Twilight at the League for Saturday Models

Among my Saturday Models, photo by R. Nakaya

The Great Wall of 104 16x20s, composite photo by Yves Leroux

What’s wrong with the Administration, the Board of Control and most of the members of The Art Students League of New York?  Don’t they realize that the natural light entering the League’s north-light studios is worth far more to artists than any amount of money that can be offered by any fabulously wealthy, property-gobbling real estate developer?  Everybody else does.  All over Manhattan, skylight studios once rented by starving artists have been preserved and converted into designer apartments for mega-rich financiers and lawyers.

What should be of paramount concern for League artists who paint in those north-light studios during the day is the inevitable loss of natural light that will result from the impending construction next door of Extell Development Co.’s residential condominium skyscraper, which will include a hotel and a Nordstrom department store on the lower floors.  It will be the city’s tallest building and could rise anywhere from 1,423 to 1,550 feet.  That’s extremely bad news for the light at the League.  But Extell also wants one-third of its residential tower to cantilever high in the sky over part of the League building in order to give its billionaire condo investors a peek at Central Park around a 920-foot apartment tower that will be built right behind it by Vornado Realty Trust.  That skyscraper will block even more of the natural light entering our skylight studios.

I wrote about the imminent loss of natural light in the League studios in my previous post.  Our Board estimates that if Extell builds its skyscraper straight up it would block 20 percent of our light, and the cantilever would further reduce the light by up to nearly 5 percent.  I’m guessing that those are very low-ball estimates and that a minimum of one-third to one-half of our natural light will be gone forever when both skyscrapers are completed.  Good morning, Mr. Edison, and welcome to the League.

I suppose I’m one of those cranky artists that Michael Kimmelman mentioned in a Dec. 23 article in The New York Times under the headline, “Seeing a Need for Oversight of New York’s Lordly Towers.”  At the end of his article, Kimmelman writes, “Members of the Art Students League haven’t yet voted whether to approve the sale of their air rights to Extell for the Nordstrom Tower. While the league stands to gain millions, cranky artists might still succeed where Landmarks failed, and shelve the cantilever. Here’s hoping they do.”  

In the late 1970s, I spent a little over two years studying figure painting at the League in Studios 6 and 7 on the fourth floor.  I came to appreciate the exquisite beauty of flesh color as revealed under the unparalleled light of day streaming through the skylights in those studios. I’m hopeless at describing visual effects, but suffice it to say that artificial light is simply crap by comparison when it comes to painting flesh.

Under artificial light, colors are delineated very clearly by value and hue, but they have absolutely no sensual appeal.  All subtle tones are lost, along with the delicate blue/gray atmosphere that embraces everything under indirect daylight from the north and can cause you to swoon at the first sight of an onion bathed in such atmospheric light.  Artists drive themselves crazy searching in vain for a passable studio lighting system to substitute for nature’s light from the distant sun.

In the following 30-plus years, I have faithfully attended a Saturday morning painting class for members in one or the other of the five north-light studios on the top two floors of the League.  We never turn on the lights, no matter how overcast the sky. Those sessions with League models are often the highlight of my week.  I receive such emotional pleasure from these alla prima painting sessions that I can’t bear to paint over my portrait sketches, although I have destroyed some I considered miserable failures.  I have saved more than 400 of these sketches, mostly 16 by 20s.  

A couple of years ago, Chashama, a nonprofit arts organization, allowed me to have a show of more than 300 of these portraits in one of their temporary gallery spaces in the city.   My "Saturday Models" exhibit ran from March 22 to April 8, 2012 at Chashama 461 Gallery, 461 W. 126th St.  I honestly didn’t care if I sold any paintings.  I just wanted to pay homage to all the unsung League models who posed for me and my friends.  And I wanted to give my sketches a little fresh air.  As I wrote in my text accompanying the exhibit, “This exhibit fortuitously answers my prayer of deliverance for all these former easel companions of mine.  They remained stalwart throughout the usual stages of triumph and despair as I struggled to bring them to life, but soon after they were consigned to that burgeoning graveyard of superfluous paintings familiar to us all.”

You might have skipped the frosting in writing that yourself, but I’m pretty sentimental and pretty irrational about a lot of things.  In fact, I didn’t even publicize the show at the League, figuring the models have been painted so often they wouldn’t be interested in seeing the show themselves, and the artists who have painted the same models would probably all be chorusing, “My paintings of the same models were a lot better!”  

So it went unheralded at the League, and in the public arena, as well.  That was fine by me, but a few friends and a few strangers did buy some of the head sketches for $100 apiece.  I threw in one or two for free to people who said nice things about my work.  And a very sweet elderly woman I forgot to get the name of walked out with two of my paintings under her arm without paying me on the spot, although several months later she did send me a check for them.  I had a swell time sitting in the huge warehouse/gallery, mostly all alone, listening to cassette tapes on my really great $20 flea-market boom box, the first one I’ve ever owned.  The paintings and I were on holiday for a couple of weeks, that’s all, and most of them came back home with me to reestablish their superfluousness in perpetuity.

I love the League and was horrified when one of the paintings on a web album I created for the exhibit ended up as the first item in a Google Image search for The Art Students League.  I almost passed out from anxiety.  My insignificant image should not be sullying the grand tradition of the League, where just about every famous American artist you can think of spent some time studying or teaching.  I panicked and deleted the image and the album, which resulted in the deletion of all the images from my hard drive, leaving me with only a few shaky, hand-held images of the exhibit that I hadn’t uploaded to the album. 

Now Extell and my beloved League are poised to dim the natural light in the studios and spoil my Saturday fun.  Like Ralph Rackstraw, the lowly seaman in HMS Pinafore, this Extell affair has plunged me into a “Cimmerian darkness of tangible despair.”  I’ll ask this one more time, “Why me, Lord, why me?”

Twilight at the League

The Art Students League of New York, 4th Floor Skylight Studio

4th Floor Skylight Studio

I wonder if anybody really cares anymore about painting indoors by daylight alone.  The reason I’m wondering is that The Art Students League of New York, my social club and workout facility for drawing and painting, will soon have none of it left in its historic north-light studios, at least not enough to paint by.

Maybe natural light is not so important for artists anymore.  But the north-light studios on our two uppermost floors have been the pride of the League since we moved into our current home, The American Fine Arts Society building on West 57th Street, way back in 1892.  That same year, Frank Vincent Dumond began teaching his principles of painting under the glorious and nonpareil light of day, or, more precisely, cool, indirect north light, which transforms the humblest of objects into the rarest of gems.  Dumond famously held court for 59 years in Studio 7, the biggest and best studio on the fourth floor, until his death in 1951.  His long-time student Frank Mason took over the class for another 57 years, until his death in 2009.  And Mason’s long-time student Thomas Torak continues to hold forth to this day in that very same studio. 

Double check my math, but that’s 121 years worth of unbroken tradition at this 138-year-old independent art school, which has been run by artists for artists since its founding in 1875.

Allyn Cox Drawing Class, Natural Light, 1st Floor, Glass Roof, 1940

Clay Sculpture Studio in Basement. Best Natural Light in the Building

Keith Gunderson, Morning Light, Clay Sculpture Studio, Oil on Canvas

There seems to be no huge outcry from the many students and instructors who frequent the five north-light studios on the fourth and fifth floors, the etching studios on the third floor, the drawing studio where Robert Beverly Hale taught anatomy for many years on the 2nd floor and the clay sculpture studios in the basement, so perhaps the answer to my question is “no” everywhere in the world today, with maybe a slight sigh of resignation from a few old-timers.  It seems like the best realist painters in America are dispensing with daylight entirely in their studios and are shining very bright artificial light on their subjects so they can paint them photographically.  Besides, artificial light is far more constant than even the best north light.  It provides fixed patterns of light and shade and makes rank amateurs happy painters.

Here at the League, two massive skyscrapers that will be erected next door and behind us over the next five or six years will probably snuff out most of the remaining natural light entering our studios.  Our light is already greatly compromised because of the construction of taller buildings to the north over the years, including a boarding school for the St. Thomas Episcopal Church boy’s choir.  That building reflects a noxious orange light into the north-light studios at certain times of the day.

Early Photo of the League Building on West 57th Street

Recent View of the League Building

Renderings of Extell's Skyscraper next to the League

Extell Development Co. will be erecting the tallest building in New York City right next door, an 88-floor behemoth that could rise to 1,550 feet if Extell decides to go ahead with its original proposal.  Final plans have not been divulged by the developer, but a height of 1,423 feet is the current projection.  The top 74 floors of the skyscraper will be a residential condominium tower, with a department store and hotel on the lower floors. 

A majority of The Art Students League members stupidly voted in 2005 to sell most of the League’s air rights to Extell for $23.1 million so the developer could build “higher.”  We just didn’t know how high at the time.  We thought maybe 40 floors or so.  Many of us voted "no" because we were sure the deal spelled trouble for the League down the road.

Former George W. Vanderbilt Gallery, about 1920. Currently divided into six studio classrooms

Our Board planned to use part of the “windfall” to recreate an exhibition gallery in the rear half of the first floor, a double-height, one-story structure with a glass roof that stretches north to West 58th Street.  That space was once the magnificent George W. Vanderbilt Gallery, which was completed in 1893.  The League converted that space many years ago into drawing and painting studios.  We also had plans to create two additional floors of natural light studios over that part of the League building.  Neither plan was carried forward.

Rendering of a Ground Level View of Extell's Cantilever

Now Extell wants to suspend one third of its residential tower as a cantilever over that part of our building to avoid having views of Central Park blocked by another skyscraper to be built right behind it on West 58th Street.  At least that’s one theory for why Extell wants its egregious cantilever over our building.

The League’s students and instructors don’t seem to terribly mind having this monstrosity hanging over the fully occupied studio classrooms located directly under the glass roof, which is now covered by ½-inch thick sheets of plywood and bitumen roof paper to keep the rain out.  In fact, 63 League instructors have even signed a petition in support of our Board’s recommendation to accept $25.8 million from Extell for our permission and more of our air rights so it can build its cantilever tower.  The League’s membership must ultimately approve or reject the sale and will vote on it later this month.

During the five-year construction phase of Extell’s skyscraper, I can imagine that protective netting and sheds and whatnot will obstruct the light entering through the League’s skylights and studio windows.  But we don’t yet know the extent of the protections, or how much natural light, if any, will enter the studios during construction.

Painters like me who prefer painting by natural light know that technical studies of reflected light and shadows, along with educated guesses, won’t give us the answer to the future of natural light at the League.  We know from experience with the church boarding school behind us that we won’t find out until the completion several years from now of Extell’s skyscraper and that other skyscraper behind it on West 58th Street, a 920-foot giant just north and a little to the west of the League. 

The League for many years has been the owner and sole occupant of the American Fine Arts Society building at 215 West 57th Street, which has been designated a city landmark.  In order to build its cantilever over our landmarked building, Extell had to win approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Extell says it will commence its tower about 30 floors above the roof of our five-story building.  It will be like having permanent space-station pieds-à-terre in the sky above us for billionaire investors from the Middle East and Far East.

Extell Excavation Site with one of the League's 4th floor skylights in the lower left-hand corner, recent photo by Andrew McKeon for YIMBY website

The Landmarks Commission did not examine numerous safety issues regarding the excavation and construction phases of Extell’s skyscraper right next to our historic art school, which is open seven days and five evenings a week for art classes and workshops.  Being unaware of the Commission’s seeming lack of empathy, I even went to its hearing on Extell’s cantilever proposal to prattle on nervously about a “Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads” and the like, before being cut off just short of my brilliant summation, having exceeded my allotted three minutes.

Many other opponents of the cantilever also testified about safety, loss of light, shadows on Central Park, outsize scale, community input, inadequate compensation, etc.  After the testimony, both pro and con, the Commission Chair said, “Thank you very much,” and the Commission immediately took a vote to approve Extell’s cantilever 6 to 1.

All the Commission was tasked to consider, we learned, was whether a guy 6 ft. 4 in. tall would look directly across the street at the League and see the cantilever.  The Commission knows that in New York City nobody ever looks up for fear of stepping in something in their path.  Oh, and lest I forget, Extell, the Commission, and the Art Students League’s governing Board of Control, which is pushing for the sale, all confidently predict that the cantilever will have minimal effect on the light entering the League Studios.  Yeah, right!

It looks like Extell’s cantilever is a done deal, thanks to our foolishness for selling the developer our air rights in the first place back in 2005.

We don’t have to lose heart just yet, however.  Here is an online exchange between two readers of a New York Times article about past and future development on West 57th Street:  “But don't the studios in the Art Students' League need light?”   “$20M buys a ton of fancy bulbs.”

Well, we all know you can’t count on anything being around forever.  Not even daylight.

Art is a Business

William Sidney Mount (1807-1868), The Painter’s Triumph, 1838, Oil on Panel, 19.5 by 23.6 in., Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia

Painters don’t necessarily subscribe to a trade magazine for the arts because they like its content.  Some just enjoy being tortured emotionally from a distance.  How else can I explain renewing for a second year my subscription to The Artist’s Magazine?  Almost nothing in its current issue was of genuine interest to me and almost all of it annoyed me.

Take the cover of its current issue, for instance.  It celebrates as “breathtaking” an oil portrait made to look like a photograph, but without the seamless unity of same.  The result is something that almost resembles a human face, but not quite, when given more than a momentary glance.  All the little changes in color and value are carefully executed and fused.  But they are slightly out of sync and distracting from the whole, resulting in that “humanoid” look all photographic oil portraits convey when examined more closely than is warranted.  A flat facial plane showing no sign of the creator’s involvement in the process via exciting brushwork or beautiful flesh color are the main characteristics of such work.  In this portrait, for example, the nose is lying flat against the cheek, with no sense of the inch or more of air space that separates the two.  All the areas where discrete accents would bring life and dimension to the face are mushed together indecisively.  The flesh color is bland and generic.  A blow-by-blow examination of this portrait would be tedious in the extreme, so just give it more than a momentary glance yourself and you will see what I mean.  But why bother, would naturally be your response to my suggestion.  Should be good advice for me, as well, but I hate effusive praise of the objectively unworthy with a passion.

The American Impressionist Robert Philipp, one of my teachers at The Art Students League, used to bluntly admonish his students when painting from the model that “you gotta make ‘em look human.”   That’s all.  You can’t get your portrait to look human by painting from a photograph or painting photographically from life.  You have to will the portrait to come alive on your canvas as you observe, and feel empathy for, the living, breathing characteristics of the sitter posing in front of you, for as long or as short a time as it takes to reach your goal of a lifelike portrait.  A quick head sketch executed from life, even if it borders on caricature, often has far more human qualities than a polished portrait that took many days to accomplish, with or without the sitter in place.  That point was made in the only article in the current issue of the magazine that interested me.  One 18^th Century British portrait painter used to put down his brushes as soon as he heard an on-site witness utter, “that looks just like her.”   

No oil portrait created in the last 75 years or so can honestly be characterized as “breathtaking.”  Sargent, Zorn, Sorolla, et al are long gone, and the art world is a much different place now.  Painters today either can’t paint as well as the aforementioned, or wouldn’t have the slightest interest in doing so.  But critical judgment is cast aside when you have to fill the pages of a periodical with articles on substandard art in order to give your faithful readers the confidence that they also can create substandard art. 

The situation is worse than ever now, since American Artist magazine was taken over and eliminated by the publishers of The Artist’s Magazine.  So this is the last industry magazine of its kind, other than that Professional Artist magazine, which used to hawk outdoor art shows and juried competitions under a former name and is now gearing up for prime time.

When I read these magazines to recharge my annoyance battery, I tend to forget that art is a business like any other and the passion painters felt in former times to chronicle their world is no longer of paramount importance. 

A good case in point is an article in the current issue of The Artist’s Magazine that celebrates paintings of isolated houses and barren interior rooms that look just like snapshots taken by a photographer who couldn’t seem to find any worthwhile center of interest through his viewfinder.  The rather large paintings have no intrinsic visual interest in color, form, brushwork or subject matter, at least in reproduction, and apparently exist merely to prove that the artist can copy all the straight lines of a clapboard wall or all the segments of an old cast-iron radiator under a window.  How exciting is that!  Repeat after me, “Just take a photograph.”  Apparently the only passion evoked in these trivial exercises was in the artist’s yeoman struggles with the elements as he lashed his easel to the ground to tepidly copy some of his subjects en plein air.  It’s hard to believe that while standing on terra firma in the great outdoors, surrounded by the beauty of the natural world, he was inspired to paint photographically.  The artist accompanies his paintings with a turgid essay on “fertile metaphors” and the like in an attempt to obfuscate the intrinsic visual blandness of the work itself. 

What can I say?  It’s an art world I never made.  But it’s just like the sage advice given for all bad things foisted on the great unwashed by mercenaries.  “If you don’t like it, just ignore it.”  That certainly narrows the field for me.