THE sculptor Richard Serra, a stickler about the differences between art and architecture, once described
most public sculpture in urban architectural settings as “displaced,
homeless, overblown objects that say, ‘We represent modern art.’”
For
most of the last century, residential and commercial developments in
New York City tended to marry architecture and art with that kind of
ambivalence, if they married them at all: lobbies with a few pretty,
unremarkable paintings; courtyards with pleasant design pieces or plop
art by sculptors whose work rarely showed up in the museums around town.
But
the landscape is starting to change, leading to what will soon be an
almost walkable itinerary of some serious art in and around Manhattan
buildings. The phenomenon is propelled largely by the same factors that
are making it more difficult for artists themselves to live and work in
the city: a concentration of global wealth with its eyes trained on real
estate and luxury developers trying to stand out to attract a piece of
that wealth.
Recently,
I arranged a meandering summer tour to visit a handful of such works
that have only recently arrived in the liminal public space of private
buildings; I also included my favorite exceptions to the bad
art-and-architecture marriage, some of which have been around for years
but are little known beyond the crowds that pass them every day, on the
way to offices or apartments.
My
map was also marked with some prime examples of what’s on the horizon.
Chief among them are the condominium buildings under construction at 56 Leonard Street
in TriBeCa, a Herzog & de Meuron creation that will feature a
mirror-polished stainless steel Anish Kapoor sculpture nestled surreally
at a corner of its base, this British artist’s first permanent public
piece here; and 152 Elizabeth Street
in NoLIta, the first residential building in New York by the Japanese
architect Tadao Ando, into which he will incorporate an art environment
of his own, a gossamer light-and-fog space in the entryway, visible from
the sidewalk.
Simon
Elias, a developer of the Herzog & de Meuron tower, said that the
business calculus behind adding a marquee work of art had become more
complex in recent years. While developers do not feel an absolute
competitive imperative to have A-list art, he said, many like him and
his partners believe that great art can help make an already distinctive
building an enduring one (and, one assumes, a profitable one).
“To
be honest, during the recession, there was a discussion about perhaps
eliminating the sculpture,” said Mr. Elias, who is Mr. Kapoor’s cousin
and had spoken with him for years about his desire to create a public
work in the city. “We didn’t think it would change the sales. But this
started not with us trying to come up with a gimmick to improve sales.
It was to create something special.”
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Amit
Khurana, one of the two partners behind the Ando building, whose seven
stories will be primarily glass and Mr. Ando’s signature material,
poured concrete, said that several artists had been considered for
commissions but that Mr. Ando’s ideas for a gauzy, light-filled
transition between interior and exterior were more in keeping with the
spirit of his architecture.
“Art
and architecture are often seen as very different things,” Mr. Khurana
said. “I think Ando-san manages to consider both and not look at these
things as separate pieces.” He added: “We also wanted to think about how
we could create something that could unite the idea of public art and
private art.”
The
first stop on my tour took me to a luxury high rise that opened a year
ago and will undoubtedly last a while, given that its 1,175 rental
apartments are believed to be the most in a single tower in the country.
The building, Sky, on 11th Avenue
between 42nd and 43rd Streets, has also distinguished itself by
installing the first permanent public artwork here by Yayoi Kusama,
87, an art-world titan whose pieces are in almost every important
contemporary art museum in the country, as well as Europe and Asia.
The
work, an imposing bronze sculpture of an eerily polka-dotted pumpkin,
an alter-ego motif that has become Ms. Kusama’s calling card, was
unveiled recently in the building’s motor court, after workers from her
London gallery, Victoria Miro, installed it, along with two lacy white
“Infinity-Net” paintings by Ms. Kusama (versions of which were for sale at Art Basel last year for $450,000 each) flanking the lobby.
“We’ve
always loved Kusama and followed her,” said Mitchell Moinian, whose
family developed the building. “Her work is a part of our own life.”
He
said he thought of the pieces by Ms. Kusama, who spent formative years
in New York in the 1950s and ’60s, as a homecoming of sorts. And, he
said, as a way to distinguish the building with an artist whose work is
not widely known in the United States but who carries significant
critical heft.
“Every
single box we needed to check, we asked ourselves, ‘What’s the best we
can do here?’” he said, adding: “It’s very easy if you have a lot of
money to have a balloon dog, but we don’t think that way.”
He
was referring, of course, to the impish stainless steel sculptures of
Jeff Koons, which have become the 21st-century equivalent of Renaissance
equestrian monuments, epitomizing wealth and power. And it’s true that
there are a fair number around, including a bright red balloon flower in
the plaza in front of 7 World Trade Center. But the pieces are still
something to behold in person, simultaneously sphinx-like and
party-clown creepy, and so I went to find the newest one in Manhattan, “Balloon Rabbit (Red),”
installed in 2014 at 51 Astor Place, a sleek new office building. At 14
feet, with a whimsical sky-gazing stance and joined ears that cannot
but evoke female genitalia, the piece, owned by Edward J. Minskoff, the
building’s developer, lords it over the minimalist lobby and can be seen
from two blocks away, reflecting its surroundings, shimmering through
the building’s glass walls.
Perhaps
to help escape its aura, I headed uptown by subway and made my next
stop another lobby artwork that suffuses its surroundings in a far
different way. This one, at 505 Fifth Avenue, an office building near
the corner of 42nd Street that opened in 2006, is by the California
artist James Turrell, a member of the so-called Light and Space movement of the 1960s, whose work took over the Guggenheim Museum
in 2013. The lobby at 505 is striking because there’s little in it but
light, artificial (from seams in the floor, corners of the ceiling and
the walls) and natural (from the street). A security guard came out from
behind his desk and advised me — docent-like and rather proudly — to
pay attention to the way the colors of Mr. Turrell’s environment begin
changing from the front of the lobby, where the daylight meets the
interior light, and surge slowly back toward the elevators, where a wall
panel bleeds from dark purples to blues to greens.
These
colors put me in mind of one of my favorite, near-hidden lobby works in
the city — in fact, one of my favorite public pieces anywhere — and I
made my last stop in Brooklyn, on my way home, at 4 Metrotech Center
downtown, the JPMorgan Chase building. For years, I’ve stopped by this
lobby to see a small, blinking neon by Bruce Nauman,
one of the most influential artists of the last half-century. Mr.
Nauman’s neons, which often juxtapose related words or phrases, can be
funny, haunting and sometimes brutal (“Raw/War”; “Run From Fear/Fun From
Rear.”)
This
one, which blinks the crossed words “Read” and “Reap” in garish greens,
pinks, reds and yellows, is mild by comparison but still provocative
for a corporate bank lobby, evoking wholesome thoughts of knowledge
alongside slightly sinister connotations of the consequences of knowing.
The piece, bought in 1992 by the bank under the direction of the
collector David Rockefeller from the dealer Leo Castelli, would be right
at home in any contemporary museum. (The Museum of Modern Art is
organizing a Nauman retrospective for 2018.)
Lisa
Erf, the chief curator of the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, one of the
oldest corporate collections in New York, told me that the piece “makes
those of us who care about it feel very good.”
“We’ve
always thought about the collection as a cultural investment, and
there’s never been any kind of easy-listening quality to it,” she added.
“That’s the point of the collection — the importance of art as an
extension of daily life.”
A version of this article appears in print on July 8, 2016, on page C15 of the New York edition with the headline: High Art Arrives at the Lobby.
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