December 5


We feel dizzy when we look at this photograph and try to figure out what it is exactly that is making us dizzy. Is it the wild and dazzlingly clumsy amalgam of styles? Is it the scale of the double debutante staircase that would require triple the amount of space in order to justify its existence? Is it the overpowering symmetry of the whole thing? Is it the tension between the table and the ceiling fresco? No!! We here at Land of Excess have figured out that we are getting dizzy because of those little vestigal reminders of real wood paneling!! These little modernist Op Art representations of what-should-be, on the right and left, aligned as parallelograms with the angle of the stairs, if glimpsed out of the corner of the eye, would trip up any debutante at the end of a rigorous evening program.