LONG LIVE THE KING: AN ELVIS SPOTTING IN DC

I’m standing at the entrance to a diminutive, seemingly forgotten salon tucked away in a corner of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. The corridor just outside, decked with oil paintings of stern-faced founding fathers, hardly prepares me for the gleaming kitsch beyond the threshold. It is January 8th 2010 and the museum has just unveiled “One Life: Echoes of Elvis”, an exhibition celebrating the man’s lasting impact on art and culture. Elvis Presley would have turned 75 today, and I have come to celebrate his birthday. I am the only one here.

The exhibition is miniature, composed of only a handful of Elvis portraits and memorabilia. And yet: where is the fanfare? Absent are the mutton-chops sporting über-fans, with their inky slicked-back pompadours and sequined white jumpsuits. It’s just me, my notepad and a massive, golden bust of Elvis rendered like he is Julius Caesar.

The bust forces a double-take. Created by Robert Arneson, this dazzling ceramic sculpture with a gold-tone glaze seems to satirise Elvis’s larger-than-life presence and the reverence he inspires in his admirers. Beneath his signature smirk, this Elvis wears a breastplate adorned with the image of a winged guitar and stamped with song titles. Underneath, a pedestal bears the word “ELVIS” in classical Hellenic lettering—and, less ornately, “THE PELVIS”.

Despite the exhibition’s petite scale (or indeed because of it) the items on display are unusually intriguing. I consider a work produced by the only portrait artist for whom Elvis ever posed. Ralph Wolfe Cowan painted the then-trim musician in a half-unbuttoned red shirt against a gold and blue Graceland sunset (pictured). The scene, rendered in oil on a round canvas, is bathed in the soft, angelic light of commemorative dinner plates and roadside souvenirs.

In the same deliciously tacky vein, an adjacent display case holds a “Love Me Tender” lunchbox, a “Rock Around the Clock” timepiece and an Elvis-themed memorial beer stein. These items exist thanks to the machinations of Elvis’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, who began marketing his client’s image in the mid-1950s. Parker’s work paid off: Elvis has appeared in Forbes magazine’s annual list of the 13 top-earning dead celebrities every year since the ranking started in 2001.

My initial concerns about attendance fade as inquisitive visitors stream into the room to peer at artefacts such as “The Book of ‘E’!!”, a personal scrapbook painstakingly compiled by an anonymous fan. The volume, with its biblical title penned in block letters on the cover, includes clippings lovingly snipped from newspapers published in the days following Elvis’s death in 1977, aged 42.

Later this year, the National Portrait Gallery will host “Elvis at 21: New York to Memphis”, a travelling exhibition showcasing images snapped when Elvis was still an obscure performer on the brink of fame. The exhibition, developed collaboratively by the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian Institution Travelling Exhibition Service and Govinda Gallery, lands in Washington, DC, on October 30th after a cross-country tour.

But for now, “One Life: Echoes of Elvis” is Washington’s sole shrine to the Memphis Flash. It may not be Graceland, but this compact show offers an evocative and occasionally poignant collection of pop iconography and folk art. I leave with a craving for fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

~ RACHEL TEPPER

“One Life: Echoes of Elvis” is at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC until August 29th.