Peacock Room by James Whistler

James Whistler’s Peacock Room stands as an important example in the history of installation and immersive art, which has a rich tradition in digital art. But the room is also a an episode of art exceeding the bounds of commission, James McNeill Whistler transformed Frederick Leyland’s dining room into what would become known as the Peacock Room, originally intended as minor touch-ups by the artist while architect Thomas Jeckyll was ill. Upon Leyland’s return, he discovered that Whistler had radically altered the space, painting over expensive leather wall coverings and embellishing the room with lavish gold and blue-green peacock motifs. The transformation culminated in Whistler adding a mural titled Art and Money; or, The Story of the Room, featuring two peacocks in a standoff, symbolizing the tension between artist and patron over the financial value of artistic labor. Hans Ulrich Obrist explains the rooms importance further: “It prefigured installation art, in which an artist works on the entire environment of a space, rather that simply decorating a part of it with a painting or sculpture.”