As I fought through crosstown traffic, the messages came in fast and furious.
Hurry up!… Where are you?!… She’s about to arrive!… You’re gonna miss her corvette pull up!
When I finally parked and made it to Melrose Botanical Garden, the crowd was spilling onto the street. Traffic slowed down. Paparazzi snapped pics. Everyone wanted a glimpse of Angelyne, the artist, provocateur and legend who had shot back into public life not with a publicity stunt or a billboard, but with a complicated body of new artwork titled “ICANDY.” Inside the gallery hung portraits of celebrities that Angelyne composed from food scraps, then photographed and finished off with a glittery autograph. Though crafted from leftover beans, noodles, lettuce and olives, these surreal apparitions of bygone stars seem to celebrate as much as skewer our obsession with self-mythology.
Angelyne at the reception of “ICANDY” at Melrose Botanical Garden.
Inside the gallery, a coquettish Audrey Hepburn emerges from the leftovers of a juicy red cabbage salad, while coffee grounds sketch Cher’s bouffant of black hair and charcoaled eyes, rendering the pop singer even more darkly enigmatic. Baby corns crown the Statue of Liberty and a roasted red pepper curves into her coy pout. “ICANDY” immortalizes many icons, from Elizabeth Taylor and George Burns to Roseanne Barr, Michael Jackson, and a dozen others. The works are often irreverent and silly, but like Los Angeles itself, they trade in fantasy—their playfulness masking sadness and melancholy. People may come to L.A. to chase their dreams, but many stay to avoid growing up.
Viewing the works during the opening, I could almost hear my mother shouting at me to “not play with your food.” There’s something deliciously punk in the way Angelyne disobeys all our proverbial parents, transforming her L.A. dinners into the stars she dreamed of emulating. Few artists possess a better biography to examine the phenomenon of stardom—its ups and downs—than Angelyne, who for all her charisma and talent, never quite broke into the upper echelons of showbiz. Long before Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian, Angelyne pioneered the art of celebrity-as-medium. She burst into the popular imagination in the mid-1980s when she plastered photos of herself—Marilyn-esque, with echoes of 1950s studio starlets and the flesh of 1980s centerfold bunnies—onto billboards across Los Angeles.
Angelyne, Audrey Hepburn. Courtesy of Melrose Botanical Garden.
In much the same way that almost everybody today cultivates social media followers, Angelyne encouraged the public to project their own fantasies onto her images. “ICANDY” immortalizes not just the figures she pays homage to, but with her glittery signature, these works write Angelyne—still hustling after all these years—back into that mythos. In short, it’s a very L.A. show: It vibrates with glitz and glamour, but also with a deep longing.
Yet that longing shouldn’t be confused with “ICANDY’s” critique of our collective mania for fame. In a moment when our worship of celebrity grows ever more dizzying—of politicians, actors, influencers, and artists—Angelyne’s portraits remind us that stardom, like the food they’re made from, is perishable.
Back outside, Angelyne charged fans for photographs taken beside her iconic hot pink corvette. In a tight pink dress, pink full-length gloves, a pink veil hiding her face, and her trademark fountain of platinum hair, the artist orchestrated her own spectacle. And who could blame her? Angelyne knows better than almost anyone that in today’s fame-hungry world, the art as much as the artist is the
main course.
