The work “Filthy Lucre” created by Darren Waterston is a reinterpretation of James McNeill Whistler’s famous “Peacock Room”. Since both rooms were located in the Freer and Sackler Galleries, I visited both to compare Waterston’s reinterpretation of Whistlers original work. I will first talk about the original Peacock Room. The Peacock Room was originally a dining room decorated by Whistler to display the owner, Frederick Leyland’s, blue and white Chinese porcelain. When Charles Lang Freer purchased the room for the gallery, he was not a fan of the colors of the pottery, so he added his own pottery of different colors he collected all over Asia. As I entered the room, I was immediately drawn to the gold leaf accents in the room. The green …show more content…
Just by the name of the work, meaning money gained in a dishonest way, I knew it would have a dark vibe. As I walked in, the room felt a bit creepy. It was the same set up as the Peacock Room, but everything was a bit darker and more destroyed. I could tell that this was an exaggeration of the fight between art and money, just like Leyland and Whistler. The shelves were all splintered, broken, and coming apart, dripping with gold paint. The pottery displayed was covered in weird, bright, and messy colors, some of it being broken on the floor. The shutters with the peacocks painted on them were cracked open with a glow of red light seeping through, which gave an eerie feel to the entire room. In response to whistlers “Art and Money”, Waterston painted a new work with the peacocks fighting more aggressively to intensify the meaning of the entire room. What I also found creepy about this work was the noises coming from the walls. Every so often a sort of knocking or creaking sounds would come from different parts of the room, which actually had me a bit scared briefly. Overall, the room still felt luxurious and over the top, but also scary and grotesque. Waterston did a great job, in my opinion, of reinterpreting the Peacock Room. He took the allegory of art and money and amplified it to a great exaggeration of the issue between Whistler and Leyland. I really felt the