NYC Photo Journal: ART: Reginald Marsh/Swing Time/Thirties New York

The Battery

There is a spectacular exhibit of 1930’s art by Reginald Marsh (also, Raphael Soyer, Isabel Bishop).

Swing Time, was at the New York Historical Society from June 21, 2013 to September 1, 2013. I was able to see the exhibit on its last day.

Reginald Marsh (1898-1954) was an American artist who focused on the mundane, the daily, the profane, the exuberant. He saw the energy and captured it in his interpretation of light by use of color and brush stroke. Some of his work reminds me of the WPA style if there is such a thing. Common at that time was the use of what I call “roundness and chunkiness” as is displayed in the human form. No super model-anorexia here. It’s the way of all flesh.

Marsh had a studio overlooking the vibrant Fourteenth street in Manhattan, the street I grew up on years after he painted the views from his window. He captured the bustle of the scenes below, and other areas of the city.

His “East Tenth Street Jungle” shows the poverty, the dregs, the sadness of people and buildings. It was the street of my library, the Tompkins Square park branch, the area that much later became the hippie hangout. The poverty and dregs changed faces. Alcohol and drugs lived on. In the background are the “gas tanks” that were prevalent along the farthest east side. The area where I grew up became a middle class development for war veterans. Stuyvesant Town, was rimmed by those overbearing rotund tanks.

Then there was the famous Coney Island where the poor flocked to the riviera of Brooklyn and were crammed like suffocating fish on the hot sand.

From movie ushers to secretaries going to work, to men ogling strippers, they were all there in Reginald Marsh’s thirties.

click on art to enlarge

Streets and Subways