Artist Offers Detailed Map Of TV Land Re-Creates Floor Plans Of Idealized TV Families
Serious art has now come to this: A museum display of floor plans for the homes of perfect TV families like Rob and Laura Petrie and Darrin and Samantha Stevens.
No dry architectural renderings these.
The new exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery of Art showcases the exact placements of Mr. Ed’s stable, Beaver Cleaver’s bookcase, and Gilligan’s hammock. The identical cousins on “The Patty Duke Show” have extra outlets in their bedroom for hair dryers.
For this, we have to thank Los Angeles artist Mark Bennett, the ultimate product of the TV generation.
Envious of the happy families that lived in TV land, Bennett started taking detailed notes on their homes when he was a child, and was soon turning his research into renderings.
He did it the hard way, long before VCRs and “Nick at Nite.”
“I did this from memory,” he explained at Friday’s press preview. “One blueprint takes eight hours - and 20 years of research.”
That meant cutting class to catch reruns in junior high, running red lights to get home in time for an “I Love Lucy” episode, watching for changes from one season to the next. For example, Mary Richards got a better TV - a Sony trinitron - after she was promoted at WJM on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
The “Family Affair” mockup duly notes the location of Buffy’s doll, Mrs. Beasley; the floor plan for the “Dick Van Dyke Show” charts the location of Richie’s cowboy lamp, and the “Flipper” rendering shows where Porter Ricks’ game warden license hung on the wall.
Bennett, 40, grew up the middle child in a middle-class home in Chattanooga, Tenn. But his parents never quite measured up to the Cleavers and the Cunninghams and the Clampetts.
“I sort of escaped into the drawings,” he said. “These are my own personal love letters to the shows.” His exhibit includes collages focused on Barbara Billingsley, aka Mrs. Cleaver.
At some point, his drawings also became art - selling for $3,000-$4,000 apiece.
Terrie Sultan, curator of contemporary art at the Corcoran, said the drawings are serious works because they explore issues of fantasy, reality, collective memory and the influence of the media.
“They’re also enjoyable to look at,” she said. “They pull you in, and yet the content makes you think, and that’s what art is.”
The exhibit, “Mark Bennett: TV Sets and the Suburban Dream,” will travel to Cleveland and Ridgefield, Conn., over the next year.
No word yet on what Bennett might do with his other obsession: serial killers.