Anatomy of a Drypoint Etching

This edition of Tudor City art features a return to Building a Babylon, a drypoint etching by Martin Lewis. Exhibited in his solo show of 1929, where he first made his name.

Herewith, the full image as seen from 1st Avenue and 41st Street. Below, the anatomy lesson.

The Woodstock stares out at No. 25 vacantly. At the time of this etching, there's not a single light on, indicating it's a building in progress. No. 25, by contrast, is alive with lights.

The building in the 41st Street cul-de-sac was apparently some kind of storage hut for the impending coming of No. 5. All of the lights are on here.

Pulled back to show it's a long way down.

Beneath, a labyrinth of shapes of all kinds.

The sole figure in the composition is at the lower left. 

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More about this artwork from our earlier post, here.

INSTAGRAM Meets the Paint Brush

Here is another admirable effort thanks to a talented group of Instagrammers. There is also a theme this week ‒ all of the entries are illustrations.  

 "View over 42nd Street from Tudor City" by secretsketchnyc         

  "Sunset on a Tudor City Rooftop" by gavindedraw

"Tudor City Bridge" by venustongnyc        

     "Tudor City Bridge" by lisabisbeeart       

"An elevated playground in Tudor City" by secretsketchnyc 

MORE Miscellany

 

We begin with a puzzle from 1934: what is the man doing to the roadway at 1st Avenue and 41st Street? 

And what exactly does the extended leg mean?

Questions, questions! The man in the hat is sticking his pole into a hole, that we are sure of. We took a closer look at the sign, which reads

 

1st Ave 41st

14 ft North of BL

30½ ft W of E curb

Looking N.W.

Not a lot of help, with notations right out of a city almanac and no mention of an extended leg, either. The photo is from the NYC Municipal Library and is entitled "Looking northwest from 1st Avenue, 41st Street." Hmmm. . .

   

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This is an oil painting entitled "Tudor City" from artist Uo Suga that was listed last week for $397.84 on eBay. Too bad the listing ended early, with no explanation.

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"Party at the Ford Foundation" by our good friend, Garth Justice.

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This comes from regular contributor David Reiff. Fabled songwriter Neil Sedaka ‒ "Breaking Up is Hard to Do," "Calendar Girl," "Love Will Keep Us Together" ‒ recently passed away, and in 2012, there was a concert honoring him in the South Park. Above, the flyer and below, the guest of honor.

Sedaka at the Tudor City Greens concert

TUDOR CITY SIGN FOR SALE

An update to last year's post about Drew Leshko, the Philadelphia-based artist who sculpts miniature renditions of commonplace structures ‒ newsstands, dumpsters, ice machines ‒ as well as vintage signs. His model of our very own Tudor City sign had already sold by the time we discovered it.

Leshko is back with a 2020 version, along with a new companion piece, the Hotel Tudor sign. Sale details, below.

Tudor City sign, $2,800. Measures 15" by 14" by 4". Made of paper, basswood, acrylic and pastel. Available at Paradigm Gallery and 1st Dibs.

Hotel Tudor sign, $1,000. Measures 18" by 10" by 2". Made of paper, basswood, acrylic, pastel and inkjet. Available at Paradigm Gallery and 1st Dibs.

The Hotel Tudor Sign Pops Up in Domino Park

JR's photo mural in Domino Park.

Williamsburg's Domino Park is currently exhibiting The Chronicles of New York City, a monumental photo collage picturing over one thousand New Yorkers. Created by the French photographer JR and installed on stacked shipping containers, the 53-foot-high mural is the artist's largest public project in the city.

The mural is of interest to this blog because it includes the Hotel Tudor sign in the upper right quadrant (detail at left). The work has been shown at the Brooklyn Museum, and this marks its outdoor debut. 

The five-acre Domino Park, set on the former site of the Domino Sugar Refinery, is one of Brooklyn's newest riverside parks, and a highly recommended excursion. It's easily accessed from Tudor City by taking the NYC Ferry (at 35th St. and the East River) to the South Williamsburg stop.

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Speaking of artists, our favorite balladeer, Vincent Cross, is about to release a new album of songs about his ancestor, the incorrigible Paddy Corcoran. 

Hear it live-streamed on Cross' Facebook page on August 6th, or buy it on his website, here.

WEEGEE and Tudor City

Weegee distortion self portrait

A look at a series of photos featuring Tudor City made by Weegee, the famed crime photographer.

Born Arthur Fellig, he starts out in 1935 as a freelance police-beat photographer for the tabloids, and is soon nicknamed 'Weegee,' given his Ouija board‒like psychic sense for being in the right place at the right time for the right picture.

In 1945, a collection of his stark street photos, entitled Naked City, is published to much acclaim, and makes him famous. He abandons photojournalism and moves to Hollywood ‒ to consult on the movie version of Naked City.

For the rest of his life, he works solely as an 'art' photographer, producing abstract pictures he dubs 'distortions,' created in the darkroom using a variety of developing tricks. Celebrities and the nude female form are favorite subjects.

Distortions of Marilyn Monroe, Pablo Picasso, John F. Kennedy, Andy Warhol and Frank Sinatra.

 To the art world, the distortions are no match for Weegee's police-beat work, but he continues to produce them until his death in 1968. We believe the photos below were made around 1965. Although the United Nations is clearly is the focus of the pictures, Tudor City deftly photobombs them all.

The Chrysler Building, No. 45 and the U.N. undergo distortion.

The apocalypse comes to Midtown, sparing the U.N. and Tudor City.

The U.N. as exclamation point ‒ and a tiny glimpse of the sign.

The superimposed face belongs to Arthur Goldberg, named U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. in 1965, and the subject of a number of Weegee distortions. 

Last but far from least, an arty composition featuring the United Nations, a giant lady, and a strategically positioned Prospect Tower. The photo is understandably untitled ‒ words fail us too!

Thank you to Weegee aficionado Anna Mogyorosy for the tip.

TUDOR CITY ART: Martin Lewis

Martin Lewis. Building a Babylon, Tudor City, NYC.  1929.

This edition of Tudor City art features Building a Babylon, a drypoint etching by Martin Lewis.

Lewis (1881-1962) started out as a commercial illustrator, but aspired to be a fine artist. He began etching in 1915, hitting his stride between 1925‒1935 with a series of prints depicting gritty Manhattan locales at night. Lewis' studio was on E. 34th Street, and much of his subject matter was drawn from the surrounding neighborhood, including Tudor City.

Building a Babylon was among the etchings shown at his first solo exhibition in 1929, which made his name. Printed in an edition of 84, this work is currently for sale online at the Allinson Gallery for $12,500.

The view is northwest from the vantage point of 40th Street and First Avenue. The Woodstock is at top center, but what is that mysterious pitched roof hut just below it? 

A photograph of the same area made around the same time offers an answer, below.

Looking up First Avenue from 40th Street, showing the back walls of Nos. 25 and 45, as well as the mysterious hut, bottom left corner.

On closer inspection, a sign explains it all: THIS PROPERTY WILL BE DEVELOPED UNDER THE FRENCH PLAN AS PART OF TUDOR CITY. The property under demolition is the future site of No. 5 ‒ and the hut most likely a utility shed erected in the 41st Street cul-de-sac in preparation for it.

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Thanks to Geoffrey Barbey for the tip. More Tudor City artwork here.

ARTWORK Old & New

Some Tudor City‒related artwork today. First up, a 1932 painting by Stuart Davis entitled New York Mural. Davis (1892-1964) was a modernist painter whose work mimicked the rhythms of jazz and whose technique reflected the flat, bold style of advertising, predating Pop Art. 

New York Mural, 1932.

New York Mural is an homage to New York Governor Al Smith, who had recently lost a run for the presidency. Objects relating to the Governor in the mural include the derby hats that he favored and the Empire State Building, which he tirelessly promoted. The bananas are a nod to Smith's campaign theme song, "Yes, We Have No Bananas." The tiger with a serpent's tail represents Tammany Hall, with which Smith was affiliated.

Center right in the mural is a group of brick-red buildings, Davis' take on Tudor City [detail at left]. Why Tudor City? Al Smith and Fred French were pals, and both very vocal proponents of walking. Indeed, the day the Empire State Building opened, Smith gave a radio address stating that the solution to the city's traffic problems lay in building residential complexes near business centers. "This has been attempted in Tudor City," he noted, adding that "it's better for health to walk five or ten blocks in the morning than to take a chance of life and limb in the subways." Amen to that.

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Above, a more contemporary ‒ albeit temporary ‒ artwork appeared on the Tudor City Bridge last Wednesday afternoon. Made of roses and votives and arranged in the shape of a heart, it's the work of an unknown artist. And, most likely, the site of a marriage proposal.

PICTURES OF THE DAY: The Artist Studio

Today's pictures depict an artist and model in the artist's Tudor City studio in 1937, and were made by the Wurts Brothers, the photography studio profiled earlier. The photographer experiments with different lighting effects (the Venetian blinds either down or up), while the model tries to look as blonde as possible.

In its early years, Tudor City was a magnet for illustrators, mainly because it was close to their customers: the ad agencies along 42nd Street, and the nearby Daily News and Daily Mirror offices. The enclave was especially popular with cartoonists, everyone from Will Eisner and Milton Caniff to C.D. Batchelor and Dale Messick.

PICTURE OF THE DAY / JR Edition

Detail, The Chronicles of New York City, 2018. 

Above, the Hotel Tudor sign turns up in an epic photo mural by JR, the enigmatically named French artist. Entitled The Chronicles of New York City, this mammoth digital collage portrays over 1,000 New Yorkers in a fantasy city setting. 

JR is currently having a moment, with major shows at both the San Francisco MoMA and the Brooklyn Museum, where The Chronicles of New York City will be the exhibition's centerpiece (opening October 4).

Detail of the detail.

Drew Leshko, SIGN BUILDER

Introducing Drew Leshko, a Philadelphia-based artist whose sculptures ‒ miniature versions of everything from building facades to newsstands to dumpsters ‒ are made of paper and wood.

The artist has a penchant for vintage signs, and below, his take on the Tudor City sign, rendered in miniature.

Sign framework, made of paper, paint and basswood.

The finished product. 

For more of Leshko's work, check out his website here. 

INTIMATE SKETCH OF NEW YORK, No. 165

Another drawing of Tudor City by the prolific Vernon Howe Bailey, profiled earlier. Sketch No. 165 was one of 381 drawings the artist made of city street scenes, which were serialized in The Sun. Original caption, below.

Forty-second Street and First Avenue.

The opening of the tunnel on Forty-second Street, west of First Avenue, and modern buildings of Tudor City are shown in the accompanying sketch. The tall building at the left is Tudor Tower and the peak-roofed structure is Woodstock Tower. 

Monday ‒ West Street Scene.

Illustration from the collection of Brian Thompson.

Residents: MERCEDES MATTER

Above and below, Mercedes Matter photographed by her husband, Herbert, in 1940.

This episode of notable Tudor City residents profiles painter Mercedes Matter, a player in the New York art scene of the 1940s. Her life, in bullet points:

✫  Born Mercedes Carles in 1913, daughter of an artist and a model. Shows an early interest in art and begins to paint in the abstract style in her teens.

✫  Hired as an assistant/translator for Fernand Léger, famed French painter, in 1936. Léger goes on to introduce her to her future husband, Herbert Matter, a Swiss photographer and graphic designer.

✫  The couple hit it off immediately and Mercedes is soon living with Herbert in No. 45, where he rents two apartments: a modest studio used for sleeping, and a grand penthouse used for working.

Two illustrations of the work space, below.

Studio in New York (Tudor City) by Herbert Matter, ca. 1937.

Herbert Matter's Studio by Mercedes Matter, ca. 1937

✫  They marry, and relocate to a rowhouse at 328 E. 42nd St. [since demolished], next to The Woodstock. Active in the emerging New York art scene, the couple socializes with a number of about-to-be-very-famous artists: Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning and Alberto Giacometti, among others. Given her striking looks, Mercedes is considered something of a femme fatale within the group.

Mercedes photographed by Herbert in Provincetown, 1940

✫  The Matters leave Tudor City around 1943, eventually setting down roots in Greenwich Village and East Hampton. In 1964, Mercedes founds the New York Studio School, a highly regarded art school emphasizing drawing from life, which proves to be her legacy.

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Years later in 2003, the Matters' only child, Alex, discovers a cache of reputed Jackson Pollock paintings in his father's storage locker. But that's a whole other story.