Broadway

Artist Patricia Chidlaw (born 1952)

Date2017

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions36 x 24 in. (91.4 x 61 cm)

ClassificationsPainting

Credit LineGift of the Hilbert Collection

Object number2018.109

DescriptionPatricia Chidlaw is a Santa Barbara artist who dubs her works “urban landscapes" to distinguish them as paintings about areas of human habitation rather than landscapes that reference the natural world. “But my subjects are certainly not all urban – some are suburban, some small towns and some are ruins, such as a faded sign and abandoned business bleaching in the desert sun as once populated areas return to their former empty silence,” she says. “While I often treat older architectural forms, I want to make it clear these are not paintings about nostalgia – all are contemporary scenes, recently observed.” Here, through today’s eyes, she portrays the historic Broadway Theater District in Los Angeles. With twelve classic movie palaces built between 1910 and 1931 located along a six-block stretch of one of the oldest streets in the city, it’s the only large concentration of movie palaces left in the United States: truly, for that brief shining moment in the past, a boulevard of dreams.

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