According to Grace Glueck (recently departed the Times because...why again, exactly?), Miklos Suba was a minor Precisionist whose specialty was Brooklyn cityscapes rendered fairly scrupulously. He wasn't a fantasist by any means. So what could have been happening in this picture, which will be shown at James Graham & Sons next month? Did buildings like this exist in 1929? Was the artist clairvoyant? These purplish towers could be the monster glass vanity projects lumbering into present-day Brooklyn.
hard to say for sure, but. a) this work is more of a cartoon sketch than than the other more representative fully painted examples i found. b) could be a sketch/cartoon of new (at the time) pre-skinned construction. nice work though esp for bklnites.
from wikipedia:
"...The traditional styles were under attack by progressive theorists since the mid-nineteenth century, primarily for attaching ornament unrelated to a modern structure's underlying construction. Their criticism gained substantial cultural credibility after the disaster of WW I, widely seen as a failure of the imperial leadership of Europe. The classical revival styles were particularly reviled by many as the architectural symbol of a now-discredited aristocratic system. Boldly abandoning ornament altogether, Mies made a dramatic debut with his stunning competition proposal for the faceted all-glass Friedrichstrasse skyscraper in 1921, followed by a curved version in 1922. He continued with a series of brilliant pioneering projects, culminating in his two European mastreworks: the temporary German Pavilion for the Barcelona exposition in 1929 .."
Thanks, I guess I was responding more to the funky CAD-curved and angled shapes of these, which aren't Mies-ian. (And I doubt even Mies' glass towers were common parlance at this time in NY.) As Bill said it's a cartoon sketch, but it still feels prescient to me.
That same Wikipedia article on Mies notes that New York's Seagram building was built in 1958.
suba's work mostly revolved around bkln. that drawing could be read in a saul steinberg kind of way with bkln in the fore and manhattan in the back ground. lower manhattan during a deco high rise building blitz. and they do look like precursors those 70's reflecto building (as seen off central expressway in dallas and elsewhere) and a whole lot of other stuff you see these days and didnt see back then as finished bldgs. whew.
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According to Grace Glueck (recently departed the Times because...why again, exactly?), Miklos Suba was a minor Precisionist whose specialty was Brooklyn cityscapes rendered fairly scrupulously. He wasn't a fantasist by any means. So what could have been happening in this picture, which will be shown at James Graham & Sons next month? Did buildings like this exist in 1929? Was the artist clairvoyant? These purplish towers could be the monster glass vanity projects lumbering into present-day Brooklyn.
- tom moody 2-16-2007 9:43 pm
hard to say for sure, but. a) this work is more of a cartoon sketch than than the other more representative fully painted examples i found. b) could be a sketch/cartoon of new (at the time) pre-skinned construction. nice work though esp for bklnites.
- bill 2-16-2007 9:58 pm
from wikipedia:
"...The traditional styles were under attack by progressive theorists since the mid-nineteenth century, primarily for attaching ornament unrelated to a modern structure's underlying construction. Their criticism gained substantial cultural credibility after the disaster of WW I, widely seen as a failure of the imperial leadership of Europe. The classical revival styles were particularly reviled by many as the architectural symbol of a now-discredited aristocratic system. Boldly abandoning ornament altogether, Mies made a dramatic debut with his stunning competition proposal for the faceted all-glass Friedrichstrasse skyscraper in 1921, followed by a curved version in 1922. He continued with a series of brilliant pioneering projects, culminating in his two European mastreworks: the temporary German Pavilion for the Barcelona exposition in 1929 .."
- anonymous (guest) 2-16-2007 11:26 pm
Thanks, I guess I was responding more to the funky CAD-curved and angled shapes of these, which aren't Mies-ian. (And I doubt even Mies' glass towers were common parlance at this time in NY.) As Bill said it's a cartoon sketch, but it still feels prescient to me.
- tom moody 2-16-2007 11:53 pm
That same Wikipedia article on Mies notes that New York's Seagram building was built in 1958.
- tom moody 2-17-2007 7:23 pm
suba's work mostly revolved around bkln. that drawing could be read in a saul steinberg kind of way with bkln in the fore and manhattan in the back ground. lower manhattan during a deco high rise building blitz. and they do look like precursors those 70's reflecto building (as seen off central expressway in dallas and elsewhere) and a whole lot of other stuff you see these days and didnt see back then as finished bldgs. whew.
- bill 2-17-2007 9:18 pm