V&A 
Filthy Lucre: Whistler’s Peacock Room Reimagined by Darren Waterston
—
January 25th - May 3rd 2020

Contemporary American artist Darren Waterston detailed reimagining of James Abbott McNeill Whistler's famed Peacock Room is coming to London this coming January.  Inspired by the tension between art and money, ego and patronage, Waterston’s Filthy Lucre faithfully recreates each of the Peacock Room's individual elements with a twist. The artist transforms the room into an uneasy experience of destruction and twisted excess, revealing a magnificent ruin crumbling under the weight of material decadence and the egos of those involved in its creation. 

The Peacock Room was famously created by Whistler without the knowledge of his commissioner, Frederick Leyland. Whistler was initially invited to consult on the room's colour scheme, but instead redesigned the entire room whilst Leyland was away. Fuelled by their clashing personalities, the argument was splashed across London's society tabloids, turning the one-time friends into enemies.

Whereas the sumptuous 19th-century dining room was once housed a stone's throw away from the V&A, and then installed at the Freer Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., Waterston’s installation is on display for the first time in the UK, and also features supporting material and video content to further explore the fascinating history of this iconic room. A soundscape by New York-based rockers BETTY enhances the experience, filling the space with muffled gossiping voices and a mournful cello.

Waterston's magisterial work evokes not only the gilded age of interior design but the biting wit and fragmented relationships of the protagonists; Whistler, Leyland and the original architect of the room, Thomas Jeckyll whose contribution was effectively obliterated by Whistler’s extravagant reworking.

The installation was created by the artist in collaboration with MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts and has come to the UK courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York.

“I set out to recreate Whistler's fabled Peacock Room in a state of decadent demolition – a space collapsing in on itself, heavy with its own excess and tumultuous history.”
- Darren Waterston

Photography by Jennifer Moyes