His big yellow Light Up, now installed in front of the Seagram Building, is particularly beautiful. Not only do its geometric eccentricities provide a brilliant counterpoint to the building's regularities, its strong yellow vibrates against the building's bronze. Unfortunately, when I wrote last month's column, The Truman Show had yet to open. A mediocre one-liner of a film with an unsubtle performance by Jim Carrey, The Truman Show uses Seaside in the role Portmeirion played in The Prisoner. The authenticity of the first glance evaporates with the second, when the sinister stage machinery reveals itself.
Authenticity is the costume worn by contemporary styles of alienation.
What's missing in the ersatz authenticity of Seaside is depth, the patina produced by real social and physical diversity and by the accidents of time. We all live in Seaside now.