Century 21, from the Winchester Trilogy

Jeremy Blake applied his training as a painter to digital animations he referred to as “time-based paintings.” In the Winchester trilogy (2002–04), Blake examined the mythology of the American West, the popular allure of violence, and the narrative of the gunslinger as imagined in relation to the history of the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California. Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, became convinced that her family was cursed following the deaths of her daughter and husband. To appease the spirits of those killed by Winchester rifles, Winchester embarked on a forty-year construction project to expand her eight-room house into a 160-room mansion. Blake described the maze-like mansion as, “more than just a monument to one person’s eccentric fears—it is the tangible outcome of a pileup of social and historical narratives.” Throughout the three Winchester animations, Blake investigates the mansion as both a psychological and cultural space. The final installment, Century 21, contrasts the Victorian mansion with a trio of space-age movie theaters that have neighbored the Winchester home since the 1960s. Both the mansion and the theatres represent ideals of progress for their respective eras: Manifest Destiny and “the final frontier.” Blake presents both philosophies as simultaneously idealistic and violent