Seward Johnson reimagines the characters from Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” as tourists in “God Bless America” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
SUMMER ARTS ON THE PLAZAS
Garment District Plazas
Broadway, Between 41st & 36th Sts.
Through September 15, free
garmentdistrictnyc.com
online slideshow
For many years, my wife and I have argued over an outdoor sculpture on East Thirty-Fourth St., J. Seward Johnson’s “The Right Light,” a bronze statue of a bearded man standing determinedly in front of an easel, palette in hand, painting an outdoor scene inspired by a mural in a small plaza next to the Affinia Dumont Hotel. While I find the piece, part of the octogenarian’s “Man on the Street” series, sort of fun, my wife considers it horrifyingly insipid. However, we completely agree on “Seward Johnson in New York: Selections from the Retrospective,” a garish collection of brightly colored lifelike tableaux that will be on view along the Garment District Plazas on Broadway through September 15, part of the Summer Arts on the Plazas program. A condensed version of his much larger, record-breaking show at the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey (which was founded by Johnson in 1992), the Manhattan version features eighteen almost hyperrealistic sculptures from three of Johnson’s series: “Celebrating the Familiar” (1987), “Beyond the Frame” (2003), and “Icons Revisited” (2011). In “Holding Out,” a woman looks out blankly, carrying a bag of groceries. “A Turn of the Century” brings to three-dimensional life the man and woman from Renoir’s “Dance at Bougival,” while “Eye of the Beholder,” in which a couple sits at a table sharing a moment, a waiter close by, is based on Manet’s “Chez le Père Lathuillle.” In “Things to Do,” a woman on a bench is making out her “to do” list. “God Bless America” adds a suitcase to Grant Wood’s “American Gothic,” and, for some unknown reason, in “Return Visit,” Abraham Lincoln is lifting his hat to a sweatered nerd reading the Gettysburg Address. “Forever Marilyn” re-creates the famous scene of Marilyn Monroe’s dress being blown up her body on a grate in The Seven Year Itch; in 2011, a virtualtourist.com poll named a twenty-six-foot-tall version of the sculpture the worst public art in the world. Perhaps the most realistic thematic sculpture is “Photo Shoot,” in which a man kneels down to take a picture of his wife, son, and dog; many people — primarily tourists — will be taking pictures of their family members (and dogs) within this installation (in addition to the others), a kind of wry self-comment on the exhibition itself. For more than fifty years, Johnson, a philanthropist whose grandfather was one of the founders of Johnson & Johnson and who is first cousins with Michael Douglas — the Oscar-winning actor posted many photos on Facebook of himself at the Grounds for Sculpture retrospective — has been attempting to capture a heartwarming aspect of America, evoking the one so beautifully rendered by Norman Rockwell in paintings and on magazine covers, but these works feel more tacky and simplistic than Rockwell’s; the precise realism of the 1987 series in particular extends to the hair and clothing styles, making them overtly dated and charmless. Perhaps they would have fit in better in Times Square. But who are we to complain? People seem to love them, so go ahead and snap away.