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WMEra?* ' .îMiK à. Bronx Museum of the Arts ; ^^^r^|:trpough||!arch 24 ^^^^sli^^lUniversity—I|j§qoklyn Campus April 17 through June 2 Jamaica Arts Center ^^eil^througl^uly 2|§¡ Staten Island Museum September 8 through October 20 ¿IF p»l¿S 71sfm. City^polleg^Bí; New York f| RR i# October 25 through December 13 pmmmìimmJi This exhibition has been made possible by a generous grant from The AltmanJFoundation. ; Edward Hopper From Williamsburg Bridge. 1928 ~w**t George A. Hearn Fund, 37.44 *!• Mgs* im •mm T*» ^%- *H ,>feaB "?«>«iSi*<5gS i,'~^«S»fi» äSP! ¿spi .' -J-.- *0-r."¿7-- ¡Bsp IMätäMä Í¿ÉÉ&IH Q,U3SS0U5ÙBÊator*V •»ra m s - --Ä-",.'*•?, •:. .:•:.-! «pvi^itepp! «tel,- (iSiSsä ... Usi-i- ilSST" The Artist Celebrates New "York Selected Paintings from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Junius Allen. American, 1898-1962 Rackstraw Downes. British, born 1939 site in which George Washington took the oath of office for the presidency. John Quincy creates some interesting spatial effects that play with our perception of the perspectives (Henry Geldzahler, American Painting in the 20th Century, NewYork: The Metropolitan Sons, it is located on the east side of Madison Square in Manhattan. In 1912 the tallest The Old New York Post Office. 1939-40 IRT Elevated Station at Broadway and 125th Street. 1981-83 Ward's 1883 statue of Washington stands on the approximate spot where the first in the painting. The rounded globes of the public street lamps, for example, lead the eye Museum of Art, 1965, pp. 28-30). New York City skyscraper, the tower rises 700 feet, or fifty stories above street level. Like Oil on canvas mounted on pressed board H. 36, W. 42 inches Oil on canvas H. 25, W. 4714 inches president took the oath in 1789. into the composition, while the stark white of the directional signal on the lamp in the Tammany Hall was the headquarters of the Democratic political clubs that dominated the the Con Edison building featured in John Button's Fourteenth Street: High Noon (1977), George A. Hearn Fund, 40.85 Purchase, Louis and Bessie Adler Foundation, Inc. Gift The seemingly innocuous scene is on closer examination replete with a number of dramas. center inserts a rather surrealist detail. political life of NewYork City during the first part of this century. the tower has a clock. When at night one views Manhattan from across the East River, the The old New York Post Office was situated at Broadway and Park Row. Built between (Seymour M. Klein, President), 1984.93 While the composition is remarkable in its stillness, the blur of the form in one or two illuminated profile of Metropolitan Tower dominates the skyline along with the Empire 1869 and 1878, it combined aspects of the winning plans submitted to the architectural British artist Rackstraw Downes has for several years depicted meticulously detailed pictorial episodes tells us that this work is not a still life. The animation of the slight blond Lizabeth Mitty. American, born 1952 Dennis Smith. American, 1951-1983 State, Chrysler, and Con Edison buildings. competition for the design of the building. The resulting structure was a marvel of late aerial views of Manhattan. He delights in the task of accurately recording a great woman wearing a sweater across her shoulders in the lower center of the composition BreakOut. 1982 Union Square: Hell. 1981 In his emphasis on atmospheric effects, Wiggins' work is comparable to Childe Hassam's nineteenth-century eclecticism. number of particulars—place, light, time of day, weather—on a relatively small canvas contrasts with the calm of the girl on the lower left, whose glance and expression suggest Acrylic on canvas H. 72, W. 58 inches Oil on canvas H. 45, W. 60 inches Broadway and 42nd Street (1902). Both artists relied on the stylistic conventions of the This painting by Junius Allen was completed in 1940, the same year as the building was that may take him years to finish. IRT Elevated Station at Broadway and 125th Street upheaval. The two black youths behind her are carefully posed in counterpoint to one George A. Hearn Fund, 1983.443 Purchase, Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1984.203 Impressionists for their topographical views of the city, which contrasted with the works being demolished. The artist leads us into the painting as if we were one of the pedestrians measures less than four feet in width, which seems hardly large enough to contain the another in a manner that recalls the pugilist compositions of the fifteenth-century Italian One tends to associate NewYork City with tall skyscrapers and streets teeming with In 1981, when he was not quite thirty, Dennis Smith painted this picture of loneliness and of Robert Henri, John Sloan, and George Luks, who focused on the more social and crossing Broadway on that rainy day near City Hall Park. expansive panorama presented. Downes, however, exploits this physical limitation by artist Antonio Pollaiuolo. people, but the other boroughs of the city have a distinctly residential character that despair. The scene is a public park; the time is night. Four men share his grim urban humanistic aspects of city life. Allen was born in Summit, New Jersey, in 1898. Allen's use of a limited palette and his choice filling the space with myriad images. The view is 125th Street in Harlem from the far West Haney received a B.F.A. from Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, and an A.F.A. from provides a ready contrast with the cityscapes of Manhattan. Lizabeth Mitty makes these setting. At the left on the raised arm of a curious seesaw sits an older figure, conventionally of climate allies his pictorial interests with those of the American Impressionist school, of Side looking east. As one studies this painting the extraordinary specificity of the artist's Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. He draws on a multitude of sources and neighborhoods the focus of her art. She grew up in Flushing, Queens, during the 1950s dressed. His head is large and is shown full face. A second man squats at the opposite Jane Wilson. American, born 1924 which the Wiggins painting, Metropolitan Tower, done nearly three decades earlier, is vision becomes apparent. He includes such details as a cloudy sky after a rainfall, still- influences, both traditional and contemporary, to forge his own statement within the and 60s when the suburban celebration in this country was at its height. end of the balance. He hides his head in a paper bag. At the right stands a third man who Playground. 1964 also an example. wet streets and rooftops, men at a construction site, a flock of white pigeons, various realist genre. Break Out is a view of houses and trees seen from the Long Island Expressway as the seems younger. He wears a vividly colored shirt. His back is turned and he appears to be Oil on canvas H. 36, W. 36 inches billboards, and landmarks such as the Harlem State Office Building at Seventh Avenue artist and her family were driving to Long Island for a Thanksgiving dinner with friends. hanging himself. Further into the park a fourth man turns his back. In the extreme distance Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Robert E. Carroll, 1978.225.3 Mark Baum. American, born 1903 and 125th Street. Downes' realism is influenced by modern photography, as evidenced by Childe Hassam. American, 1859-1935 Mitty notes that this fleeting vision had emotional import for her. The first sighting of walks a small white dog restrained by a leash. In the foreground, a cone wastes its Critics have evoked the names of Gainsborough and Constable when describing the Seventh Avenue and 16th Street. 1932 his awareness of peripheral vision and its attendant distortions. Broadway and 42nd Street. 1902 these residential areas just beyond the Midtown Tunnel represented liberation from the fuchsia-colored ice cream. plein-air landscapes of Jane Wilson. This study of a playground in Tompkins Square Park, Oil on canvas H. 30, W, 28 inches Oil on canvas H. 26, W. 22 inches congestion of Manhattan. Hence the title, Break Out. The location is Union Square, in the late nineteenth century a fashionable area, but until located on Manhattan's Lower East Side, also calls to mind the misty, atmospheric Edith C. Blum Fund, 1983.122.2 Louis Michel Eilshemius. American, 1864-1941 Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876-1967), 67.187.128 recently one of the most derelict and crime-ridden of Manhattan parks. Between 1977 cityscapes of Whistler. Her gray tonalities seem appropriate visions of twentieth-century A native of Austria, Mark Baum came to NewYork City in 1919. He studied painting at the NewYork at Night, ca. 1917 Doreen Böiger Burke has written about this view of Broadway and 42nd Street: Jerome Myers. American, 1867-1940 and 1983 Smith had painted some forty pictures, and among his last were Hell and its metropolises. National Academy of Design in 1923 but left after one year to work on his own, although Oil on cardboard mounted on masonite H. 28, W. 2214 inches "Dated 1902, the painting shows a scene in New York's Times Square during an evening The Night Mission. 1906 companion piece Heaven. Wilson has long been associated with a generation of painters called "gestural he did attend the Cape Cod School of Art in Provincetown in the summer of 1926. Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876-1967), 67.187.158 snowstorm. For Hassam the city was its best 'viewed in the early evening when just a few Oil on canvas H.