Eyeballs are everything.
Sales, collectors, exhibitions, shows, auctions. It can all be a bit nebulous and distracting, especially when artists often want something far simpler—they want their work seen.
David Meikle’s Arid Plains Meteorite, the first painting completed as part of his work on the film Asteroid City.
In 2010, Utah’s Office of Tourism launched a new campaign to tout the beauty of the Beehive State. Titled “Life Elevated,” the campaign would feature the artwork of Salt Lake City landscape painter David Meikle, whose paintings of Zion National Park, Lake Powell, Arches National Park, dinosaurs, the Golden Spike and skiing were turned into murals for major airports all around Utah and roadside billboards at 29 entry points into the state. The Office of Tourism estimated 31 million people would see them every year. If you’re keeping score, that’s a lot of eyeballs.
The campaign caught the attention of four very specific eyes in 2021: those of filmmaker Wes Anderson and his producing partner, John Peet. They were the right set of eyes: Meikle’s work will make its Hollywood debut this summer in Anderson’s new film, Asteroid City.
Asteroid City Observatory by David Meikle.
“I was in the middle of a big mural project, and I started getting calls from John who was asking me about my work. Before long, he sent over a [non-disclosure agreement] that I had to sign before he could talk more about it. It was only after that I learned that Wes Anderson was involved. My jaw hit the floor,” Meikle says from his Salt Lake City studio. The artist was no stranger to Anderson’s work; in fact, he once dressed as oceanographer Steve Zissou, from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, at a Wes Anderson-themed party. “I was familiar with his high level of visual design and the thought that went into his movies, so it was quite exciting.”
Asteroid City poster featuring David Meikle’s artwork.
Anderson has used fine art in his filmmaking before. Paintings have small tertiary roles in his early masterpiece The Royal Tenenbaums, and a more obvious presence in films like The Grand Budapest Hotel, in which an art theft plays a motivating conflict within the plot, and in The French Dispatch, which has an entire chapter devoted to a genius artist and the prison guard who serves as his business manager. Early in the development of Asteroid City, Anderson and Peet were combing through gallery websites looking for the right artist for the film, which is about a “fictional desert town circa 1955” that would host a “Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention [that is] spectacularly disrupted by world-changing events.”
“I can’t recall exactly how long it took to find him, but we did consider other artists before reaching Dave. Primarily, we were conducting our search through galleries in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada. Eventually, this led to Dave’s professional website. I contacted him directly there and also through Mark Sublette at Medicine Man Gallery,” Peet says of the search. “That first conversation was regarding the so-called ‘Arid Plains Meteorite’ billboard. From the first draft of the script that Wes shared, this screamed out as one of the more important (and therefore more problematic) pieces in the movie. Not only because it’s one of the largest and most featured, but because it had to announce our arrival, really, while also conveying something—swiftly.”
One of David Meikle’s paintings that was turned into a billboard for Wes Anderson’s Asteroid.
With Meikle legally sworn to secrecy, Peet had storyboards, photos of the production design and what little he could share of the script sent to Meikle in Utah so he could appropriately step into Anderson’s world. “It started out as one painting, which was the billboard that was going to be used on set. I did that and they must have liked the process because they were asking for two more paintings,” Meikle says, adding that he was having the paintings scanned so the images could be sent to Spain, where the film was being shot as a stand-in for the American West. Ultimately, he did seven paintings for Asteroid City, including the poster. And then when the trailer for the film was unveiled in April, Meikle’s works could be seen throughout, including behind Tom Hanks, Jason Schwartzman and other stars. “My wife is really good at keeping an eye on things online, so as they were announcing the cast she was keeping me up to date. It was exciting watching the names come up.”
Asteroid City Road and Bridge by David Meikle.
And there were many names because the cast is stacked: Hanks, Schwartzman, Scarlet Johansson, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Bryan Cranston, Liev Schreiber, Steve Carell, Maya Hawke, Matt Dillon, Margot Robbie and Willem Dafoe. And, because it’s only fair, add into that mix David Meikle.
David Meikle in his Salt Lake City studio. Courtesy the artist.
When it came to the look of the desert, the Utah painter had more of a say in the details. He was told early on that he could expect the film to be set along the Nevada-Arizona border, which would help guide decisions about the color of the rocks and the geology of the mountains. Southern Utah also served as inspiration. As Meikle was sending snapshots of the half-finished paintings to Anderson and Peet via email, he was getting encouraging notes back from the filmmakers. It was Anderson who suggested he add more canyon to the image that would become the poster.
A work on the easel during David Meikle’s work on Asteroid City.
“Wes had lots of notes, but he’s a very collaborative person. He really came to me to do what I’m strongest at, which is rocks and canyons. He wanted that to fit into his film, which it did,” says Meikle, who never actually met Anderson or spoke to him, but exchanged countless emails during the production of the film. “At one point I was in France, where Wes lives and keeps an office, so I asked if I could come meet him and say hello, but he wasn’t in the country. Still, he graciously invited us to visit his production office, where we were shown some early clips of the movie.”
Jason Schwartzman, left, Jake Ryan and Tom Hanks in writer/director Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, a Focus Features release. David Meikle’s painting is featured on the billboard in this still from the film. Credit: Courtesy of Pop. 87 Productions/Focus Features.
While Meikle used existing landscapes for inspiration, Anderson also wanted an imagined place that is somewhere between reality and fantasy. “For us, Dave’s contributions became so perfectly representative of it all—representative of a completely imaginary place,” Peet says. “And yet he captures something.”
Peet, who is serving as co-producer on Asteroid City,admits that the painter is still in the dark on how much of his work is featured in the film. “David is an important piece of the movie—even more than he realizes, I expect,” he adds.
Mountains and Cactus for the Asteroid City.
The movie opens in theaters June 16, and Meikle is excited to have had his hands in a small part of it. He’s also excited to have new people discover his artwork. “I think like all artists, I just want to have my work be seen, and what a great opportunity to do that with this film,” Meikle says. “It’s an exciting time for Western art. I hope people see the work and wonder where it came from. For me it’s exciting to be involved in something like that.” —
Powered by Froala Editor
