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Cass Gilbert's Woolworth Building

Woolworth Building, No.31

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John Marin's Etchings Marin’s New York etchings are among his most celebrated. He printed the majority of his etchings himself, as he liked to experiment with producing multiple effects from a single plate.[1] Interestingly, Marin’s etchings of the Woolworth Building are from a similar point of view to those used in his watercolors.[2] In both watercolor and etching, the emphasis of the works is the effect that the Woolworth Building has on its surroundings, not the actual structure itself. Marin focuses on creating an equilibrium between what he thought of as dynamic forms, a point of view evident from his note in the 1913 Exhibition Guide.

The images that Marin produced of the Woolworth Building demonstrate a measure of chaos, but one feels as if that chaos is contained within the frame. This interpretation connects with the inconclusiveness of contemporary skyscraper criticism discussed above. In black and white, the etchings are more visually striking than the watercolors. One gets a greater sense of the multitude of forces at play that Marin mentioned in the 1913 Exhibition Guide. In from 1913, Marin etches lines in the sky that make it look as if the tower is giving off energy. This fits well with Marin’s interpretation that buildings were alive, and that they would have an effect on their surroundings by emanating an energy-like force.

The etched lines serve a second purpose: to frame the tower and thereby balancing the composition. Their inclusion prevents the Woolworth Building tower from outright dominating the composition, an effect that Marin also achieves in his watercolors through use of color washes. His from 1912 is an example of this: the lines of blue and overall blue color wash are a softer version of Marin’s etched lines of energy in Woolworth Building (The Dance). Interpreting their inclusion as a balancing force is in line with Marin’s belief that smaller masses did exert a degree of resistance against larger masses – what he described as the “the warring of the great and the small.”[3]

In the etchings, one loses a sense of the Gothic ornament on the building’s façade. Scholars of the Skyscraper Gothic point to the moralizing purpose of this detailing – the Gothic style of architecture being associated with medieval churches and “lending the moral authority of Christianity to the commercialism of the modern age.”[4] The visual association with the Gothic tradition enhanced Woolworth’s civic identity, and by denying this, Marin further undermines the association between the building and the man who financed its construction.

[1] Jessica Murphy, “John Marin,” in Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O’Keeffe. ed. Lisa Mintz Messenger (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001): 158.
[2] Martha Tedeschi, “Great Forces at Work: John Marin’s New York,” in John Marin’s Watercolors: A Medium for Modernism. ed. Martha Tedeschi and Kristi Dahm. (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2010), 116.
[3] John Marin, The Selected Writings of John Marin. ed. Dorothy Newman (New York: Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1949), 4-5.
[4] Kevin D. Murphy and Lisa Reilly. “Introduction,” in Skyscraper Gothic (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017), 9.

Liz Horner
Marin's Songs of Modernity Upon his return from The City of Light, The City of Dreams quickly swept the young Marin off of his feet. The modern metropolis and its experiences captivated him; amidst the city's hustle and bustle, Marin saw great emotion and dynamic forces at work. He proudly proclaimed that he was devoting himself to the task of expressing the “great music” produced by the “life of a great city.”[1]

Marin best illustrates this "great music" in his series of the Woolworth Building. Here, he utilizes the medium of watercolor to freely elicit the emotions of the building and its surroundings. As the viewer moves chronologically from the work No. 28 to No. 32, Marin increasingly blurs the boundary between representation and reality. Looking first at No. 28, Marin uses somewhat loose form and vibrant colors, but the almost-complete building is still predominantly viewed in a representational manner. The building’s structural features can be identified, and the composition is stable. A jumble of surrounding architecture provides a foundation in the foreground as the viewer glances upwards at the soaring building. A completely new perspective is gained as one moves to the work No. 29. No longer is the viewer loftily looking upwards to the sky; instead, the Woolworth Building is now delineated and curls upward in a flurry of motion to the heavens. The previously-horizontal foundation of buildings now spirals around our central Woolworth, shifting our points of view and suggesting a Delaunay-esque simultaneity of temporal space. As we continue to No. 31, Marin allows the Woolworth Building to regain some of its architectural structure, but then jaggedly distorts these features as they rotate and crescendo upwards. The surrounding strokes on the peripheries of the skyscraper insinuate dynamic, destabilizing movement. Mimicking the Woolworth, the surrounding buildings rhythmically follow suit in their own tilting perspectives and jagged distortions. The andante tempo of No. 31’s subtle, slow spiraling cadence of movement is rapidly accelerated to an allegro as in Marin’s culmination of his series with No. 32. The dizzying mass of the Woolworth building is nearly fully-abstracted as Marin adds additional movement and speed to the work. No particular architectural features can be identified, and the once neatly-organized rows of foreground buildings are now lost in a chaotic storm of upheaval and movement.

Marin continually strove to study the emotional and expressive sensations of the building, rather than the simple representational views. John Marin produces a symphony of dynamic movement in his etching Woolworth Building (The Dance). The viewer is integrated into the social fabric of the city as the Woolworth is seen from street-level. Under the orchestration of Marin, the barren trees swing to the left in unison, the “Cathedral of Commerce” loftily ascends upwards as it trembles with vibrato into the sky, the streets fill with the staccato rhythm of New York’s passing inhabitants – all producing the “great music” of the metropolis Marin had originally strived for.

Through his many portrayals of New York and the Woolworth Building, Marin interpreted the rapidly changing society around him. The grand upheaval and distortion of the Woolworth represented the destruction of the past, the upheaval of tradition and old society in a chaos of rapid movement, rhythm, and color. He sought to portray the modern metropolis and all of its experiences, namely, the individual’s near-constant state of overstimulation and sustained bombardment by the new, strange, wonderful, and terrifying. Marin best accomplished his goal through his watercolor series and etchings of the Woolworth Building. Using his whirling, spiraling motions of destabilization; rigid destructing of architecture; and tumultuous, chaotic upheaval of bordering buildings and surrounding city architecture, Marin accomplished what no American artist had yet done and illustrated the overwhelming experience of New York City and the modern metropolis.

[1] John Marin, Untitled Note. In An Exhibition of Water-Colors – New York Berkshire and Adirondack Series – and Oils by John Marin, of New York. Exh. Cat. Gallery of the Photo-Secession, n.pag. Reprinted in Camera Work 42-43 (1913a), 18.

Parker Temple
Representing Engineering: the Eiffel Tower and the Woolworth Building The structures of the Eiffel Tower and Woolworth Building were engineering marvels representative of humanity’s continued forward progress; however, they were equally as much a part of a rapid upheaval of society that affected millions across the world, for the better and for the worse. Due to this, artists gravitated towards these structures. Using these awe-inspiring achievements of engineering as connections to the concept of urban modernity, the artists Robert Delaunay and John Marin best painted the dynamic experiences of the great metropolis.

Before the day of these two artists, it was uncommon to portray specific works of architecture as the focus of a composition. When architecture or engineering was the subject of a particular work, the structures were normally subordinated to secondary focus in landscapes and genre scenes. Delaunay daringly broke tradition with his portrayals of Gustave Eiffel’s controversial, towering abstract structure of wrought iron. Across the Atlantic, John Marin, never one to abide by tradition himself, chose the monumental Woolworth Building as his focus. Both of these artists steered far from past precedent and chose modern marvels of engineering and technology as their subjects; utilizing these subjects as canvases, the artists painted their subjective views of modernity upon them. In both series’ cases, a structure of superb engineering was in some way destructed by tiltation, delineation, or fragmentation. The grand upheaval of both of these represented the destruction of the past, the upheaval of tradition and old society in a chaos of rapid movement, speed, and light. Delaunay and Marin – as well as the Futurists – sought to portray the modern metropolis and all of its experiences. Namely, this could be characterized by an individual’s near-constant state of overstimulation and sustained bombardment by the new, strange, wonderful, and terrifying. Within Champs de Mars: The Red Tower, Delaunay best accomplishes this through his dizzying and rapid changes of perspective, dynamic sense of motion, flamboyant color usage, and sharp, slicing fragmentation of light. Marin similarly accomplishes this, in Woolworth Building No. 31, through his usage of destabilization through whirling, spiraling motion; rapid, rigid destructing of architecture; and the tumultuous chaos of the surrounding buildings and architecture within the city. Drawn to the Eiffel Tower and Woolworth Building by their superb and unparalleled engineering, the artists saw a unique opportunity to represent their urban, modern societies.

Parker Temple