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<article><DIV id="readability-page-1"><article itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="https://schema.org/NewsArticle"><meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2019-04-30T13:39:00-04:00">
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<meta itemprop="dateModified" content="2019-04-30T13:40:00-04:00">
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<meta itemprop="mainEntityOfPage" content="https://www.citylab.com/design/2019/04/neon-signage-20th-century-history/588400/">
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<figure itemprop="image" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject"><picture><source srcset="https://cdn.citylab.com/media/img/citylab/2019/04/mr1/940.jpg?mod=1556645448" media="(min-width: 1024px)"></source><source srcset="https://cdn.citylab.com/media/img/citylab/2019/04/mr1/lead_large.jpg?mod=1556645448" media="(min-width: 576px)"></source></picture><meta itemprop="height" content="128">
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<meta itemprop="width" content="300">
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<meta itemprop="url" content="https://cdn.citylab.com/media/img/citylab/2019/04/mr1/300.jpg?mod=1556645448">
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<picture><source srcset="https://cdn.citylab.com/media/img/citylab/2019/04/mr1/300.jpg?mod=1556645448" media="(max-width: 575px)"></source><img src="https://cdn.citylab.com/media/img/citylab/2019/04/mr1/300.jpg?mod=1556645448" alt=""></picture><figcaption><span itemprop="caption">The Moulin Rouge cabaret in
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Paris</span><span itemprop="creator">Benoit
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Tessier/Reuters</span></figcaption></figure><div>
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<h2 itemprop="headline">
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Why Neon Is the Ultimate Symbol of the 20th Century
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</h2>
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<div><p><span><time>1:39 PM
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ET</time></span></p></div>
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</div>
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<h2 itemprop="description">
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The once-ubiquitous form of lighting was novel when it first emerged in the early 1900s,
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though it has since come to represent decline.
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</h2>
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<section id="article-section-1"><p>
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In the summer of 1898, the Scottish chemist Sir William Ramsay made a discovery that
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would eventually give the Moulin Rouge in Paris, the Las Vegas Strip, and New York’s
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Times Square their perpetual nighttime glow. Using the boiling point of argon as a
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reference point, Ramsay and his colleague Morris W. Travers isolated three more noble
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gases and gave them evocative Greek names: neon, krypton, and xenon. In so doing, the
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scientists bestowed a label of permanent novelty on the most famous of the trio—neon,
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which translates as “new.” This discovery was the foundation on which the French
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engineer Georges Claude crafted a new form of illumination over the next decade. He
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designed glass tubes in which neon gas could be trapped, then electrified, to create a
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light that glowed reliably for more than 1,000 hours.
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</p>
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<p>
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In the 2012 book <em>L’être et le Néon</em>, <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/being-and-neonness-translation-and-content-revised-augmented-and-updated-edition-luis-de-miranda" target="_blank">which
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has been newly translated into English by Michael Wells</a>, the philosopher Luis de
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Miranda weaves a history of neon lighting as both artifact and metaphor. <em>Being and
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Neonness</em>, as the book is called in its English edition, isn’t a typical
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material history. There are no photographs. Even de Miranda’s own example of a neon deli
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sign spotted in Paris is re-created typographically, with text in all caps and dashes
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forming the border of the sign, as one might attempt on Twitter. Fans of Miami Beach’s
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restored Art Deco hotels and California’s bowling alleys might be disappointed by the
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lack of glossy historical images. Nonetheless, de Miranda makes a convincing case for
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neon as a symbol of the grand modern ambitions of the 20th century.
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</p>
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<p>
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De Miranda beautifully evokes the notion of neon lighting as an icon of the 1900s in his
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introduction: “When we hear the word <em>neon</em>, an image pops into our heads: a
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combination of light, colors, symbols, and glass. This image is itself a mood. It
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carries an atmosphere. It speaks … of the essence of cities, of the poetry of nights, of
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the 20th century.” When neon lights debuted in Europe, they seemed dazzlingly
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futuristic. But their husky physicality started becoming obsolete by the 1960s, thanks
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in part to the widespread use of plastic for fluorescent signs. Neon signs exist today,
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though they’ve been eclipsed by newer technologies such as digital billboards, and they
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remain charmingly analog: Signs must be made by hand because there’s no cost-effective
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way to mass-produce them.
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</p>
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<p>
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In the 1910s, neon started being used for cosmopolitan flash in Paris at precisely the
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time and place where the first great modernist works were being created. De Miranda’s
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recounting of the ingenuity emerging from the French capital a century ago is thrilling
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to contemplate: the cubist art of Pablo Picasso, the radically deconstructed fashions of
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Coco Chanel, the stream-of-consciousness poetry of Gertrude Stein, and the genre-defying
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music of Claude Debussy—all of which heralded a new age of culture for Europe and for
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the world.
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</p></section><section id="article-section-2"><p>
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Amid this artistic groundswell, Georges Claude premiered his neon lights at the <a href="https://www.mondial-paris.com/en/visiteur/auto" target="_blank">Paris Motor Show</a> in
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December 1910, captivating visitors with 40-foot-tall tubes affixed to the building’s
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exterior. The lights shone orange-red because neon, by itself, produces that color.
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<em>Neon lighting</em> is a catchall term that describes the technology of glass tubing
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that contains gas or chemicals that glow when electrified. For example, neon fabricators
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use carbon dioxide to make white, and mercury to make blue. Claude acknowledged at the
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time that neon didn’t produce the ideal color for a standard light bulb and insisted
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that it posed no commercial threat to incandescent bulbs.
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</p>
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<p>
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Of course, the very quality that made neon fixtures a poor choice for interior lighting
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made them perfect for signs, de Miranda notes. The first of the neon signs was switched
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on in 1912, advertising a barbershop on Paris’s Boulevard Montmartre, and eventually
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they were adopted by cinemas and nightclubs. While Claude had a monopoly on neon
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lighting throughout the 1920s, the leaking of trade secrets and the expiration of a
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series of patents broke his hold on the rapidly expanding technology.
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</p></section><section id="article-section-3"><p>
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In the following decades, neon’s nonstop glow and vibrant colors turned ordinary
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buildings and surfaces into 24/7 billboards for businesses, large and small, that wanted
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to convey a sense of always being open. The first examples of neon in the United States
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debuted in Los Angeles, where the Packard Motor Car Company commissioned two large
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blue-and-orange <span>Packard</span> signs that literally stopped
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traffic because they distracted motorists. The lighting also featured heavily at the
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Chicago Century of Progress Exposition in 1933 and at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York.
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At the latter event, a massive neon sign reading <span>Futurama</span>
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lit the way to a General Motors exhibition that heralded “The World of Tomorrow.”
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</p>
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<figure><picture><img alt="" data-srcset="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2019/04/AP_8912060228/cbd32b0e1.jpg"></picture><figcaption>
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Workers remove a hammer and sickle from a neon sign that reads “Glory to Communism,”
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visible on the roof of the Communist-run electricity-board headquarters in
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Czechoslovakia in 1989. (AP)
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</figcaption></figure><p>
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De Miranda points out that businesses weren’t alone in embracing neon’s ability to
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spread messages effectively. By the middle of the century, the lighting was being
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adopted for more political purposes. “In the 1960s, the Soviets deployed a vast
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‘neonization’ of the Eastern bloc capitals to emulate capitalist metropolises,” de
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Miranda writes. “Because consumer shops were rare in the Polish capital [of Warsaw],
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they did not hesitate to illuminate the façades of public buildings.” In other words, as
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opposed to the sole use of the more obvious forms of propaganda via posters or slogans,
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the mass introduction of neon lighting was a way of getting citizens of Communist cities
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to see their surroundings with the pizzazz and nighttime glamour of major Western
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capitals.
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</p></section><section id="article-section-4"><p>
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Neon, around this time, began to be phased out, thanks to cheaper and less
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labor-intensive alternatives. In addition, the global economic downturn of the 1970s
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yielded a landscape in which older, flickering neon signs, which perhaps their owners
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couldn’t afford to fix or replace, came to look like symbols of decline. Where such
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signs were once sophisticated and novel, they now seemed dated and even seedy.
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</p>
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<section><h2>
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Cities are changing fast. Keep up with the <b>CityLab Daily</b> newsletter.
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</h2>
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<label for="promo-email-input-email">The best way to follow issues you
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care about.</label></section><p>
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De Miranda understands this evolution by zooming out and looking at the 1900s as the
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“neon century.” The author draws a parallel between the physical form of neon lights,
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which again are essentially containers for electrified gases, and that of a glass
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capsule—suggesting they are a kind of message in a bottle from a time before the First
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World War. “Since then, [neon lights] have witnessed all the transformations that have
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created the world we live in,” de Miranda writes. “Today, they sometimes seem to
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maintain a hybrid status, somewhere between junkyards and museums, not unlike European
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capitals themselves.”
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</p>
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<figure><picture><img alt="" data-srcset="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2019/04/AP_945361213236/888fdd750.jpg"></picture><figcaption>
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Martin Wartman, a student at Northern Kentucky University, works on a neon sign at
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the Neonworks of Cincinnati workshop connected to the American Sign Museum, in 2016.
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(John Minchillo / AP)
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</figcaption></figure><p>
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Another mark of neon’s hybridity: Its obsolescence started just as some contemporary
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artists began using the lights in their sculptures. Bruce Nauman’s 1968 work <em><a href="https://www.stedelijk.nl/en/collection/1097-bruce-nauman-my-name-as-though-it-were-written-on-the-surface-of-the-moon" target="_blank">My
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Name as Though It Were Written on the Surface of the Moon</a></em> poked fun at
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the space race—another symbol of 20th-century technological innovation whose moment has
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passed. The piece uses blue “neon” letters (mercury, actually) to spell out the name
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“bruce” in lowercase cursive, with each character repeated several times as if to convey
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a person speaking slowly in outer space. The British artist Tracey Emin has made <a href="https://www.artsy.net/collection/tracey-emin-neon-sculptures-and-prints" target="_blank">sculptures</a>
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that resemble neon Valentine’s Day candies: They read as garish and sentimental
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confections with pink, heart-shaped frames that surround blue text fragments. Drawing on
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the nostalgia-inducing quality of neon, the sculptures’ messages are redolent of
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old-fashioned movie dialogue, with titles such as “You Loved Me Like a Distant Star” and
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“The Kiss Was Beautiful.”
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</p>
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<p>
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Seeing neon lighting tamed in the context of a gallery display fits comfortably with de
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Miranda’s notion that neon technology is like a time capsule from another age. In
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museums, works of neon art and design coexist with objects that were ahead of their own
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time in years past—a poignant fate for a technology that made its name advertising “The
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World of Tomorrow.” Yet today neon is also experiencing a kind of craft revival. The
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fact that it can’t be mass-produced has made its fabrication something akin to a
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cherished artisanal technique. Bars and restaurants hire firms such as Let There Be Neon
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in Manhattan, or <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theneonqueen/" target="_blank">the L.A.-based master
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neon artist Lisa Schulte</a>, to create custom signs and works of art. Neon’s story
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even continues to glow from inside museums such as California’s <a href="https://www.neonmona.org/" target="_blank">Museum of Neon Art</a> and the Neon Museum in Las
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Vegas. If it can still be a vital medium for artists and designers working today,
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“neonness” need not only be trapped in the past. It might also capture the mysterious
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glow of the near future—just as it did a century ago.
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</p>
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<p><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/04/being-and-neonness-neon-lights-symbol-20th-century/588184/" target="_blank">The
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Atlantic</a>.</em></p></section><section data-include="css:https://cdn.citylab.com/static/a/frontend/dist/citylab/css/components/author-article.cf4e8e0b143f.css"><h4>
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About the Author
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</h4>
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<div itemprop="author">
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<h5 itemprop="name"><a href="https://www.citylab.com/authors/sarah-archer/" target="_blank">Sarah Archer</a></h5>
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<p itemprop="description"><a href="https://www.citylab.com/authors/sarah-archer/" data-omni-click="inherit" target="_blank">Sarah Archer</a> is the author of <em>The
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Midcentury Kitchen</em>.
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</p>
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</div></section></article></DIV></article>
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