After the successful construction of The Tower Building in 1889, New York began reaching higher and higher into the sky. Architects played with the shape and function of buildings, while artists and photographers documented the changes. The first skyscraper didn't remain for very long, however, as it was demolished in 1914. The New York skyline looked different every day as it developed. Artists recognized this sense of change and used the powers of mood and perspectives to capture the many aspects of New York City. From above or below, at day or night, through the eyes of a city veteran or newcomer, the same buildings took on new meaning from artist to artist.
Childe Hassam, 1902, oil on canvas, 26 X 22 in 67.187.128
Hassam’s impressionist view of New York City conveys a calm, drizzly atmosphere. No one person stands out from the others. This point of view captures the burgeoning metropolitanism of the new century. Sociologist Georg Simmel remarked that: “One nowhere feels as lonely and lost as in the metropolitan crowd.” As the skyline of Broadway becomes more populated, perhaps the individuals on the street become more assimilated into their surroundings and less individual, like in an impressionist brushstroke.
Edward J. Steichen, The Flatiron, 1904 Printed 1909, Photograph, 18 13/6 X 15 1/8 in. 33.43.39
Steichen’s photograph is not a pastel postcard cityscape. Instead, this photograph could be an establishing shot for a pensive movie scene. The periwinkle haze that provides a hue doesn’t add cheerfulness. Many photographs of cityscapes capture a highly representational realism: they include landmarks (like the Flatiron Building) and recognizable features of a place and its sight and smells. Someone might look at a photograph of a city and think “I’ve been there!” While this is true of “The Flatiron Building,” the blue hue at twilight light gives it an otherworldly quality. Someone might look at it and say, “I’ve been there, but it didn’t feel like that.” Steichen’s perspective already changes the viewer’s attitude and perception about this new building.
Detroit Publishing Company, New Municipal Building, New York, 1909, color lithograph, sheet: 5 1/2 x 3 1/2 in. Burdick 417, p.1v(4)
Now, this print is a ‘pastel postcard cityscape.’ The Detroit Publishing Company celebrates the grandeur of the Municipal Building in the blinding sunlight. People become black dots on the sidewalks, their role in the narrative of New York City growing smaller. The company released several cards that featured newly completed New York skyscrapers from a well-lit view taken at the level of some adjacent office window, as if the viewer jutted out their head to admire the show-stealing new building.
John Marin, Saint Paul’s, Manhattan, 1914, watercolor and charcoal on paper, 15 11/16 x 18 7/8 in.
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Marin’s characteristic bright watercolors and bulging buildings expose New York in a bright daylight, like the postcard. The central building here, however, is not new. As the Metropolitan Museum points out, “Marin celebrates a landmark of colonial America—Saint Paul’s Chapel, completed in 1766—by transforming it into a modern Cubo-Futurist tower.” Marin’s chapel, dominating the foreground with darker colors, makes a statement of thoughtful rebellion against the skyline’s transformation. With so much emphasis on the ‘new,’ Marin focuses on the ‘old’ architecture.
John Sloan, The City from Greenwich Village, 1922, oil on canvas, overall: 26 x 33 ¾ in.
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John Sloan’s paintings often highlight life in New York City’s poor immigrant neighborhoods. This dark cityscape zooms forward in history to show even more development in the city. The mood of this painting shows a palpable smoggy glow from the lights. Sloan’s view includes the evidence of the people living in these streets. There is an advertisement on one building, and the spots of color in the windows make the viewer almost able to see inside. Instead of focusing mainly on the buildings, Sloan centers on the train that divides city blocks, making a less cohesive scene.
James Lesesne Wells, Looking Upward, 1928, woodcut on paper, sheet: 22 x 17 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Well’s woodcut from the Harlem Renaissance shows a higher horizon line and less representational realism than the previous pieces. The slant of the buildings echos the confusion of the central figure who is looking for his place among the skyscrapers. As a Black artist, James conveys his personal experience as a minority as well as the universal experience of the overwhelm that leaps and bounds of modernist development can evoke. 20 years later, we are still lost in the metropolitan crowd.
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