ending at the neon sign for Hot Traxx Disco, a
made-up name for what at the time of filming was the
Reseda Country Club, “an underachieving music venue
attempting to recapture its glory days from the ‘80s,” that
was in the process of being sold. [17]
76
It is perhaps not a coincidence that The Pussycat Theatre
façade was recreated for both Once Upon a Time…In
Hollywood and Boogie Nights (though they were different
locations of the adult film theater chain) as both directors
are Los Angeles natives whose films draw inspiration from
the look, feel and people of the city. In addition, the theaters
had massive curb appeal with their fanciful massive
lettering, backlit panels and globe lights. Neon signage is
another tool for attracting attention and luring in business
after the sun goes down. Though many of Los Angeles’
Fig. 9. Detail from Frolic Room signage permit 1948. LADBS
permit number1948LA26169.
neon signs have disappeared over the years, some iconic
examples remain such as the 1948 sign for The Frolic Room
(Fig. 9) at 6245 Hollywood Blvd, which can be glimpsed in
a tracking shot in Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood and in
Ed Ruscha’s Hollywood Boulevard photography projects.
[18] Los Angeles architecture “required a car-friendly
environment; mandatory were acres of convenient parking
right in front, gigantic signs, and flashy architecture that
caught a driver’s eye with enough time to pull in.” [19] The
aesthetics of the city is interlaced with the act of viewing the
city from the car window, a fast-moving parade of neon and
bright lights when travelling down Hollywood Boulevard at
night. This is then represented in films where Los Angeles
is either subject, setting or both, commonly by way of a
tracking shot.
Fig. 10. Hollywood Boulevard, 1973: Roll 23: Argyle headed
east: Image 0136, Edward Ruscha. Getty Research Institute,
Los Angeles (2012.M. 1).
The Tracking of the Tswuun-Tswuun
Rotunda
Film is not the only art form making use of the lateral
tracking shot evocative of the moving panorama to
document the landscape and architecture as seen from a
moving vehicle. In 1966, artist Ed Ruscha self-published the
book Every Building on the Sunset Strip, a fold out 760.7
cm long continuous print of developed 1,006 cm Ilford FP-
4 black & white 35mm film documenting a 2.5 mile stretch
of Sunset Blvd. For the project, Ruscha mounted a tripod to
a pickup truck and shot both the north and south side of the
street. Ruscha used this methodology to explore
streetscapes throughout Los Angeles and documented the
entire 12 mile stretch of Hollywood Boulevard in 1973,
2004 and 2010, showing incidental changes to architecture,
urban development and even automobile style over four
decades. [20]
In part to contextualize this decades-long project
of Ruscha, Steidel published THEN & NOW, Ed Ruscha
Hollywood Boulevard 1973-2004, noting that “the
original 1973 North side view is shown along the top of
the page and juxtaposed with its 2004 version underneath.
Along the bottom of the page, you find the original 1973
South side view shown upside down, also juxtaposed
with its 2004 version. The panoramics face each other
and they are aligned.” [21] Featured amongst the
“panoramics,” on the 5500 block page of the book, is the
Tswuun-Tswuun Rotunda seen both in its heyday as the
Chu-Chu Chinese restaurant in 1973 (Fig. 10), when it
was surrounded by a large U-shaped apartment complex,
and as the Velaslavasay Panorama in 2004, with the sign
“PANORAMA” clearly visible on the façade.
Fig. 11. Tswuun-Tswuun Rotunda at 5553 Hollywood
Boulevard, 2004. Photo: Larry Underhill.
77
Ruscha revisited the project again in 2010 and captured the
vacant site after the demolition of the 1968 rotunda structure
(Fig. 18).
The Tswuun-Tswuun Rotunda followed the LA tradition
of a building designed to seize the attention of passersby,
whether on foot or by car. Dr. David Chu built the “Tiki-
Chinese-funk” rotunda in 1968, after he purchased a
horseshoe-shaped apartment building built in 1911. [22]
The eye-catching Chu-Chu Chinese, a green stucco cylinder
with a blue tiled roof topped by a glowing orange ball,
surrounded by Canary Island date palms and luxurious
tropical foliage, took advantage of its 5553 Hollywood
Boulevard location, just east of an entrance to the 101
Freeway. [23] The take-out restaurant expanded on the
Chinese food empire created by the husband and wife team
Dr. David and Dorothy Chu at the nearby Shanghai
Restaurant, which in the late 1960’s was also expanding its
banquet halls upstairs. [24] Located east of the rotunda site
at 4916 Hollywood Boulevard, Shanghai Restaurant held a
spectacular façade—bright reds and blues with a swaying
dragon to invite you forward, replete with backlit signs
crafted in 1962 by Wong’s Neon (Fig.12 & Fig. 13). [25]
Fig. 12. Matchbook showing Shanghai Restaurant Façade
Collection: Eric Lynxwiler.
Fig. 13. Hollywood Boulevard, 1973: Roll 5: Begin of
Hollywood Bd. Headed west: Image 0171, Edward Ruscha.
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2021.M. 1).
The eye-catching sensibility of these vernacular structures
played an integral role in the genesis of the Velaslavasay
Panorama. In March of 2000, Sara Velas was driving down
Hollywood Boulevard in search of a specific address.
Looking to her left, she spotted the abandoned rotunda
structure sticking out amongst a plot of vacant land—the U-
shaped apartment building no longer extant as it was
condemned after the Northridge earthquake in 1994 and
subsequently demolished. Velas immediately noticed the
uncanny resemblance the structure had to Catherwood’s
Fig 14. Catherwood’s Panorama Broadside. 1887. Collection:
The New-York Historical Society Library, SY 1837 no.21.
78
panorama which once stood at the corner of Prince and
Mercer Streets in New York City (Fig. 14 & Fig. 16). Less
than a year later a broadside announced the introduction of
the Velaslavasay Panorama to the neighborhood and beyond
with a comparison of Catherwood’s and the Tswuun-
Tswuun Rotundas. (Fig 15).
Fig. 15. Impending! Broadside for Velaslavasay Panorama,
2000. Design: Sara Velas.
Whether on foot or by car, the “tracking shot” approach
to the entrance of the structure was an integral part of one’s
experience with the panoramic painting inside. In contrast
to the flashy (but confusing) “South Seas” themed structure
and accompanying pizza sign, many visitors felt
underwhelmed by the decidedly “low key” panoramic
painting. [26] Created within the Tswuun-Tswuun rotunda,
Panorama of the Valley of the Smokes inverted the
panoramic spectacle of the nineteenth century.
The early 2000s era in East Hollywood specifically (and
in many areas of Los Angeles generally) was marked by
growing investment interest in large-scale development
projects, spurred in part by zoning changes in areas close to
Metro (subway) transit lines. [27] This kind of speculative
investment interest led to the sale of the entire plot of land
at 5553/5555 Hollywood Boulevard, forcing the
Velaslavasay Panorama to relocate in mid-2004. The
Tswuun-Tswuun Rotunda was torn down in 2005 (Fig. 17).
Fig. 16. Sidewalk view of the Tswuun-Tswuun Rotunda at the
height of its use as a panorama venue, 2003. Photo: Sara Velas.
Fig. 17. Imminent demolition of the Tswuun-Tswuun Rotunda,
2005. Photo: Sara Velas.
Fig. 18. Hollywood Boulevard, 2010: Roll 53: Ivar Ave headed
east: Image 0175, Edward Ruscha. Getty Research Institute,
Los Angeles (2012.M. 1).
79
Repurposing the Union Theatre
In an interesting twist for a museum dedicated to the
creation of panoramas and other entertainments popular
before the invention of film, in 2004 the Velaslavasay
Panorama moved into one of Los Angeles’ earliest purpose-
built cinema halls—the Union Theatre. Built in 1910, the
structure was originally called the Union Square Theatre in
reference to the name of the neighborhood at the time. [28]
Close to the University of Southern California (USC,
established 1880), the location of the movie theater took
strategic advantage of the Los Angeles Inter-Urban Railway
Company Street Car System—the University Main line
passed immediately in front of the building on 24th Street.
[29] In close proximity to the fashionable and expensive St.
James Park subdivision, over the years the neighborhood
around the Union Square Theatre would be home to
luminaries and high-powered businessmen including the
Doheny family oil barons, Theda Bara, and Curly Howard
of Three Stooges fame. [30]
The theater went through various owners and names
during the first half of the twentieth century as it served the
public as an entertainment venue, including being a part of
the Fairyland chain of Southern California film theatres
from 1915-1926. In 1935, former screen vamp Louise
Glaum opened an acting school and playhouse, calling it
Louise Glaum’s Little Theater at Union Square. In 1951, the
building at 1122 West 24th Street goes dark as a movie
theatre and was obtained by Tile Layer’s Local #18 to use
as their union headquarters. [31]
Fig. 19. Union Theatre Façade, 2004. Photo: Sara Velas.
When Sara Velas began the Velaslavasay Panorama
relocation to the Union Theatre site, the structure had lost
much of its street-side allure. It looked abandoned. The neon
was gone and most of the exterior was bland, beige and
white (Fig 19). Storefront improvement funding from the
Community Redevelopment Agency in 2004 enabled the
process of reigniting the “curb appeal” with a complete
overhaul of the neon signage and a repainting of the building
to highlight the moderne turquoise tile in the façade.
The relocation of the Velaslavasay Panorama prompted a
huge difference in context for a visitor’s experience.
Whereas one would previously approach a “curious hut”
surrounded by gardens visible from the street that did not
have an embedded “obvious” use, the Union Theater
location set the visitor’s framework for approaching a
structure that signaged itself as the location of
entertainment. This building was obviously a theater and,
with its (analog) letter-changeable marquee, this building
most likely was a “movie theatre.” The Velaslavasay
Panorama subversively put a 360-degree statically painted
panorama into one of Los Angeles’ earliest movie theatres.
Doubling the Illusion
Moving from the outside, a place designated for the “natural
world” and filled with people, trees, birds, flora and fauna,
to an interior space, a human-made place, an “artificial”
place, brings out the question of artifice and authenticity.
We have talked so far about the exterior façade of the
Velaslavasay Panorama alluding to both the moving
panorama and the lateral tracking shot in cinema, and how
this idea extended to the previous home of the Velaslavasay,
the Tswuun-Tswuun Rotunda in Hollywood, but what of the
interior space?
Hollywood has made a custom out of repurposing façades
and interior spaces for art, altering exteriors and interiors to
fit the vision of the director. Buildings and interiors are
manipulated for the sake of cinema, but in the case of the
Fig. 20. Union Theatre Façade, 2017. Photo: Ornate Theatres.
Velaslavasay Panorama, a cinema house is manipulated for
the sake of the painted panorama, a reversal of a trend that
has been the status quo for the past 100 years. In the
panorama viewing hall of the Velaslavasay Panorama at the
Union Theatre, down the darkened hallway and up the spiral
staircase, one finds Shengjing Panorama, an elevated view
of the city of Shenyang 100 years ago (Fig. 22). And similar
to how Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson
manipulated city blocks for the aesthetic and historic
purposes of their films, the painters of Shengjing Panorama
80
manipulated the geography of the city to give the viewer a
more complete and aesthetically pleasing picture. [32] We
are inside a manipulated structure and placed in an illusion
of the outside world in its manipulated form.
Fig. 21. Union Theatre/Velaslavasay Panorama interior,
“Shengjing Panorama” Grand Opening, 2019. Photo: Forest
Casey.
In fact, the interior manipulation of the Union Theatre
was done so that the illusion of the space as untouched and
a relic is so convincing visitors believe the panorama is
original to the space. [33] Not only are viewers experiencing
a manipulated view of Shenyang, China circa 1910-1930 in
the round, they are also experiencing the Union Theatre
circa 1910 as it never was (Fig. 21 & Fig. 22). There is an
artistry, a human-made mirage of time and place that is
created and experienced as something real. This is similar
to the craft of a film director. For instance, Quentin
Tarantino in Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood cares
deeply about the historical accuracy of his depiction of the
façades and interiors of Hollywood in the era when his film
takes place and uses the film as a vehicle to discuss the real
life story of the murder of Sharon Tate. Except, in his
version of history Tate, by a twist of fate, does not die.
The manner in which the Velaslavasay Panorama is both
an experience of cinema and of the panorama phenomenon
is uniquely bound to its location—Los Angeles, the home
of the Hollywood Industry. Just as areas of Los Angeles are
filmed and made to look like such far off places as New
York City, Chicago, Miami or Tel Aviv, a little room in the
historic district of West Adams, Los Angeles, is made to
look like Shenyang, China one hundred years ago.
Fig. 22. “Shengjing Panorama,” 2019. Photo: Forest Casey.
Notes
1. The writers are likening the experience of seeing
Shengjing Panorama flat to scroll paintings such as Along
the River During Qingming Festival, a well-known
landscape/cityscape subject depicting vignettes of everyday
life, first created by Zhang Zeduan in the 12th century and
reinterpreted by various artists over hundreds of years.
2. Yomi Braester, “Panorama as Method,” Prism 16, no. 2
(October 2019): 300.
3. Sara Velas, who originally conceived of the project,
worked on the sculptural faux terrain, painting touch-ups,
sound and light installation, construction, curation, planning
and development in collaboration with several other artists.
4. From the IPC database online list of immersive 360-
degree panoramas worldwide, over 95% depict exterior
landscapes. See “Panoramas and related art forms
[database]”, International Panorama Council, November 12,
2020,
https://panoramacouncil.org/en/what_we_do/resources/pan
oramas_and_related_art_forms_database/.
5. Script was loaned to Sara Velas of the Velaslavasay
Panorama via Peter Morelli in 2005, when a photocopy was
sent by postal mail from the collection of the Saco Museum
in Maine.
6. Bernard Comment. The Painted Panorama, (New York,
NY: Abrams, 2000), p. 65.
7. Erkki Huhtamo, “Global Glimpses for Local Realities:
The Moving Panorama, a Forgotten Mass Medium of the
19th Century,” Art Inquiry. Recherches Sur les Arts 4
(2002):193-228.
8. In the IPC database on moving panoramas, 18 out of 38
listed are directly related to travel, cityscapes and
landscapes. See “Panoramas and related art forms
[database].”
9. Hunter Vaughn, “The Travelling Frame: The Tracking
Shot in Resnais and Godard” in Framed!: Essays in French
Studies, ed. Lucy Bolton (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2007).
10. Braester, “Panorama as Method,” 301.
81
11. John Edmond, “Moving Landscapes: Films, Vehicles
and the Travelling Shot,” Studies in Australasian Cinema.
5.2 (2011): 28.
12. See John Edmond.
13. Jakob Isak Nielsen, “Camera Movement in Narrative
Cinema - Towards a Taxonomy of Functions” PhD diss.,
University of Arhus, Aarhus, Denmark, 2007, ISBN 87-
92052-25-8, 28. This paraphrases Barry Salt’s claims in
“Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis” (2009).
14. Thomas W Gaehtgens, “Studying Los Angeles’s
Urbanism,” in Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future 1940-
1990, eds. Wim de Wit and Christopher James Alexander
(Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 2013).
15. Alison Martino, “Quentin Tarantino Is Filming on
Hollywood Boulevard, and It Feels like a '60s Time
Machine,” Curbed LA, July 2018. Retrieved from
https://la.curbed.com/2018/7/25/17614416/quentin-
tarantino-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood. The Pussycat
Theatre at 6656 Hollywood Blvd opened in 1974, whereas
the film took place in 1969.
16. In 2001, Brad Pitt visited the Panorama of the Valley of
the Smokes at the Velaslavasay Panorama while walking
down Hollywood Boulevard. See Ed Leibowitz, “Panorama
Mama,” Smithsonian Magazine, May 2004.
17. Bill Locey, “Time Warp: ‘80s Rock On at Reseda
Country Club,” Los Angeles Times, June 10, 1999.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jun-10-ca-
45970-story.html.
18. See LADBS Building Permit Number 1948LA26169,
Frolic Room signage permit. The marquee of the Union
Theatre includes elements of historical signage which were
re-illuminated with neon by the Velaslavasay Panorama in
2004. The exterior marquee signage was restored again in
2016 and included painting by Oscar Rospide who worked
on the restoration of the Al Hirschfeld murals inside The
Frolic Room in 2012 and who also painted the original
PANORAMA lettering on the Tswuun-Tswuun Rotunda
home of the Velaslavasay Panorama in the year 2000. See
“The Friendly Frolic Room,”
http://onlyinhollywood.org/friendly-frolic-room/.
19. Chris Nichols, “Everyday Entertainment: Post-Postwar
Life in the San Gabriel Valley,” in Overdrive: L.A.
Constructs The Future 1940-1990, eds. Wim de Wit and
Christopher James Alexander (Los Angeles, CA: Getty
Research Institute, 2013), 202.
20. Edward Ruscha, Then & Now: Ed Ruscha, Hollywood
Boulevard 1973-2004. Göttingen: Steidl, 2005. See Getty
Research Institute Edward Ruscha photographs of Sunset
Boulevard and Hollywood Boulevard, 1965-2010
Collection Viewer
https://www.getty.edu/research/collections/collection/1000
01?tab=about Ruscha’s exhaustive approach of
documenting the everyday through a Hollywood Boulevard
streetscape resonates with Shengjing Panorama’s historic
reference to the iconic scroll painting subject Along the
River During Qingming Festival focused on detailed visuals
of everyday city life.
21. Ruscha, see https://steidl.de/Books/Then-Now-
0814233344.html.
22. Chris Nichols as quoted in Howser, Huell. Season 19,
Episode 2: Panorama Update "Visiting…With Huell
Howser,” Initial broadcast on PBS July 29, 2011.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2096305/?ref_=ttep_ep2. See
Los Angeles Department of Building & Safety (LADBS)
Building Permit Number 1968LA71827.
23. The roof of the Tswuun-Tswuun Rotunda bears curious
resemblance to the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests
structure in the Temple of Heaven complex in Beijing,
China.
24. “Shanghai Adds Room for Buffet Dining Upstairs.” Los
Angeles Valley News, August 8, 1969.
25. LADBS Building Permit Number 1962LA24626.
26. Karen Pinkus. “Research and Debate - Hollywood
Panorama,” Places Journal: A Forum of Design for the
Public Realm, Volume 18, Number 3, October 15, 2006.
https://placesjournal.org/assets/legacy/pdfs/hollywood-
panorama.pdf.
27. Just blocks from the 5553 Hollywood Boulevard
rotunda site, the Hollywood/Western Metro Redline station
opened in 1999.
28. The City of Los Angeles currently refers to the
neighborhood as “University Park.” See LADBS Building
Permit Number 1910LA07066.
29. Young, Leon Young’s 1904 Los Angeles Cal. City
Railway Directory, http://www.erha.org/youngs.htm. See
USC Communications
https://about.usc.edu/history/founders/.
30. Maginnis, Duncan
https://stjamesparklosangeles.blogspot.com/. See Angel’s
Walk L.A. https://www.angelswalkla.org/wp-
content/uploads/AWLA_FIG_GUIDEBOOK.pdf
31. LADBS Building Permit Number 1951LA22628.
32. Li Wu and the painters created three composition
variants for Shengjing Panorama with varying degrees of
mapping accuracy. Ultimately, the collaborative team
selected a view with manipulated geography in order to
simultaneously show relevant scenes, iconic
neighborhoods, and streets.
33. Megan Koester, “Old Oasis in Transient Town,”
Exclusive Content, October 25, 2020,
https://exclusivecontent.substack.com/p/old-oasis-in-
transient-town.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Rastra Contreras, Brandy Kana,
Guan Rong, Forest Casey, and their associates at the
82
Velaslavasay Panorama; the painters of Shengjing
Panorama—李武Li Wu, 晏阳Yan Yang, 周福先 Zhou
Fuxian; colleagues Dr. Jonathan Y. Banfill, Dr. Dydia
DeLyser, Dr. James Fishburne, Laurene Harding, Nicholas
Lowe, Eric Lynxwiler, Chris Nichols, and Larry Underhill;
Eleanor Gillers and The New-York Historical Society
Library; Karen Ehrmann, Tracey Schuster, and the Getty
Research Institute; Mary Dean and Ruscha Studio; John
Hough and OrnateTheates.com; the International Panorama
Council, the 29th IPC Conference Committee, and
conference hosts Panorama 1326 Bursa Conquest Museum
and the Bursa-Osmangazi Municipality in Turkey.
Author Biography
Ruby Carlson is a writer and award-winning
cinematographer for film and fine art productions. Ms.
Carlson is the Head of Enrichment & Engineering and Co-
Curator at the Velaslavasay Panorama, a non-profit arts
organization and museum. She has worked in the
professional field of painted panoramas since 2008 to
elucidate, present, and gather funding for panoramas and
related mediums. From 2015-2018, she served as the elected
Secretary of the IPC. She is a Los Angeles native and
studied Linguistics at The George Washington University
and Lacanian psychoanalysis at the Psychoanalysis Los
Angeles California in Extension (PLACE).
WWW.RUBYCARLSONSTUDIO.COM, @1887to1904
Sara Velas is an artist, graphic designer, gardener, curator
and native Los Angeleno. She is the Artistic Director/Co-
Curator of the Velaslavasay Panorama, a nonprofit museum
and garden she established in the year 2000 to present
variations on art forms and entertainments popular before
the invention of cinema along with experimental immersive
experiences. Focused on the contemporary creation of
panoramas, her work has been supported by the Andy
Warhol Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts,
California Community Foundation, and the Los Angeles
County Department of Arts and Culture, among others. An
active International Panorama Council member since 2004,
she served as IPC President from 2014-2017 and in 2020
elected for a new term as Co-President with Dr. Molly
Briggs. She currently sits on the Executive Board of the
Center for Land Use Interpretation and is involved with
architectural preservation throughout Los Angeles. Born in
Panorama City, California, she received her BFA in
Painting from Washington University School of Art in Saint
Louis, Missouri in 1999
WWW.PANORAMAONVIEW.ORG, SSSVELAS.NET