Tag: midtown

Skyscrapers & Art

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United Nations Grounds

  • Created by the Russian painter and sculptor, Zurab Tsereteli, the sculpture commemorates the 1987 signing of the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate – Range and Shorter – Range Nuclear Missiles (INF Treaty), and is in celebration of the 45 Session of the General Assembly. Created as a monument to peace, the sculpture is composed of parts of actual United States and Soviet missiles. The work depicts an allegorical St. George, one arm raised, as he drives a lance through a double headed dragon.

    The dragon in the sculpture is not the mythological beast of the early Christian tradition, but the specter of nuclear war vanquished by the historic treaties between the Soviet Union and the United States. Accordingly the dragon is shown lying amid the broken pieces of Soviet SS-20 and U.S. Pershing missiles. Actual fragments of these weapons have been used in the sculpture.
  • Bronze monument consisting of a multitude of figures on a large ship (23′ long) with three masts and two gangplanks. Gift of Ireland.
  • The statue ‘Mir’ (Peace), one of the symbols of the United Nations Headquarters in New York, is the work of the renowned Croatian sculptor Antun Augustinčić (1900, Klanjec – 1979, Zagreb). The sculptor himself came to the United States in 1952 to choose and propose a UN ground site for the 16’ high bronze statue.
  • “Kusikawsay” means “peaceful and happy life” in the Quechua language. The sculpture, a gift of Colombia, is made of seven tonnes of melted ammunition surrendered by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP) as part of the peace agreement with the government in 2016. Made by Chilean  artist Mario Opazo, it represents an indigenous canoe that comes out of the ground like a projectile.

United Nations Grounds, New York City

August 27th, 2019

Square Space

The Humble Fabulist2 Comments

Jennifer Bartlett
Rhapsody, 1975-76

When Rhapsody was first shown, in 1976, it occupied the entirety of the art dealer Paula Cooper’s Manhattan gallery space. Consisting of 987 one-foot-square steel panels covering an expanse of more than 150 feet, the work has an overall monumentality, but its small panels invite intimate interaction. Together they represent Bartlett’s attempt to create a painting “that had everything in it,” she has said.

Each of Rhapsody’s steel panels was baked with white enamel, silkscreened, and then painted. Its range of imagery—from photographic images to abstract shapes—presents a variety that undermines any sense of stylistic unity. “It was supposed to be like a conversation,” the artist has explained, “in which people digress from one thing and maybe come back to the subject, then do the same with the next thing.” Looking at Rhapsody is like listening in on this conversation. A viewer can step back and see the ebbs and flows, or come in close and engage deeply with a single topic, sentence, or line. [Source: MoMA]

June 16th, 2019