The Spring 1999 Issue is now available To Order:
ROCKEFELLER CENTER
SCULPTURE
The Challenges of an Art Program
by Carol Hereselle Krinsky |
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Remarkably enough, although the original three blocks of Rockefeller Center
contain New York's most conspicuous ensemble of figurative sculpture, few people notice or
remember it. New Yorker's and tourists know Paul Manship's gilded Prometheus
(1933), which floats above the sunken plaza in the center of the original complex of
offices and theaters. Pedestrians walk past the Fifth Avenue buildings under Lee
Lawrie's enormous bronze Atlas (1936) and sometimes look up at him. But
hardly anyone knows about the stone reliefs by Gaston Lachaise or the large
stainless-steel composition by the young Isamu Noguchi. In the buildings designed
and constructed from 1929 to 1940, entrances, lobbies, and plazas were adorned by Carl
Miles, Attilio Piccirilli, Carl Paul Jenewein, and others. With some words
larger than life, some of them painted or gilded, the Center's sculpture ought to be among
midtown Manhattan's chief attractions. Yet only Atlas and Prometheus
are reproduced on tourists postcards, the latter often subordinated to the image of the
adjacent ice-skating rink. Why? |
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