This page was created by Parker Temple. The last update was by Ellen Dement.
Marin's Songs of Modernity
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
Parker Temple
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