Subway Art

Live like the velvet mole; Go burrow underground. . . .

When the velvet Poetess Elinor Wylie proposed this alternative to the ivory tower, she was not thinking of the millions who scuttle like rats and whiz like rocketing atoms through the subways of the world's great cities. The oldest of these subways are the dismalest: Boston's system, built in 1897, and Manhattan's Interborough Rapid Transit (1904) and Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit (1913). Those most conducive to human sanity are the clean, well-lighted neatly tubular "undergrounds" of London and Buenos Aires. Proudest and most ornate is the three-year-old Moscow Metro.

For nearly two years the question of how subways in general could be improved artistically has been studied by a group of Manhattan artists. Some WPA and some not, but all members of the United American Artists, they believed that this extracurricular activity in the public weal would be their best argument for a Federal Bureau of Fine Arts. Last May the Union's Public Use of Arts Committee started preparing an exhibition of murals and sculpture for subways which last week opened at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art. Said the Museum's catalogue:

"The motive for introducing murals and sculpture into subway stations is an obvious one: the wish to combat an atmosphere which is always lugubrious and occasionally sinister. . . . Manufacturers of breakfast-foods, hair tonics and other springboards to the better life have for years covered the walls of subway stations with vivid posters. . . . Young voyagers . . . frequently add a mustache here, a black eye there, thus proving their disrespect for the esthetic effects offered them."

Apparently not counting on the respect of young voyagers for any future esthetic effects, the prospective subway artists considered one of their problems to be that of finding mediums which no pencil could mutilate. Murals would also have to be resistant to vibration, dirt and cold. Technical aid on these points was available from one of the best-qualified experts on artists* materials in the U. S. Many artists credit 40-year-old Ralph Mayer with reviving tempera painting almost singlehanded through his course on it at Manhattan's Art Students' League in 1931. A chemical engineer and painter, black-haired, intent Mr. Mayer developed for subway muralists two new methods which last week appeared successful.

Method No. 1 begins by coating a piece of sheet iron with heavy black enamel, firing it at such a high temperature that the enamel and iron are fused, then firing on two more coats of white enamel. On this the artist paints as if it were canvas, using pigments of powdered enamel mixed with a special oil. The panel is then fired a fourth time, producing a highly glazed, virtually indestructible mural. This was never done before because no way had been found of retaining colors through firing with anything but approximate fidelity. Of 13 selected designs and sample panels in this medium displayed in last week's show, two vivid abstractions by Balcolm Greene and Eugene Morley and a panel of four decidedly white-collar gentlemen by Elizabeth Oldswed showed best its wide range of possibilities.

Method No. 2 is a modern version of fresco painting, which may be done on plaster or gesso, preferably on concrete. The medium used is a fast-drying chemical, silicon ester, which may be applied to the wall when it is either wet or dry. On exposure to air, it forms a surface of pure silica resistant to almost any atmospheric conditions. Most impressive concrete mural: a long panel by Angelo Sottosanti and Arthur Schneider. An abstraction of city life, it was typical of the sort Manhattan critics thought least fitting in subways. First results of a public poll conducted by the Museum showed that citypent Manhattanites disagreed with the critics, wanted New York City scenes more than landscapes, fantasy, or humor.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.