There is no missing The Shag House in Palm Springs.
It is hard to not stop and stare at the 10-foot-tall lime green doors.
While the doors may seem imposing, the Orb Breeze Blocks open the house to the quiet, Little Beverly Hills neighborhood just minutes from downtown, and a former golf course, now Prescott Preserve, which frames the neighborhood. It is clear The Shag House is meant to be seen.
Shag had a successful run as a commercial artist before he began painting his first tiki bar scenes in the 1990’s. From the very beginning, his work focused on creating environments which emphasise socialising. While his early paintings focused on tiki culture—the American art, music, and design movement inspired by indigenous Pacific Islander cultures—Shag realised he needed to expand his subject matter, and he began painting what he called the Palm Springs lifestyle.
His early prints serve as guides for what he hoped Palm Springs might become. He even managed to incorporate stories from the Old Testament into a series of paintings that illustrate the Palm Spring’s way of life.
His paintings set the stage and are part of the scenery. Shag’s prints are stories to be told. We walk into a scene and wonder what we missed: certainly, there was conversation, food, and drink and with titles like “Tipsy,” “Toasty,” “Eight Shades of Drunk,” and “Two Hours Past Bedtime,” we don’t have to worry that the party will end any time soon.
Shag writes that the “paintings themselves celebrate consumerism and consumption on vividly coloured sharply rendered panels; the characters drink, smoke and eat in lavish, stylish surroundings.”
”The Shag House certainly surrounds its inhabitants with a lavish, style that fosters engagement with others. Whether floating in the pool, cocktailing at the indoor and outdoor bars, snacking around the fire pit, or playing a game of ping pong on the 8-inch-thick Corian Quartz table with its beautifully crafted iron “net,” The Shag House provides sumptuous opportunities for socializing.
While Shag’s paintings invoke and celebrate the Palm Springs lifestyle, they are graphically connected to 1950’s and 1960’s marketing and advertising, which partners well with the Palm Springs’ homes constructed by the Alexander Construction Company. Using designs by architects Palmer and Krisel, they built over 2000 homes in Palm Springs and its surrounding communities. The company has been credited with doubling the size Palm Springs. The design of these homes, now identified as Mid-Century Modern, provide the setting for a good number of Shag’s prints. “Welcome to Your Beautiful New Lifestyle” and “Welcome to Our Glorious Lifestyle” like many of Shag’s paintings, invoke color schemes, furniture, fashion, and hair styles that all fit together, perfectly framed by houses and pools that have come to define the Palm Springs lifestyle. While the housing designs have changed over the years, the pool has been part of Palm Springs since its beginnings as an escape from Hollywood in the early 20th century.
In 1909 Nellie Coffman built The Dessert Inn as a sanitarium for patients with Tuberculosis. By 1914 she converted the hospital into a hotel. Then in 1923 she expanded from a small hotel with a number of small individual bungalows to a large modern Spanish inspired hotel with landscaped grounds and a large pool. The Inn provided an escape from Hollywood and the prying eyes of the reporters who were beginning to investigate and document the offscreen lives of Hollywood’s new stars. The yellow journalism (today’s tabloid journalism) of the early 1920’s promoted several sensational scandals involving some of Hollywood’s biggest personalities and made a lot of money for one of the first media moguls William Hearst. The negative press and Congress’ concern about the immorality of the industry and its negative influence on the nation led the studios to create their own conduct code, to avoid Congressional oversight.
The Hay’s code was meant to monitor the conduct of Hollywood’s talent and the content of its films. In addition to the morality clauses the studios included in contracts, the actors and actresses often were required to remain within two hours of Hollywood during a shoot. Palm Springs gave them 15 minutes to spare. Hollywood’s gossip reporters were only compensated for travel up to 100 miles, so Palm Springs was just outside their reach. These two factors, and Nellie Coffman’s care and concern for her guests, helped the resort grow, which also encouraged her celebrity guests to build their own houses in the desert. She was quoted as saying her goal was “to make and keep Palm Springs attractive to attractive people.” For those attractive people, there was nothing more attractive especially in the desert than a pool. The Desert Inn’s pool was the place to be seen.
Soon enough there were pools everywhere. Palm Springs and its surrounding communities are often cited as having more pools per capita than anywhere else in the US. Shag debuts the swimming pool as the focus and subject of his paintings in the 2003 print “Palm Springs Weekend.” The pools in Shag’s paintings like the pools in the backyards of most houses in Palm Springs provide the setting for both socializing and play. We see this connection in many Shag paintings, where the “characters are interacting and reacting to each other and to outside events.” And, of course, they are
all attractive.
The art of connection though frequently written about is often underappreciated. Designers with the connection superpower understand what is necessary to turn ideas and relationships into objects and spaces. They create a site and fill it with the people and materials necessary to fulfill a vision, whether it be one of their own, their clients, or in this case the painter/designer Shag. John Patrick, JP, of Coachella Valley Life & Style, is that connector.
JP has been in the marketing and branding business for close to forty years. He brought together Shag and philanthropist and businessman Brandon McBurney who purchased the home that would become The Shag House. While Shag’s drawings provided the direction for the look and style of the house, it was up to JP and his team to create a space that was livable and lived up Shag’s specific vision. JP arrived in Palm Springs in 2006 and used the years of the connections he has made with realtors, contractors, tile makers, painters, designers, landscapers, the organizers of Modernism Week, and dozens of suppliers, to coordinate the transformation a 1958 Alexander Mid-Century pool home into what is now known as The Shag House.
JP generously provided me with a tour of the house. There is so much to take in, so it was difficult to capture the entire Shag House experience with a camera. The house is a photo studio with each room providing its own Shag experience, and there is always something new to see and plenty to keep you busy. One of my favorite parts of the house is Shag’s take on the game early-60’s board game, Operation. While his 5-foot, wall-mounted version does not have any “funny bones” or “spareribs” to remove, Shag’s game has a “liquored up liver” and “Kettle One Kidney” that require some attention.
While The Shag House was developed to host charitable events, it is also available for vacation rentals. If you are looking for a memorable stay in Palm Springs, step into The Shag House and step into “a life-size Shag painting.”
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