You can watch him argue for the benefits to MoMA of Jean Nouvel‘s Empire State Building-height tower (now downsized to mere Chrysler Building height) at the hearing of a City Council subcommittee of its Land Use Committee that occurred two weeks ago. That’s Lowry on the left, the project’s attorney Michael Sillerman on the right. Once you roll ’em, you’ll also see architect Nouvel, left.
(If you just can’t get enough, you can view a second, longer version of Lowry’s testimony here, on the CultureGrrl Channel.)
As I drove back up the westside from that hearing, I passed by the remains of the late, lamented Knox Martin “Venus” mural, all but obliterated by the in-construction Nouvel luxury apartment tower that the French architect probably visited while he was in New York.
Wait a minute! When we last saw Martin’s mural, it had been reduced to a mere sliver:
But when I most recently viewed it, the 85-year-old artist’s oeuvre had been reduced to a mere signature—the mega-letters that Knox had added last year to his 1970 mural, in a stealth protest. Here’s what “Venus” (which should now be retitled “KNOX”) looked like a couple of weeks ago, when I took a passing shot at it through my car’s sun roof:
Will this grudging accommodation still remain when 100 Eleventh Avenue is completed? Will the northmost apartments, abutting the women’s prison to the left, have windows allowing privileged views of the parts of Martin’s colorful abstraction that no one else will ever see?
