Celebrating New York City Through Photographs and Artworks at The Armory Show

Bruce Silverstein Gallery is celebrating New York City at this year’s Armory Show with an installation featuring photographs, prints and paintings by famous artists with deep connections to New York City.

BY KAZAD

NEW YORK, NY- Bruce Silverstein Gallery is celebrating New York City at this year’s Armory Show. Located in New York City, the gallery sees the annual show as an opportunity to honor the city where it is located. On display in the gallery’s booth is an installation that honors the great metropolis and all who inhabit it.  The Bruce Silverstein Gallery celebration is timely as the city recovers from a major outbreak of the coronavirus. There is also the 20th memorial celebration of 9/11.

The works on display span from the 20th century to the modern day. They range from exceptional photographs to prints and paintings by famous artists with deep connections to the City. The list of artists includes Berenice Abbott, Adger Cowans, Bill Cunningham, Ahmet Ertuğ, and Chester Higgins. Others are André Kertész, Walter Iooss, Frank Paulin, Larry Silver, Aaron Siskind, and Ryan Weideman. The artists provide a comprehensive and inclusive visual depiction of Manhattan during these dynamic decades.

Celebrating New York City And All Who Inhabit It

Central to the celebration of New York City is the extraordinary, early mammoth print of the iconic Grand Central Terminal from 1920. The print was in The Museum of Modern Art’s 1958 exhibition Architecture Worth Saving that highlighted the rapidity at which America was losing much of its architectural heritage.

A selection of photographs by Bill Cunningham is also on view in a carefully curated show. The show highlights the devotion of the fashion historian and columnist for The New York Times, to documenting the New York lifestyle. Cunningham captured his love for fashion at parties, events, and most prominently, the street style of New York City. His works reveal the evolution of trends that nodded to politics and moments of cultural transition. Cunningham’s instinct and autonomous lens enabled him to capture these moments at their inception.

Adger Cowans’s Icarus Falling in Mid-air

Icarus, a powerful image by Adger Cowans, is another work in The Armory Show guests will find captivating. The piece depicts a silhouetted figure seemingly falling in mid-air. Cowans was a founding member of The Kamoinge Workshop, a collective of photographers established in New York City in 1963. The objective of the members of the photography group was to photograph the Black community with dignity and positivity.

Cowans’s early paintings were influenced by Abstract Expressionism. He used combs and custom-made beveled glass squeegees. The works were incorporated with exaggerated sweeping gesticulations of paint that endowed the works with fluidity and motion. Two early large-scale paintings by the artist on display compliment his photographs from the same period.

Aaron Siskind’s abstract masterpiece New York 14, 1950, is also on display. The rare oversized vintage print depicts an oil-stained crumpled piece of discarded paper hung in William de Kooning’s studio. The image is said to have had a significant influence on his monumental Women paintings at the time when the painter was struggling with the series. Aaron Siskind was the only photographic member of the Abstract Expressionist group.

André Kertész : Documenting Anonymous City Dwellers

André Kertész photographs of anonymous city dwellers are revealing. On view is a selection of photographs from the estate of the artist that expose the hidden and innocent aspects of New York City. To capture the images, Kertész honed his lens from the privacy of his Fifth Avenue apartment window on anonymous city dwellers, unbeknownst to them that they were the subject of a photography study.  Created between the 1950s and 1960s, the photographer captured fragments of passersby on the streets below.  In the windows of adjacent buildings and on Washington Square Park, Kertész captured timeless images that reveal his attempts to engage with his new community in the City.

Also on display are two exceptional large-format architectural studies of specific sites in Manhattan and Brooklyn created by Turkish artist Ahmet Ertuğ. Young Muslim Woman in Brooklyn, 1990 by Chester Higgins touches on the multicultural nature of New York City. The oversized platinum print is the most famed image by the artist.  Also included in the show is Higgins’s Hopper-esque masterpiece, Early Morning Coffee, 1974.

Additional works in the show include Walter Iooss’ monumental N.Y. Giants vs. Pittsburgh Steelers, Bronx, NY, 1963: early New York Street images by Berenice Abbott, Frank Paulin, and Larry Silver.  There are also photographs by taxi driver Ryan Weideman taken in the back seat of his taxi in the 1980s.

Celebrating New York City: Bruce Silverstein Gallery’s homage to NYC at this year’s Armory Show is insightful. What do you think. Share your thoughts. Leave a comment.