Edwin Ruda, Tecumseh, 1969... in the concourse underneath the Empire State Plaza.
Edwin Ruda.
RELATED: still trying to find out... WHO IS THIS ARTIST?
Showing posts with label Empire State Plaza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Empire State Plaza. Show all posts
Monday, May 10, 2010
Edwin Ruda
Edwin Ruda, Tecumseh, 1969... in the concourse underneath the Empire State Plaza.
Edwin Ruda.
RELATED: still trying to find out... WHO IS THIS ARTIST?
Friday, January 25, 2008
James Wines
This James Wines sculpture - Grey Disc, 1968, painted cement and steel - is another of my favorites from the concourse underneath Empire State Plaza.
Grey Disc at Empire State Plaza is almost like a proto-Sculpture in the Environment piece.... perhaps the experience of placing his piece within the Rockefeller/Harrison context contributed to ideas leading to the founding of SITE two years later.
SITE is maybe BEST known for the nine BEST Products showrooms, commissioned by BEST art patrons Sidney and Frances Lewis... here is some more info on those buildings. BEST Products has gone out of business, and all but one of SITE's BEST buildings has been destroyed... the overgrown and grassy Forest Showroom is now a church.
Ghost Parking Lot, 1978, commissioned by the Hampden Plaza shopping center. Here is what it looked like when it was still new, and here is a gorgeous photo taken in 2002, shortly before it was destroyed.
Indeterminate Facade Showroom, 1975 - everybody who has been to art school in the past thirty years is familiar with this building.
Indeterminate Facade Showroom today. This photo was taken from Diebold Essen's Magellan's Log, where you can see that in this panoramic photo taken in 2002 (scroll right) the original architecture was still extant.
James Wines more recently did the Shake Shack.
RELATED: God Bless Sidney and Frances Lewis.
RELATED: 1983 Time article on James Wines and SITE.
Friday, January 04, 2008
Donald Judd
Donald Judd, untitled, 1968, stainless steel and amber plexiglass, at the New York State Museum, in Albany.
This is the Donald Judd that Jen Graves was delighted to discover last month, and here is the Conrad Marca-Relli she regrets not getting an image of.
Judd and Ford.
RELATED: Wallace Harrison and Nelson Rockefeller's Empire State Plaza
Friday, December 28, 2007
empire state underground christmas
Al Held.
Lee Bontecou.
Snowflakes and Held.
I went back to see the Empire State Plaza collection. It's amazing how accessible and empty this long white wide space is... absolutely no people except for random packs of roaming kids. Is it open all night long? Do they ever lock the doors? More pictures next week.
RELATED: my previous visit, with information, Jen Graves' visit.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Wallace Harrison and Nelson Rockefeller's Empire State Plaza
Wow, there is an AMAZING collection of art at the Empire State Plaza. I've always loved this place architecturally, but really had no idea about the art... most of it in the concourse directly below the plaza.
Okay, a little background. The Empire State Plaza is an Albany, NY centerpiece.. an elevated grouping of several state buildings around a central plaza. All of it is from the 1970's, except for the New York State Capitol at one end. As kids we know this place because of The Egg (and here's an unusual view) and as a place for ice-skating in winter; I'd never thought of it as an art destination.
We visited last weekend and I was excited to take note of all of the sculpture on the plaza... George Rickey, Ellsworth Kelly, Alexander Calder, Claes Oldenburg, and many others... when I saw a security guard I asked if there was a list of all the artists represented and he took me into the Egg and down into this concourse level which I had never known existed. It's a huge hallway under the plaza, connecting everything.... and FILLED with more stuff. The guard got me the list of all the artists in the collection, way more than I was expecting, and so I had to come back another day to see it.
Allan D'Arcangelo, American Landscape, 1967. I was thrilled to find both this and a Nicholas Krushenick... last time I saw them they were also both in VMFA's Speed.
Almost everything in the collection is from late 1960's New York... they must have been acquiring and commissioning work as the Plaza was being built. High Times, Hard Times picks up pretty much exactly where this work leaves off... really nice to see this having seen High Times, Hard Times.
Nicholas Krushenick is the subject of what looks like an excellent survey show at Marianne Boesky right now... serious thanks, James Kalm.
Lee Bontecou, Untitled, 1966. This piece is at the end of a looong Al Held.
It's like Logan's Run. I don't remember who did this piece, only half of which is visible here.
From far left: Pollock, Kline, Rothko, Frankenthaler, Louis, Still. It's staggering...
The Pollock is gorgeous, lots of poured soaked paint... yellow, blue, silver, brown, black. This was the only piece I saw that didn't have a sign, although the old frame had a small thing affixed to it which gave the title as Number 12, from 1952. I'm wondering if there is no sign because there are some attribution questions or something? I know there is another Jackson Pollock also called Number 12, but from 1949. Whatever this piece is, it's lush.
Without Pollock we would have no Frankenthaler, and without Frankenthaler we would not know Louis... so this stainy Pollock is a good one to show with those two.
Another good painting by an artist whose name I can't recall.... it's like a Kristin Baker done by Ben Shahn, which I guess means it's better than a Kristin Baker.
UPDATE: The above artist is Robert Goodnough. Thank you, kind reader. More on the mysterious Goodnough here.
Andy Warhol, Portrait of Nelson Rockefeller, 1967 - Rockefeller was the governor... the whole plaza was his idea; Wallace Harrison was the architect. I truly can't imagine a politician today making an art and architecture project like this happen.
others to see - Philip Guston, Jack Youngerman, a huge Alfred Jensen, Jack Tworkov, Grace Hartigan, a grouping of David Smith, Donald Judd, Al Loving, Louise Nevelson, Larry Zox, and much MORE.
Okay, a little background. The Empire State Plaza is an Albany, NY centerpiece.. an elevated grouping of several state buildings around a central plaza. All of it is from the 1970's, except for the New York State Capitol at one end. As kids we know this place because of The Egg (and here's an unusual view) and as a place for ice-skating in winter; I'd never thought of it as an art destination.
We visited last weekend and I was excited to take note of all of the sculpture on the plaza... George Rickey, Ellsworth Kelly, Alexander Calder, Claes Oldenburg, and many others... when I saw a security guard I asked if there was a list of all the artists represented and he took me into the Egg and down into this concourse level which I had never known existed. It's a huge hallway under the plaza, connecting everything.... and FILLED with more stuff. The guard got me the list of all the artists in the collection, way more than I was expecting, and so I had to come back another day to see it.
Allan D'Arcangelo, American Landscape, 1967. I was thrilled to find both this and a Nicholas Krushenick... last time I saw them they were also both in VMFA's Speed.
Almost everything in the collection is from late 1960's New York... they must have been acquiring and commissioning work as the Plaza was being built. High Times, Hard Times picks up pretty much exactly where this work leaves off... really nice to see this having seen High Times, Hard Times.
Nicholas Krushenick is the subject of what looks like an excellent survey show at Marianne Boesky right now... serious thanks, James Kalm.
Lee Bontecou, Untitled, 1966. This piece is at the end of a looong Al Held.
It's like Logan's Run. I don't remember who did this piece, only half of which is visible here.
From far left: Pollock, Kline, Rothko, Frankenthaler, Louis, Still. It's staggering...
The Pollock is gorgeous, lots of poured soaked paint... yellow, blue, silver, brown, black. This was the only piece I saw that didn't have a sign, although the old frame had a small thing affixed to it which gave the title as Number 12, from 1952. I'm wondering if there is no sign because there are some attribution questions or something? I know there is another Jackson Pollock also called Number 12, but from 1949. Whatever this piece is, it's lush.
Without Pollock we would have no Frankenthaler, and without Frankenthaler we would not know Louis... so this stainy Pollock is a good one to show with those two.
Another good painting by an artist whose name I can't recall.... it's like a Kristin Baker done by Ben Shahn, which I guess means it's better than a Kristin Baker.
UPDATE: The above artist is Robert Goodnough. Thank you, kind reader. More on the mysterious Goodnough here.
Andy Warhol, Portrait of Nelson Rockefeller, 1967 - Rockefeller was the governor... the whole plaza was his idea; Wallace Harrison was the architect. I truly can't imagine a politician today making an art and architecture project like this happen.
others to see - Philip Guston, Jack Youngerman, a huge Alfred Jensen, Jack Tworkov, Grace Hartigan, a grouping of David Smith, Donald Judd, Al Loving, Louise Nevelson, Larry Zox, and much MORE.
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