 |
|
|
New York is preëminently the City of Violent Contrasts. Towering shafts of brick and stone and steel, soaring traceries of cables, derricks, girders and electric signs, smooth stretches of gray asphalt, subway and sewer excavations, broad harbors and stately ships, oily canals and garbage dumps, classic columns, gilded domes, palaces and shanties, parks and fountains, factory chimneys and gas tanks; these are a few of the items that occur in this as in other cities, but nowhere else are these and other manifestations of beauty and ugliness, prosperity and squalor brought into such vivid and striking relief, and of no other city can we say with equal truth that it defies the effort to summarize briefly its typical characteristics. Fragments and details suggestive of widely differing phases of its life persistently force themselves into a single picture without regard to orderly classification or proper dramatic sequence. Appreciation of the beauty of nature as undisturbed by man seems inherent in our race, but man in his material progress is constantly defacing nature, constantly destroying, constantly substituting forms and arrangements dictated by utility, not by beauty, and shocking to our finer instincts. Then imagination steps in and gradually invests these new forms with new meanings derived from history, logic, romance, symbolism and pure poetic fancy. Some are condemned and discarded as unnecessary or useless, while others at first glance equally ugly acquire a significance and a soul. Of him who would interpret such a theme as New York our first demand must therefore be prophetic vision. To the artist who seeks to penetrate the outer surfaces of his subject and to suggest and interpret an activity, a creative power, a vastness of scale and a variety of functions beyond human power to portray, charcoal is a most, perhaps the most, inspiring medium. It is surely the medium that most readily lends itself to the simultaneous expression of form, mass, line and tone. Hopkinson Smith once said that Venice is nothing but air and water. There all else has been so softened and moulded and enveloped as to become part and parcel of sea and cloud. The portrayal of this is preeminently a painter's job. But New York, in addition to being a lot of other things, is a Venice in the making, and all the ugly paraphernalia by means of which this making is slowly going forward, all the unlovely processes, physical and chemical, structural and commercial, must be recognized and expressed and by the light of poetic vision be made a part of its beauty and romance. A painter might perhaps strive to envelope and obscure whatever seemed objectionable in a glory of color. An architect might lay undue stress upon the many examples of distinction in the work of his craft, which are often all but details in a vast scheme. The pictorial expression of New York requires a blending of the view points of the painter and the architect in which both contribute to an image of something not yet realized, perhaps never to be fully realized, and help in dramatizing the struggle towards that thing. Peter Marcus is a painter not an architect, but he is also a designer experienced in the goldsmith's craft and there is evident in these charcoal studies a pleasure in the delineation of the tracery of bridge cables and trusses, derricks, scaffolding and electric signs, that in contrast with his broad and greatly simplified expressions of architectural form and detail, adds vastly to the eloquence of his work. Furthermore, he is a native of New York as his parents were before him, and the slow development by which New York has climbed upward has been part and parcel of his life. These are the days of a premature development or forcing of the artistic personality, usually expressed at some sacrifice of the prevailing characters and sentiment of his subject. To my mind the most distinctive quality of these drawings is found in the complete subjection of the artist to the spirit of the thing represented. Lower Manhattan from the harbor, from Brooklyn, from across the Hudson and from the air has been exploited to such an extent as to destroy for the native New Yorker much of the impressiveness of this majestic panorama, but lower Manhattan as seen from within by the man in the street has a different kind of impressiveness and pictorially has hitherto been somewhat neglected. Five drawings are devoted to this theme-"Lower Broadway," " Wall Street," "The City Hall," "The Tombs," and "Exchange Place." These five drawings as a group seem to me to represent the culmination of the artist's achievement. They show a simplicity and ease of method, a definite conception and an admirable sureness of values and textures. In imaginative power and sinister suggestion, "Exchange Place" brings to mind Bochlin's "Isle of the Dead" and it is not like that, a creation of the imagination but a truthful characterization of locality. A second group of five are "The Metropolitan Tower," "Times Square," "Grand Central Station," "The Municipal Building," and "The Cathedral on the Avenue." As these take us further up town into wider streets and more extended surfaces of sky, distance and silhouette become increasingly important in their composition, and what we lose in concentration we gain in tonal interest. "The Old Bridge," "Washington Bridge," "Queensboro Bridge," and "The Viaduct," fall naturally into a third group. Here we have a different manifestation of energy, the architecture of the engineer, crisp and nervous in rendering, beautifully expressive of structure unadorned. If in the drawings thus far mentioned certain qualities of Piranesi, Méryon and Brangwyn are brought to mind; in "High Bridge," "The Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument," "Hell Gate Bridge," "Grant's Tomb," and "The Cathedral on the Heights," there is equally a suggestion of Whistler. Less vigorous than the others in draughtsmanship, they, are full of the suggestion of subdued color. By reason of the more subtle quality of their rendering, they lend themselves less readily to reproduction but even the reproductions convey beautiful impressions of shadowy foliage and quiet waters, bare, wind-swept branches and lonely spaces. It is safe to predict that if he continues his interest in charcoal as a medium, Peter Marcus will gradually and naturally acquire a more characteristic personal manner, but it will come from ease of mastery not from assumed eccentricity, and whatever he may achieve in future this series of drawings will stand as the most comprehensive and broadly discerning study of New York in its entirety that has yet been made. J. Monroe Hewlett |
|
|
|