Friday, August 24, 2007

Deciphering Art: A Closer Look at John Marin's Study, New York

Deciphering Art is the Fine Arts Museums' new series of blog posts that look at works of art from the Museums' permanent collection in detail.

For our first post, we look at American Modernist artist John Marin's (1870–1953) painting Study: New York (1934) with American art curator Timothy Anglin Burgard.

About the painting Marin declared, “Thus the whole city is alive—buildings, people, all are alive—and the more they move me the more I feel them to be alive.”

Things to look for:

1. The Brooklyn Bridge tower and the warehouses that line the East River dominate the left side of the painting.

Marin depicts the Brooklyn Bridge, an urban landmark, as a receiver and transmitter of energy that transforms the viewer’s experience of the surrounding cityscape.

2. Marin depicts the New York skyline as a giant pueblo building with a single door.  A diagonal airshaft resembles a pueblo kiva ladder.

Marin perceived Native American art as validating modernism’s experimentation with abstract forms.

3. Marin’s use of the five-pointed star marks the modern American city, New York, as the locus for a new spiritual order of the future.

The pueblo, the Brooklyn Bridge and the star represent America’s past, present, and future.

4. The circular “yin/yang” symbol of the lower center represents Marin’s des.. [more]

Posted by: Lars Bair | August 24 at 11:40:09 AM
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