Middle Manhattan Movement (Abstraction, Lower Manhattan)
Artist
John Marin
(American, 1870 - 1953)
Date1928
MediumTransparent watercolor with graphite and charcoal on textured watercolor paper
DimensionsOverall: 26 1/4 x 21 1/2in. (66.7 x 54.6cm)
ClassificationsDRAWINGS
Credit LineMuseum Purchase
Terms
Object number54.5
Description On View
Not on viewCollections
CopyrightPresumed copyright: the artist or the artist's representative/heir(s).
Label TextAmerican painter John Marin lived in Paris between 1908-11, at the very moment Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque developed the painting style called Cubism. When Marin returned to the United States, he applied this modernist vision of simultaneity to both urban and rural landscapes.
Marin composed Middle Manhattan Movement as a balance betweenrepresentation and abstraction. The upper half of the composition evokes looming office buildings and street lamps, while the alternating light and dark pattern in the lower portion expresses lively action of figures and traffic against store fronts.
Marin celebrated the City’s vibrant street life by creating a rhythmic interplay of forms, in the manner of a jazz composition. There are few fixed lines to stabilize the image; lines keep the eye moving in a circular direction.
Mary E. Murray
Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art
2017
