John Marin - Bryant Square

John Marin - Bryant Square, 1932

I love this painting.

Bryant Square is in Midtown Manhattan, behind the NY Public Library, I passed by there many times. Actually it's named Bryant Park: the old name was Reservoir Square (the old building of the Croton Distributing Reservoir was on the place where now stands the Library). They gave it the actual name in 1884 to honor the NY Evening Post editor and abolitionist William Cullen Bryant. Well, the Evening Post was founded by Alexander Hamilton, so it's a lot of history in this place.

It was long time ago a potter's field (a graveyard for the poor). It was in the 1970's place for prostitutes, drug dealers and homeless. It was used several times by the military in the Independence War and then in the Civil War. It was the site for the World's Fair, in 1853. Manhattan has a very dense history.

I crossed Bryant Park so many times, on my way to various offices around, to leave a resume, to talk to a head-hunter; it was in the end of 2002, I was looking for a job in New York, the period was not the best one. Then, when I got the job (not in New York), I came back to Times Square and to Bryant Park, this time happy.

I was twice invited to the HBO studios, in a tower just near the Bryant Square; first time it was for a screening of Children Underground, second time for The Collector of Bedford Street; I'd tell you about each one some time. And I was once there to meet Lady D (not the one everybody knows about): she was there, in front of the Public Library, wearing an elegant fur... but this is quite a different story.

But let's go back to the painting. It has dynamism and poetry. It reminds me of a work of the Futurist Boccioni, dated 1911 (Der Lärm der Strasse dringt in das Haus). It is at the Sprengel Museum in Hannover; I saw an image of it, in a book about Contemporary Art.

Read here more explanations about the work of Marin.


(Phillips Collection)

(New York, New York)