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Cass Gilbert's Woolworth Building

Woolworth Building, No.32

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John Marin's Watercolors Marin is best known as a watercolorist, and scholars suggest that he was likely drawn to it in part because it was disassociated with the academic artistic tradition and institutions[1]. Marin disliked art theory and the intellectuals behind it because he thought they were pretentious. Marsden Hartley credits Marin with “[lifting] water color painting out of the embroidery class,” a testament to his establishing of watercolor as a serious medium.[2] Marin used tube watercolors, which allow for greater dilution of pigment, color washes, and the bleed technique that can be seen in his work.

In his watercolors, Marin adopts a perspective commonly used in contemporary commercial images: framing the skyscraper with other buildings. There is, however, a difference between the images of the Woolworth before and after completion; the later works demonstrate a move towards abstraction through further destabilization of the building. Marin’s Woolworth Building, No.29 from 1912 and Woolworth Building, No.32 from 1913 are indicative examples. Marin destabilizes the building by bending its tower, yet he never loses its vertical emphasis. The importance of height and its prominence in contemporary skyscraper criticism was perhaps in the back of Marin’s mind when he created the works. In 1896, Louis Sullivan published “The Tall Building Artistically Considered,” in which he advocated for “every inch of [the skyscraper] tall. The…power of altitude,” cementing verticality as one of the skyscrapers most important aspects.[3] This view of prioritizing vertical emphasis and height in skyscraper design persisted into the twentieth century.

The move towards abstraction seen between Woolworth Building, No.29 and Woolworth Building, No.32, can be attributed to Marin’s concern for conveying his emotions through the images that he created. In the Exhibition Guide, Marin states that a photographic representation of urban life and the structures that characterize it would not be an effective way to capture his feelings – “the moving of [him]” – that were evoked by the changed cityscape.[4] It is worth considering, however, that Marin never yielded to total abstraction in his works; there is always a discernable subject. Even though the structure of the Woolworth Building is not accurate in Woolworth Building, No.32, Marin maintains the solidity of the form, so the building is destabilized, but not deconstructed.

Looking at his works, it is clear that Marin was uninterested in representing the perspective one gains from the skyscraper - that is being elevated above the rest of the city. He was primarily attracted to the view that one has of a skyscraper when one is looking at the exterior of the structure and how the tall building affects the surrounding cityscape. Given this, one can assume Marin was wholly unconcerned with what happened inside of skyscrapers (i.e. their economic functions, the people working inside) or who financed their construction, and this is interesting when one considers that the Woolworth Building is the physical manifestation of one man: Frank W. Woolworth. By subverting traditional perspective and destabilizing the building, Marin undercuts the association between the man and the building, thereby shifting the focus of the image to the urban environment.

[1] Martha Tedeschi, “John Marin’s Loaded Brush: Orchestrating the Modern American Watercolor,” in John Marin’s Watercolors: A Medium for Modernism. ed. Martha Tedeschi and Kristi Dahm. (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2010), 30.
[2] Marsden Hartley, “As to John Marin, and His Ideas,” in John Marin (New York: Museum of Modern Art by Arno Press, 1936): 16.
[3] Louis Sullivan, “The Tall Building Artistically Considered,” (1896).
[4] John Marin, The Selected Writings of John Marin. ed. Dorothy Newman (New York: Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1949), 4-5.

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