A few years ago, Lucas Books released Star Wars: Visions which, unlike the typical "Art Of" books, presents works of "fine" art inspired by Star Wars both in and out of universe. My favorite piece is the one pictured above, the wonderfully nostalgic Magic Hour by Jon Demartin. Magic Hour depicts a scene from The Empire Strikes Back seen as many people at the time would have seen it: in a drive-in.
I love this painting because it so beautifully captures the socio-economic context of the original Star Wars trilogy, a very different America from the one in which exists now. One needs only look at some of the other popular movies of the 1970's to see that Star Wars with it's light-hearted tone and optimistic story sticks out like a sore thumb. One of the reasons the first movie took off the way that it did was that is was fun piece of escapism during dark and gloomy times.
I grew up in Chicago and the industrial background behind the movie screen is one that could have been the steel mills of the South Side of Chicago or anywhere in the industrial Miswestern Rust Belt with its beautiful and terrible glimmering towers and belching smokestacks. Part of the nostalgia of the piece is that it pictures a world that is lost. Not only is the drive-in mostly extinct as a phenomenon but with the decline of manufacturing in the U.S. the communities it once supported are mostly gone as well and many of the large-scale facilities have been torn down or stand as ruins. I like to think the people in their cars are enjoying some time off from their rough but good-paying manufacturing jobs.
The great thing about the drive-in as a subject is that unlike the normal cinematic experience which is purposefully sealed off from the world, the drive-in is open and movie's contents are free to be compared to the surrounding world. Notice the juxtaposition of hardscrabble industrial life and clean cinematic fantasy which speaks to the role of movies as escapism and inspiration in our lives. The painting's title, Magic Hour, implies that the other hours of the day are less than magical.
The artist's use of color is a clever nod to Ralph McQuarrie, the concept artist who is largely responsible for the look of the original trilogy and whose painted skies often featured electric blues and rich oranges like the background sky in Magic Hour. In fact, Demartin's industrial landscape strongly recalls McQuarrie's concept art for Bespin, the floating city in The Empire Strikes Back and the location depicted on the movie screen in the painting.
For all its exotic location and beauty, Cloud City is an industrial "Tibanna" mining station and for all way know, could be the Gary, Indiana of the Galaxy Far Far Away.
Patrick Garone,
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