NYC Arts: Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld’s Collection
“Scenes of New York City: The Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld Collection,” is now on view at the New-York Historical Society. Art collectors and philanthropists Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld, who have had the collection in their private home, are pleased to be sharing it with a wider audience via this generous donation to the New-York Historical Society. The exhibition features many artists new to the institution, including Marc Chagall, David Hockney, Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence, Louise Nevelson, George O’Keeffe, Norman Rockwell, and Andy Warhol.
Highlights include depictions of city life. In “The Lunch Counter at S. Klein’s in Union Square in the 1930s,” ca. 1930–39, Polish-born artist Theresa Bernstein depicts the racially integrated lunch counter at a popular department store. Her work often explored the major issues of her day, from racial discrimination to unemployment and suffrage — often through the lens of women’s daily lives. Jacob Lawrence’s “Harlem Diner,” 1938, pictures struggle during the Great Depression and prefigures a composition from the artist’s watershed Migration Series. An early painting by Mark Rothko, “Untitled (The Subway),” 1937, uses the New York City subway as grounds for pictorial experimentation, presaging the abstract color fields of the artist’s mature career.
New York City landscapes offer another perspective on the city. Ben Shahn’s 1930 “Picnic, Prospect Park” applies a modernist style inspired by Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse to the Brooklyn greenspace. Françoise Gilot’s “Gingko Trees in Central Park,” 2002–04, is a vision of autumnal yellows, while Marc Chagall’s “View of Central Park from the Window,” 1958 opens from the Stanhope Hotel on Fifth Avenue onto a summer scene of the famous urban grounds and Central Park West skyline.
Also included are works from movements specifically associated with New York City, such as the Ashcan School, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art. In “Central Park, 1902, Robert Henri, founder of the Ashcan School, rejects the park’s famous landmarks to portray instead a nondescript slope, rendered in slashing brushwork and a stark urban realist style. In “Untitled (New York Times),” ca. 1976, Abstract Expressionist William de Kooning breaks the strict format of the iconic newspaper with exuberant gestural strokes. And in “Radiant Baby with AIDS Alligator,” ca. 1984, Pop artist Keith Haring suggests a primal chase between life and death. His graffiti, applied to a Bowery subway sign, exemplifies the way he used his publicly accessible art to advance awareness of the AIDS epidemic.
Accompanying many of the works on display is commentary from a variety of New Yorkers sharing their memories and impressions of the places depicted. Local residents, writers, artists, hotel staff, baseball fans, professors, and tree enthusiasts all reflect on the ever-evolving nature of the city and its landmarks. A Stuyvesant High School student describes the view of the city skyline from her school, for example, while a New York Public Library librarian recounts being welcomed to work each day by the building’s sculpted lions, Patience and Fortitude.
