2021 Pageant Of The Masters Is A Night Of American Splendor

LAGUNA BEACH, CA—Pageant of the Masters began by local artists during the Great Depression to raise people’s spirits. The 2021 show did just that for a nearly full house on a warm Wednesday night in midsummer. “Made in America: Trailblazing Artists and Their Stories” comes to life with verve, humor and sensual pleasures.

The sounds of the orchestra are sublime. Stars dot the sky overhead. So many moths fly in the towering swaths of the stage lights mounted high overhead that you’d think it was snowing.

It is difficult to describe the impact of the pageant without giving away its plethora of surprises. So masterful is the storytelling, that even when the show stops to break down, step-by-step, how a painting physically comes together into a final tableau, none of the magic is lost when at last we see it in full lighting.

First-timers to the Pageant of the Masters should be ready to have their expectations exploded. This is a spectacle on a grand and marvelous scale—so much more than a series of famous paintings re-created within frames inside the foreshortened stage opening.

The compelling backstories of the art and artists are told through Richard Doyle’s lovely narration. Our 21st century taste for speed is satisfied with the judicious use of projections and other stage sleight-of-hand. The charm and charisma of the volunteers (when animated) and their breathtaking stillness in the living pictures is uncanny.

But don’t forget to bring your binoculars! After being so thoroughly immersed in Matthew Rolston’s “Art People: The Pageant Portraits”exhibit at Laguna Art Museum, we should have known better. If only to verify that it truly is living human beings in those oil, marble, wood and bronze works of art.

The true genius of the evening is the story of our country told through its artists, noble and otherwise. Many of the trailblazers are famous, others receive a long-overdue introduction.

It’s a revelation to learn of marble sculptor Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907). The tableaux vivants of her neoclassical works, now ensconced at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, inspired sustained awe.

Ulysses S. Grant sat for her, among other famous American men. Why isn’t she a household name?

We learn that Lewis was the daughter of a Chippewa mother and a West Indian father, born a free woman in upstate New York. She enrolled at Oberlin College only to be falsely accused of a crime. She fled to Rome, where many ex-pat women sculptors found a welcoming home to work.

So many American artists had to flee our shores to practice their craft or find an audience. But Lewis’ resilience isn’t a solitary example; resilience is a recurring motif in “Made In America.”

The fierce spirit that drives artists to make art despite entrenched bias and injustices is in large part what makes 2021’s pageant so uplifting.

That, and the art of presenting the wonderful art.

Oh, and don't forget the fireworks.