Marcel Duchamp’s Nude, Ascending

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Show seen: Marcel Duchamp at MoMA

LHOOQ, or LOOK, or “She has a hot ass” on a Mona Lisa Postcard.

With all the attention on everything that came later in Marcel Duchamp’s long career, like the mustachioed Mona Lisa postcard, L.H.O.O.Q., 1919, above, the Bicycle Wheel, 1913, among many others, it’s all too easy to forget that Duchamp (1887-1968) started out as a Painter. So, it was the very rare chance to see the overview of his Paintings included in MoMA’s Marcel Duchamp, the first U.S. Retrospective show of the Artist in 50 years, that most intrigued me.

The entrance lobby. Press Previews are too early for me, so I have to wait a long time to get these shots during normal hours. When I finally get one like this, it feels like the show is open just for me. Or you. Anonymous Photographer, Broadway Photoshop, NY, Multiple Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, 1917 surrounds The Chess Game, 1910, center. Marcel Duchamp would “retire” (sort of) from Art to focus on chess, his other obsession, later in his career.

With 300 pieces spanning his 68-year career far more than Paintings were on view in one of the largest shows I’ve ever seen. After an opening gallery of early Paintings & Drawings from 1900-10 that saw the Artist “trying on” styles borrowed from Degas, Gauguin, Cézanne and others, in 1911 he embarked on something his own. In only the 2nd of 9 galleries, 3 works on its last wall stopped me in my tracks.

Out of the darkness, a wall with three Paintings that grabbed me and haven’t let go. Nude (Sketch), Sad Young Man in a Train, 1911 (Dated 1912), left, Nude Descending the Staircase, (No. 2), 1912, center, (No. 1), 1911, right. A copy of the very comprehensive Exhibition Catalogue lies on the bench.

I became obsessed with one Painting and one question, that ran incessantly through my mind over what would be 5 visits to the show, a number that would have been doubled had I not been limited by health issues-

HOW did Duchamp come up with this?-

Nude Descending a Staircase, (No. 2), 1912, Oil on canvas.

As far as I know, t’s unprecedented in Art history to 1912, and remains singular since. The only three Paintings Duchamp did in this style I know of are on that wall. Brilliantly executed, with exquisitely controlled chaos, I’d never seen anything like Nude Descending a Staircase, (No. 2). Well, except when I saw it twice before- the first time in 2005 in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, who own it, and then in 2013 in the 100th Anniversary recreation of the legendary 1913 Armory Show, which introduced it to U.S. audiences in NYC & Chicago, at the NY Historical. 13 years ago is enough distance for it to leave a fresh impression. Seeing it now in the context of his Paintings up to 1912, and the only two other works in this style, floored me. The jump between what he had been doing and this is a giant leap. It left me feeling it was, at once, a gambit raising the stakes on the Cubists, and again, one of the boldest declarations that “I have arrived!” in Art history and certainly in Modern Art history. Marcel Duchamp was 26 when he Painted it. After being rejected for inclusion in a show in Paris because he was asked to, and refused to, change its title, he allowed it to be shown at The Armory Show in 1913 where it was sold for $324.00 ($240.00 after commission).

J. F. Griswold, The Rude Descending the Staircase, Cartoon by J. F. Griswold in The New York
Evening Sun, March 20, 1913.

Being sold was one thing. The scandal its showing created was another. “An explosion in a shingle factory,” The New York Times review called it in their review of The Armory Show . Duchamp got a chuckle out of that, but WHERE was the appreciation for what he had accomplished here?

Thelma Cudlipp, The Nude Descending the Stairs, Cartoon in The Sun, April 20, 1913

No one at the time seemed to appreciate it. It’s been slow in coming since.

Consider what he was up against. In 1911, Vincent van Gogh’s star was finally rising (after his death in 1890) on the heels of the largest ever (to that point) retrospective of his work at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in 1905. Monet was busy making breakthroughs in his gardens in Giverny. Cézanne had only been dead for 5 years, his accomplishments still being absorbed, and Edgar Degas would live for 6 more years. Kandinsky finished Composition V in 1911, the first completed work in his legendary Compositions series, while Hilma af Klint toiled in obscurity mid-way towards completing her Paintings for the Temple series, 1906-15. Meanwhile, the Cubism of Picasso, Brague & Juan Gris was at its peak, and Umberto Boccioni and the so-called Futurists were obsessed with observing the modern world. Against ALL of this, Marcel Duchamp steered his own course, playing his Art “chess pieces” somewhere else, into an unoccupied space. It seems to me that he did exactly this with his work his entire career.

Checkmate.

The mechanics of movement. Detail of Nude Descending, (No. 2) of the lower middle section shows some of the ways in which Duchamp depicts movement, including the semi-circular lines to the dots in a circle, which Duchamp borrowed and was in turn borrowed by Francis Bacon. Note the functions of the black lines.

It’s very interesting that the stated materials for Nude Descending are only oil on canvas- no mention of graphite or another medium for an underdrawing. Since there’s no mention of an x-ray or any other “beneath the surface” exam on the wall card, in the exhibition catalogue or on the Philadelphia Museum of Art website, I’m left to wonder if the “underdrawing” is really the black lines all over the work. They’re exact, though purposely open-ended, helping to create the movement of the figures while outlining shapes. Still, if there is no underdrawing, it’s remarkable how well the complex composition fits on the canvas. The jarring fluidity of the figures is echoed in the staircase, the most unique set of stairs I’ve ever seen. They seem to be more Cubist than the figures. Towards the front, we see the side and the top straight on. Must be hard to walk down!

The palette brightens the standard Cubist fare somewhat, especially when seen next to Nude Descending No. 1, which was displayed here to the right of No. 2. That means visitors proceeding through the show chronologically (i.e. from left to right in my picture of the wall) saw No. 2 before No. 1¹), and the even more cryptic, Nude (Sketch), Sad Young Man in a Train, 1911 (Dated 1912), installed to the left of No. 2. For me, No. 2’s palette, which is somewhat lighter than many Cubist Paintings, emphasizes the “statement” Duchamp may have been making here that he had fully arrived as a Painter. Regarding the title, Duchamp said it was an example of “the use of words as a means of adding color… of adding to the number of colors in a work².” At least one Drawing, Once More to this Star, 1911, does precede Nude Descending (No. 1), but it seems to have little to do with the series beyond showing a figure on a staircase, though going up and facing the other way. I have not come across any others.

Cubism is static, revealing multiple sides of the same still person or object. In 1911, Duchamp set out to bring movement to Painting. In Nude Descending the Staircase (No. 2), he succeeded masterfully, one-upping the Cubists at their own game, creating something new, something entirely his own. Voices from all of the “isms” of the time rejected it. Of course they did. Marcel Duchamp was eternally beyond category.

Checkmate.

“I wanted to get away from the physical aspect of painting. I was much more interested in recreating ideas in painting.” Quoted on MoMA’s Introductory Wall Card to gallery 2.

In pondering Duchamp’s road to the Nude Descending, on the preceding walls of gallery 2 there were hints. One day, he watched a woman walking her dog, but didn’t speak to her.

Portrait (Dulcinea), 1911

This episode resulted in Portrait (Dulcinea), 1911. Unlike Dulcinea in Don Quixote, this one was real. A bit like Dante & Beatrice Portinari, the repercussions of this encounter would be enduring in his Art. Here, we see the same woman 5 times, a definite precursor to the Nude Descendings. Seeing someone multiple times is a characteristic of Film which exposes multiple emulsive frames each second.

“In 1912 … the idea of describing the movement of a nude coming downstairs while still retaining static visual means to do this, particularly interested me. The fact that I had seen chronophotographs of fencers in action and horse galloping (what we today call stroboscopic photography) gave me the idea for the Nude. It doesn’t mean that I copied these photographs. The Futurists were also interested in somewhat the same idea, though I was never a Futurist. And of course the motion picture with its cinematic techniques was developing then too. The whole idea of movement, of speed, was in the air³.”

Eadweard Muybridge’s Woman Walking Downstairs, 1887, which I edited, then reversed to mimic the direction of the figure in the Painting, while making an assumption, as I explain below.

Film was a relatively recent invention. In its early days, Eadweard Muybridge, who died in 1904, created ground-breaking movement studies, including Woman Walking Downstairs (a nude) in 1887.

I merged the 9 frames I selected in the Muybridge Film into one to see how closely it would resemble the Painting. Would Duchamp have able to do something like this in 1911 is unknown to me. Still, it doesn’t come close to what we see in the Painting, especially in the legs. It seems to me that most of the development took place in Duchamp’s mind.

Nude (Sketch), Sad Young Man in a Train, 1911 (Dated 1912).

Given their dates, at MoMA the three Paintings were not arranged chronologically (Perhaps the curators decided to flank the larger Painting with the two smaller pieces for symmetry’s sake?). I’m looking at them out of chronological order, too. It’s the other Painting besides the two Nude Descendings on this wall that has also been the subject of much controversy. What, exactly, is being shown in Nude (Sketch), Sad Young Man in a Train, 1911 (Dated 1912)? The motion has led some scholars to suggest a masturbatory significance to it⁴. Others see Duchamp, himself, as the “sad young man”- the exhibition catalogue calls it a “Self-Portrait⁵.” I haven’t been able to find any comment by the Artist on it, so its mystery remains intact, and most interesting for me as one of the few Paintings on the way to Nude Descending (No. 2) in a similar style. Like No. 2. It also includes multiple versions of the same figure, and what appears to be the main figure is brighter than the others. That hints at something else all three may have in common.

Nude Descending the Staircase (No. 1), 1911

According to the exhibition catalogue, Nude Descending (No. 1) is a “sketch” for No. 2, and (being dated 1911) was done before it, though it hangs after it in the show. Of it, the curators says, it “focuses on Duchamp’s aim of producing ‘a static representation of movement. A single upright figure, almost tentatively carrying out the action of the title, is represented in a few successive positions, rendered in a Cubist vocabulary of lines and planes of muted color⁶.” It also helps me see what may be going on in No. 2 a bit clearer. We can see the background more distinctly and the figure is somewhat more definite. It’s effective, but seen after No. 2, has nowhere near the same impact. For me, its primary value is as a stepping stone to a classic, allowing a bit of insight into how Duchamp developed his masterpiece. There is also a No. 3, however it’s a reproduction of No 2 that Duchamp hand-colored for one of his best clients, the Arensbergs, who were upset they were too slow on the trigger to acquire No. 2. It was not included in the show.

My drawing mannequin walking down some imaginary stairs, nude…

The more I looked at Nude Descending (No. 2), I couldn’t help but feel the figure in it looks somewhat like a drawing mannequin, particularly the top half of it. Somewhat. Drawing mannequins have been around for a very long time in one form or other, possibly for centuries. IF Duchamp had one, he could alter its pose to mimic a nude walking down stairs. He “could have.” I have no idea if he did.

A nude descending a staircase. *- LIFE Magazine Photo.

The other interesting thing about Nude Descending is that the commentary down through the century has assumed the figure is female. Yet, some believe the torso does not look female. “…the overall proportions of the figure and the treatment of the chest region suggest that it is, if anything, masculine. There is also the possibility of an effeminate male or a male in drag given the suggestion of a long skirt or dress and Duchamp’s later incarnation a Rrose Sélavy, his female alter ego photographed by Man Ray…⁷.” That reads like a contradiction to me.

My version of Nude Descending (No. 2) higlighting the right-most figure.

When I isolated what I believe to be the first figure in Nude Desending (No. 2 ), it looks more female to me than it does when considering the Painting as a whole, but not conclusively. I think it’s nebulous.

Marcel Duchamp descending a staircase. *- I believe this is a LIFE Magazine Photo, but I’m not sure.

The possibility that Nude (No. 2) is another Self-Portrait can’t be ruled out. I have to say that though the above Photo was taken years/decades later- of, but not by Duchamp, there is a bit of resemblance to the Painting for me. At this point, all the evidence on the identity or the sex of the subject I’ve seen is inconclusive. What’s not is that it’s a brilliant Painting.

Marcel Duchamp discussing Nude Descending (No. 2) with Art historian Henri Marceau at the Armory Show 50th Anniversary Exhibition in 1963. *- Smithsonian Photo.

“My aim was a static representation of movement, a static composition of indications of various positions taken by a form in movement—with no attempt to give cinema effects through painting. The reduction of a head in movement to a bare line seemed to me defensible⁸.”

His frustration with Nude Descending(No. 2)’s reception led to his giving up Painting, permanently! Before he did, on view in gallery 3, Duchamp created a few other important Paintings – in a completely different, yet equally remarkable style, including this one-

Bride, Oil on Canvas, 1912. I can’t help but think Duchamp’s good friend, Francis Picabia went to school on it.

It also stopped me and gave me much to think about. In Bride, 1912, Duchamp has taken Nude Descending one step further. Gone is the, apparent, physical movement of the figure/Bride, in its place it’s replaced by what’s taking place in the mind and state of being. This image would become the central image in his legendary work, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (Even), aka The Large Glass, 1915-23, which was not included in the MoMA show being permanently installed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (where I saw it in 2005). As brilliant as Bride is, it’s apparently a study for The Large Glass. “The work can be viewed as ‘nature’ exposed or stripped bare by the scientific male gaze; this of course looks back to the voyeuristic theme of Dulcinea, but also, more importantly, anticipates The Large Glass as, literally, the Bride stripped bare by her Bachelors⁹ Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy, Box in a Valise. I counted at least 10 different Box in a Valises created between 1935 and 1941 in the show. It’s a bit ironic that Duchamp is the subject of a large museum Retrospective in NYC & Philly. He questioned the value of museums at one point, and created these as a “substitute.” Eventually, he came around and decided museums would be a good home for his oeuvre. He chose the Philadelphia Museum of Art. As part of his Boxes, Nude Descending (No. 2) got another life, as here where it is seen in a reproduction in the foldout left wing. He collaborated with the legendary Box genius, Joseph Cornell, on some of these.[/caption]

Thinking about the rest of the show, it seems to me that Marcel Duchamp spent his very long career bringing his favorite non-Art pastime, chess, to his work: he continually played chess with the Art world. He continually made gambits, moving his (Art) pieces where Art wasn’t. He also had serious questions regarding the viability of museums. Yet, he maintained a relationship with MoMA’s founding curator, Alfred Barr, who showed his work there early on, and MoMA helped Duchamp emigrate from Nazi Europe to the U.S. in 1941. Duchamp also guided his devoted collectors, Louise and Walter Arensberg to leave their large collection to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1950, creating the world’s largest Duchamp holdings. It seems to me that in the end, Duchamp relaized museums were his best chance at maintaiing indefinite visibility. Marcel Duchamp at MoMA, and soon to open in Philadelphia, is proving him right.

As I walked through the rest of the show I couldn’t shake the sadness I felt that Duchamp, who’s Art career would continue for another FIFTY-SIX years after Nude (No.2), was no longer Painting.

“Symbolist traces may well have contributed to the unfavourable reception of Nude Descending a Staircase, (No.2) when Duchamp entered it for the Cubist-dominated Salon des Indépendants in March 1912. Albert Gleizes, a key figure in the Puteaux Cubist group and chairman of the hanging committee, asked Duchamp’s brothers to persuade him at least to change the title. Duchamp refused to do so and withdrew the picture. Although the work was shown in October of that year at the ‘Salon de la Section d’Or’ exhibition in Paris, and was later the succès de scandale at the International Exhibition of Modern Art, known as the Armory Show, in New York in 1913, Duchamp took the rejection badly¹⁰.”

“His lack of faith in the supposed open-mindedness of the self-appointed avant-garde, which manifested itself most obviously in the 1917 Fountain hoax (a porcelain urinal sent as an exhibit), can be dated from this event¹¹.” Fed up with the reaction Nude Descending (No. 2) received, he turned his back on Painting, assumed another identity and created this in 1917-

Fountain, 1950 (replica, after lost 1917 original), Porcelain urinal

I don’t blame him.

As the 9 galleries of his work at MoMA showed, the world gained, perhaps, THE most influential Artist of the 20th century not named Picasso, but it lost what might have been one of its greatest Painting careers far too early.

“Watch yourself, skeleton, the museum will find you
all down the staircase, the first place you fell in love.” *

Special Thanks to Lana Hatten for research assistance.

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “Stairs” by Joy Again from Forever, 2014.

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Had I been curating, I would have put Nude Descending (No. 1) first, (No. 2) in the middle, andNude (Sketch), Sad Young Man in a Train, 1911 (Dated 1912) on the right. ↩
ibid, P.87 ↩
Katherine Kuh, Marcel Duchamp, Interview broadast on the BBC, March 29, 1961. ↩

Ashton, etc., World of Art: Marcel Duchamp, P.51 ↩

Marcel Duchamp, MoMA, P.86 ↩

ibid, p.86. ↩

Ashton, etc., World of Art: Marcel Duchamp, P.56. ↩

Peter Brooker, Andrew Thacker, Geographies of Modernism, 2005 ↩

Ashton, etc., World of Art: Marcel Duchamp, P.70.”
“But, the damage had been done. “Immediately I wanted to change. The idea was to change; not to repeat myself.” Quoted on a MoMA Wall Card.

So, after painting a Mural to hang over a client’s bookcase, this incredibly gifted Painter would Paint no more. He turned his attention to, well, everything else. After the Bride Stripped Bare, he invented the Readymades, which have achieved legendary status and. become incalculably influential.

[caption id=”attachment_33864″ align=”aligncenter” width=”849″ ↩

World of Art: Marcel Duchamp, P. 56. ↩

ibid. ↩

Posted on September 19, 2026September 19, 2026 by Kenn Sava Posted in Art, Joy Again, Marcel Duchamp, MoMA, NYC, NYC Art Shows, NYC Art Shows 2026, Painting & Drawing Tagged 2026 Art Shows, Duchamp, MoMA, Nude Descending, NYC Art Shows

Ten Seconds With Alfred Schnittke

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited).

What’s in a signature? One from 1988 has kept me thinking about it for 38 years.

Modern & Contemporary Classical Music may not be among the most popular genres of Music, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t include extraordinary people. Still, it’s quite a bit more popular today than it has been for most of my life. It’ll never be mainstream, but as I’ve sold off my Music collection these past 10 years to keep this site going, I’ve met a lot of its passionate fans, which is refreshing to see. One thing I won’t be selling is a yellowed, 38 year-old section of a Sunday New York Times signed for me by one of it’s most important figures.

A treasured possession for 38 years. My copy of the May 22, 1988 New York Times Arts & Leisure section, signed for me by the late Alfred Schnittke, who was too engrossed in Composing to care about his tie.

Imagine meeting Beethoven, Brahms, or even J.S. Bach? Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998), who may have been the last 20th century Composer in that line that pre-dates Bach, is the closest I’ll come to meeting someone whose name can be, and most given the fact that Mr. Schnittke composed a Cadenza for Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D, Op.61 (which can be heard online), is¹.

The first paragraph of the article to the left of the picture that is now signed, shown above. I also admire Cage, Ligeti and especially Olivier Messiaen (1908-92).

Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) was a German/Russian/then German again, 20th Century Composer, who created an extensive body of astonishing Orchestral work, Chamber Music, about 70 Film Scores, and an Opera.

Alfred Schnittke, left, acknowledging an endless standing ovation after a performance of his Violin Concerto No. 4 with the great violinist, and one of the earliest Schnittke champions, Gidon Kremer, right. Screenshot. Location & date unknown. Such was the interest in this concert, the audience was shown completely filling all the aisles! That leads me to believe it was in the USSR.

Set the way-back machine for May 22, 1988. I was relatively new to his Music then (though I know enough 38 years later to realize that I’ve still only scratched the surface of it), but I was very taken with it the very first time I heard it. That Sunday, I read that one of his works, his Piano Sonata, was being premiered as part of an All-Schnittke concert at the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in an article titled “An Eclectic Mix, Through a Contemporary Prism.” in that Sunday Times Arts & Leisure section. I called for tickets and went with a few adventurous friends.

Inside Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium looking out from the stage. I’ve noted the approximate seating locations of Mr. Schnittke & myself that night in May, 1988. *- Metropolitan Museum Photo.

Our seats were in the balcony. During the 1st part of the concert, which was all Chamber Music (his Quasi una Sonata, 1968, for violin & piano, Piano Quintet, 1972-76, and the String Trio, 1985, were performed), I was surprised to notice the Composer, sitting by himself right of center a few rows from the stage. He was a bit hard to miss, even from the back at a distance. Wearing a dark suit, he had distinctive long straight dark hair, not unlike that of George Harrison or Ringo Starr of The Beatles in the late 1960s, circa Abbey Road. Mr. Schnittke (who was considered a Musical “extremist” by the powers that be in the USSR) was someone who was always up to date on the latest in Music around the world. I’ve often wondered if his hairstyle of the time was a Beatle influence, especially with what we know now of their importance as a cultural force in ending the USSR. Nevertheless, his presence at this concert was something of a shock, as I’ll get into. The article didn’t mention he’d be here.

The hall had about half-emptied as the audience decamped to the lobby during the intermission between halves. Mr. Schnittke was still sitting alone. What I heard in the first half affirmed my initial feelings about his Music, so I grabbed that Arts & Leisure section and a pen and decided to go down there. Gulp. Completely out of character for me at the time. Downstairs, the path down the aisle was relatively clear, leaving me to gather my nerve and my thoughts. Though it felt like an out of body experience, I remember thinking ummm…what was I going to say to him? I don’t speak Russian, and only a few words in German. “Gutte abend, Herr Schnittke.” Then what? When I got to about 15 feet of his row, I suddenly realized I wasn’t as alone as I thought I was. Dark shapes were moving in behind me, and then around me. Men in black suits. Just before they reached me, I reached Mr. Schnittke’s row.

Without saying a word, I reached in, extended my right hand and arm, holding The Times article with his Photo facing up, with a pen tucked into my thumb. The shapes around me seemed to stop. Luckily, Mr. Schnittke turned to his right, glanced up at me, saw my arm with the newspaper, and reached up and took it. No words had been said. He pulled it down, and signed it. With difficulty.

My heart sank. I had imposed on him, and felt terrible that this uniquely & incredibly gifted man was having such difficulty simply writing his name! I had walked down that aisle smack dab into the middle of something, and someone’s life, that I couldn’t even begin to imagine.

In the days, months, and 38 years that followed, I’ve learned much more. Alfred Schnittke had overcome more than most of us can imagine to be sitting in that seat in Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium that evening.

Though his star continues to rise, this is the work that may yet make Alfred Schnittke a household name. His homage to times past in his gorgeous “Suite in the Old Style” performed here in its arrangement for Chamber Orchestra by the WDR Symphony Orchestra and Andris Poga on Jan. 15, 2021. Though an outlier compared to much of his Music, it reveals a mastery of what had come before, something he seamlessly assimilated into the rest of his work.

“To tell the truth, even though I was his friend, I did not know that he was capable of such careful and interesting analysis, that he had such a profound insight into the music of other composers, and that he found in it so many regular features that were hidden from others,” Mstislav Rostropovich ²

In 1985, just 3 years earlier, he suffered a stroke that left him clinically dead, more than once! Yet, he managed to recover and get back to composing, and one of the first pieces he finished, after 3 years of work on it, was the Piano Sonata (now known as Piano Sonata No 1) which received its World Premiere that night by Vladimir Feltsman, for who Mr. Schnittke composed it as a gift³, mere minutes after he signed my newspaper. It’s gone on to become part of the repertoire and has received a number of recordings. Seeing how hard it was for him to sign his name, I wondered how hard it must have been for him to write such complex Music at a time before the assistance of computer Music Composition software!

Hard enough as all of that must have been. There was much more.

Those men in black suits who had begun to surround me might have been KGB or some other security force whose job it was to make sure Mr. Schnittke didn’t escape and seek asylum. It tuned out that the Soviet Composer’s Union (who had previously banned his Symphony No. 1, 1969-74), had banned him from traveling outside of the USSR in 1980. So, being allowed to attend a foreign premiere of one of his pieces in 1988 must have been a recent development, making attending the Premiere of his Piano Sonata a new thing for him. Though it was a sign that things were changing for Soviet Composers, Musicians & Artists, those men in black reminded me the oppression he had lived & Composed under for decades wasn’t over. This was, most likely, his first visit to NYC (though others of Alfred Schnittke’s foreign visits are mentioned, there is nothing about this visit in Cellist & Conductor Alexander Ivashkin’s Alfred Schnittke biography⁴ A glow-in-the-dark FALLOUT SHELTER sign around the corner from me seen at night in November, 2023. After as long as it’s probably been there, I sure hope I never need it.[/caption]

Though I had read Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, I knew nothing about the reality of life in the USSR for every day people, beyond what we imagined here in the U.S., during what was then still the Cold War. I knew that Shostakovich & Prokofiev had faced constant pressure to conform to State expectations, but little more. I can’t name a Soviet Painter from the Post-War generation after Malevich & Lissitzky. I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was DAMN scary for a little kid, taught to “duck & cover” under my school desk (never mind it was right next to a wall of 5 foot tall glass windows), as a means of “surviving” an atomic bomb. Even in 2026, I still spot rusted and faded “FALLOUT SHELTER” signs in my neighborhood and around town, an eerie reminder that the danger hasn’t completely gone away and there’s not much one can really do to “protect” her or hisself from it.

Ban this! A box set of the ten Symphonies Afred Schnittke managed to complete in spite of it all. Released by the European BIS label in 2009, it’s the first and only set of his Symphonies on record thus far. He didn’t live to complete his 9th Symphony, so the recording included here is a 2006 “construction.”

Dimitri Shostakovich died in 1975. I had no idea what the situation was for Composers, Artists & Musicians after him, until I began reading Alexander Ivashkin’s Schnittke biography, the only one done on him thus far. In addition to the intractable Soviet Composer’s Union (as if that wasn’t ENOUGH to deal with), Mr. Schnittke’s health continued to decline.

Many of the leading Soviet Musicians of his time championed & commissioned work from Alfred Schnittkel, which enabled him to survive & continue. Here he is with two of them- the legendary cellist & conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, left, and the great violist Yuri Bashmet, right, circa 1988 or 1990. From a Schnittke/Bashmet/Rostropovich CD Booklet.

In 1990, less than two years after he signed my newspaper, he emigrated to Hamburg, Germany, where he taught and continued to Compose, but he suffered yet more stokes. His last stroke paralyzed his right side. He continued to compose, writing with his left hand. On August 3, 1998, he passed away at just 63, a little more than 10 years after my brief encounter with him.

One of the first CDs of Alfred Schnittke’s Music, recorded in the USSR, and released by a USSR record label in 1984 on LP then on CD in 1990. Especially after his Symphony No. 1 was banned, it’s absolutely amazing to me, and a testament to his passion & dedication, that Mr. Schnittke persevered and continued to create such daring and creative Music, AND got it heard, performed & recorded in the USSR!

Today, I see so much more when I look at that old newspaper. I see that NOTHING stopped Alfred Schnittke.
-Not having his Symphony No. 1 effectively banned by the Composer’s Union. He went on to Compose 9 more. According to Alexander Ivashkin’s Alfred Schnittke biography, today, Symphony No. 1 is “still one of his most important works,⁵.”
-Not being banned from traveling outside the USSR. Other Artists, including Gidon Kremer, Mstislav Rostropovich, Oleg Kagan, and Mark Lubotsky commissioned Music from him (which helped him survive), then performed it throughout the world. (His wife, the brilliant pianist Irina Schnittke, continued to champion, perform & record his work after his death.)
-Not the stroke he suffered in 1995, from which he “came back from the dead” to finish the Piano Sonata I heard premiered that night. The same night he persevered to sign my newspaper.
-Finally, not the subsequent strokes he suffered that didn’t stop him from Composing right to his death in 1998. Schnittke scholar Gerard McBurney feels that it is the works he Composed over this last decade (including his Fourth Quartet, 6th, 7th & 8th Symphonies) “that will ultimately be the most influential parts of Schnittke’s output ⁶.”

I came think that sitting alone in Grace Rainey Rogers that May night must have been a moment of sheer triumph for him.

Perhaps that taste of freedom was enough to convince him to finally emigrate to Hamburg, at last escaping the tyrannies of the USSR and the Composer’s Union.

With Princess Diana. *-Date, place & Photographer unknown. From gold.ac.uk

In spite of ALL of that, he left us an extraordinary amount of Music. As I write, Discogs lists 376 releases of his Music on LP or CD, while the Ivashkin-Schnittke Archives currently lists 152 Schnittke CDs. IMDB lists him as a Composer on 79 Films. Among them are at least two that are considered classics- The Commissar, 1967, and Larisa Sheptiko’s final Film, The Ascent, 1977. Those early years writing Film scores gave him fluency with an extremely wide range of Musical styles that formed the basis of his own Compositions. Film Composing also paid his bills until he could get his other Music heard.

“Each of us has the right to experiment,” Igor Stravinsky, defending himself against a critical article in Pravda, the Soviet newspaper ⁷. Stravinsky was, perhaps, the Composer Alfred Schnittke studied the closest, particularly Stravinsky’s harmony.

Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso No. 1 is, perhaps, more like most of his Music than Suite in the Old Style heard earlier. Performed live here by Gidon Kremer & Tatiana Gridenko, violins, the two Artists who premiered it in 1977, and the Kremerata Baltica in Moscow in 2004, on the 70th anniversary of Schnittke’s birth.

Alfred Schnittke’s Music is something of a logical conclusion to the Western Classical Tradition to this point. What I mean is that Mr. Schnittke was a voracious student of Music history- especially Contemporary Music history- he lectured & wrote about it. Now, it was hard in the West in the 1970s and 80s to hear cutting edge Contemporary Classical Music. There were few recordings, and it wasn’t played on the radio or performed in concerts all that often. To hear it in the USSR, where much of it was forbidden. was many fold more difficult. Still, Mr. Schnittke heard it and brought elements of it into his work. But he didn’t stop there. He invented a style which he called “Polystylism,” “which juxtaposed and combined music of various styles past and present⁸.” Of it he said-

‘”It is not just eclecticism for its own sake,” he explains. ”When I use elements of, say, Baroque music, I do it not simply because I want to juxtapose different styles, but because I feel it’s what I have to do in the piece at hand. Sometimes I’m tweaking the listener. And sometimes I’m thinking about earlier music as a beautiful way of writing that has disappeared and will never come back; and in that sense, it has a tragic feeling for me. I see no conflict in being both serious and comic in the same piece. In fact, I cannot have one without the other. They are two sides of the same consciousness,”‘ Mr. Schnittke says in the NY Times article he signed.

As a result, his Music has a way of summing up our times and what has come before.

Alfred Schnittke being allowed to come to NYC in May, 1988 might have been a sign that the USSR was about to end, which it did three and a half years later. Perhaps his perseverance & dedication played a small part in that in some way. That endless standing ovation after the aisle-filling Violin Concerto No. 4 performance I mentioned earlier, was an indication of how very popular Alfred Schnittke had become in the late days of the USSR.

”He is one of the greatest humanists who ever worked in the art of music,” former NY Philharmonic Music Director & conductor Kurt Masur said⁹.

What’s in a signature? My entire encounter with Alfred Schnittke lasted maybe 10 seconds, but 38 years later it continues to speak to me. On this yellowed page I see his determination to overcome everything life threw at him to leave the world the incredibly special gift of his unique Music. He also left us his example. Without saying a word to me, Mr. Schnittke has helped me gain strength to continue doing what I need to do, in spite of the difficulties, illnesses and ailments I’ve had to deal with (things everyone has to deal with). I hope he was pleased that someone so far from home responded to his Music enough to approach him for his autograph.

Kenn Sava at the entrance to Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium (which looks exactly as it did in May, 1988), at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, holding a copy of Alexander Ivashkin’s Alfred Schnittke biography, April 13, 2026. My thanks to the kind lady who took this.

This piece is my small way of paying Alfred Schnittke back, and paying him forward, for his kindness to a total stranger one night in May, 1988. I hope spending time getting to know him rewards you, too.

*- Soundtrack for this piece is Alfred Schnittke’s “Suite in the Old Style,” heard above.

This piece is dedicated to Mirek Goraj, another survivor & the resident tech genius at the Aperture Foundation, for his undying support of NighthawkNYC, for getting the site migrated to a new host so all of you can read it for the next 4 years, for getting my computer up and running, and, especially, for his friendship that I can’t live without through thick and thin lo these past two decades.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free since 2015! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate securely by PayPal below to allow me to continue. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art books & Music from my collection!
Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.
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It is the cadenza Gidon Kremer performs when he performs Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. ↩

quoted in “Foreword by Mstislav Rostropovich,” in A Schnittke Reader by Alexander Ivashkin, P.vii ↩

Gavin Dixon, The Routledge Handbook of the Music of Alfred Schnittke, P. 246 ↩

I highly recommend Alexander Ivashkin’s recording Alfred Schnittke: Complete Works for Cello & Piano performed with the great pianist, Irina Schnittke, Alfred’s wife. An absolutely brilliant recording.), and quite possibly his only visit here.
[caption id=”attachment_33047″ align=”aligncenter” width=”640″ ↩

Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke, P.123 ↩

https://schnittke.org/en/index.html ↩

Quoted in “Foreword by Mstislav Rostropovich,” in A Schnittke Reader by Alexander Ivashkin, ibid. ↩

https://www.schnittke.org/en/index.html ↩

NY Times, April 12, 2000 ↩

Posted on August 2, 2026August 28, 2026 by Kenn Sava Posted in Alfred Schnittke, Metropolitan Museum, Music Tagged Alfred Schnittke

NighthawkNYC.com Is 11 !!!

This site is Free & Ad-Free!
If you find this piece worthwhile, please donate via PayPal to support it & independent Art writing.
Other ways to support it at the end. Thank you!

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava.

Banner 89, July 15, 2026. Eddie’s Cafe is engulfed by the throngs of people celebrating the Knicks Championship, June 13th, less than an hour after they won on the corner of West 28th Street & 7th Avenue, 4 short blocks from Madison Square Garden, as close as I could get. What better way to honor Year 11 of NighthawkNYC.com than by honoring the most joyous moment I’ve experienced in all my years in NYC.

Another challenging year is in the books, but I’m still here! A torn meniscus in October and then Baastrup’s disease (in May) left me with very limited mobility and debilitating pain for a few weeks each. A concussion in February brought post-concussion syndrome that went on for 2 months in between. My thanks to Dr. Kavita Sharma, who somehow got me back to being able to walk, Dr. Kimberly Peters, and Dr. Robert Kaufman for his ongoing treatment. Without them, I wouldn’t have been able to see the shows I did manage to see in 2026 (let alone get to the food store). Most importantly, I was able to see the once-in-a-lifetime, 8 years in-the-making, Raphael: Sublime Poetry at The Metropolitan Museum of Art six times (normally, I would have made twice or three times as many visits). I’m very grateful to have been able to see as much as I did in Year 11, and I’m looking forward to sharing it with you.

Was it you? If you blinked, you missed it! June 8, 2026. I retired it a few days later as the number continued to climb.

Meanwhile, during Year 11, NHNYC welcomed its 200,000 visitor on June 8th, a number that has now reached 218,000, as readership continues to climb for the 11th straight year. Also I was, and am, very pleased to have introduced the first-ever guest writer, Lana Hattan, to the site she pushed me to start in 2014!

Meeting Bella. May 15, 2015.

Her interview with Marc Chagall’s granddaughter, the renowned Floral Artist Bella Meyer, is part of her ongoing research into the life & work of Mark Chagall, and has never previously been published. I’m thrilled to have “Marc Chagall’s Granddaughter: An Artist In Her Own Right” here. The response to it has been very gratifying for both of us.
While this is the first time her writing has appeared on these epages, it is not the first time her work has been seen here! In 2018, I published the Video she directed of the legendary People’s Art School in Vitebsk, Belarus, what had just been restored, where Marc Chagall was the school’s first director. He hired Kashmir Malevich & El Lissitzky & Yehuda Penn (his former teacher) to teach at the school. While they were there, Malevich founded Suprematism, one of the most influential Art movements of the 20th century. I published her Video here. Then, in 2025, Lana graciously allowed me to publish Photos she took at the Guggenheim Museum blockbuster Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, in 2018, which I published in my piece on Hilma, here. Finally, the Hattan Group, who work with Lana, were able to attend the Raymond Pettibon show, Raymond Pettiboyn: The Cloyd o’ Misreadyng, at the Garage in Moscow(!) in 2017 and Photograph it for me, enabling me to write about it, which I did, here. Everyone who has read any of those pieces owes her their thanks, as do I.

Roses by CJ Hendry at her Flower Market 2.0 Rockefeller Center, September, 2025.

Without a doubt, my most popular piece of Year 11 is “CJ Hendry: Color Pencil Mastery to Art SuperStar,” which has quickly risen to being one of my top 5 most-read pieces ever! I chalk it up to the fact that there hasn’t really been much written about her to date, in spite of her achieving “super star” status. (I believe I was the first one to say she has!)

Christine Sun-Kim: All Day All Night, Whitney Museum, 2025

With limited mobility, I spent much of the year trying to catch up on the 4 great blockbuster shows from Summer, 2025, which kept me busy for most of the rest of 2025 and in to 2026. Important shows by, Christine Sun-Kim,

Amy Sherald, Breonna Taylor, 2020 Oil on linen.

Amy Sherald,

With Lana Hattan at Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, the most recent show we’ve been able to see together. Guggenheim Museum, New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2018. My Thanks for the woman who approached us and insisted she take our picture. Cosmic!

Hilma af Klint and

Installation view of the entrance to Jack Whitten: The Messenger.

Jack Whitten were all featured in Year 11.

Sharing a street with the immortal Jimi Hendrix mere steps from his Electric Lady Studios, OG Anunoby is now a legend in NYC. July 12, 2026.

Then, what took place in NYC late on June 13th was something the likes of which I’ve never seen or experienced here. Ever! Having lived through prior championships by the Yankees, the Giants, the Cosmos(!), the Rangers, and the Knicks (in 1973), including being at the Championship winning games for the Yankees in 1999 and the Rangers in 1994, and seeing the Champion Knicks in the 1973 playoffs, NONE of that, or even NYC on 9/11 (in a completely different way, of course) prepared me for what I experienced that night and in the 2 months preceding June 13th. It left me wondering why so many people had such a huge reaction to it and related to it so intensely. Part of my series of pieces on extraordinary events in NYC, my take is “Living the Dream: The Knicks & New York City.”

A highlight from Year 11. Carmen Bambach at her show, Raphael: Sublime Poetry, Metropolitan Museum, April 14, 2026.

Knee deep in the depths of Raphael: Sublime Poetry on April 14th, I was shocked to realize the curator, Met Museum legend Carmen Bambach, was standing next to me! The curator of three of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen (having seen all three multiple times, to my mind Raphael may be her ultimate achievement), I swallowed hard and summoned the courage to speak with her. That story, and much more, in the piece (possibly another of my series of pieces on one show, which I’ve never seen anyone else do) that I’m hoping to write with your support. Here, in a Drawing that Raphael gifted to the great Albrecht Durer(!), Ms Bambach points out a Sonnet Raphael wrote on the lower right section of the piece, which circles back to the title she chose for the show, “Raphael: Sublime Poetry” in more ways than one!

Oh! I’m pleased to announce that there’s a new edition of my ever-popular NHNYC Banner Retrospective now titled “11 Years of NighthawkNYC.com Banners,” which includes the latest one you see up top.

For an even further look back at NighthawkNYC.com see my 10th Anniversary piece, for a Retrospective of the first 10 years of Nighthawknyc.com!

As always, Thank You for reading my pieces, and Thanks especially to those of you who have donated or purchased items from my collections to enable me to continue. Last week, your donations enabled me to renew the web hosting for NighthawkNYC.com for the next four years! Everyone reading this owes you their thanks.

I am extremely proud & pleased to say NighthawkNYC.com made it to Year 11 being 100% FREE & AD-FREE! How rare is that today? I now need your help to continue to add to the site and cover 2026 shows including the aforementioned Raphael: Sublime Poetry, which closed and became part of history on June 28th. More on the various ways you can help at the end, with my Thanks in advance.

So, The Universe willing- ONWARD to Year 12!
Kenn.

For Lana, my rock, who told me repeatedly that I would get through it all this year.

*-Soundtrack for this piece is “Two of Us,” by Lennon & McCartney as recorded by The Beatles on Let It Be, a song Sir Paul says he wrote about himself and soon-to-be-wife, Linda Eastman. It’s seen & heard here in their Official Video, with appearances by Linda & Yoko Ono)-

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free since 2015! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate securely by PayPal below to allow me to continue. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art books & Music from my collection!
Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.
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Posted on July 15, 2026August 2, 2026 by Kenn Sava Posted in About Me, Art, Christine Sun Kim, CJ Hendry, Guest Writers, Lana Hattan, Painting & Drawing, Raphael, The Beatles Tagged NighthawkNYC, Nighthawknyc.com

11 Years of NighthawkNYC.com Banners

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If you find this piece worthwhile, please donate via PayPal to support it & independent Art writing.
Other ways to support it at the end. Thank you!

By Kenn Sava, with a tip of my Fedora to Edward Hopper.

Having run, on average, 4 banners a year these past 11 years, here’s a look back at what you saw when you looked above what I’ve written here since July 15, 2015: the NighthakwkNYC.com Banners I’ve run from Day 1.

Speaking of Day 1, July 15, 2015…Remember this?

Banner #1. July 15, 2015. Location- Somewhere Downtown, late. My adaptation of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, 1942, into a “Self-Portrait,” as I said, here. My piece on decades of looking for the site of the REAL Nighthawks Diner, which remains my most popular piece ever, is here.

Banner #2 – NighthawkNYC Version 2.0 in honor of the First Anniversary, July 15, 2016, I decided to create my own version.

Banner #40b – My working file since July, 2016. The blue lines are the ghosts of all the layers that have been added to this image its first eight years! There are so many on it now, you can’t make out me or the cafe! Some of them are seen below…

Banner #3. Night flowers. In summer, 2023, this Deli became a cannabis shop…

Banner #4 – Outside Ai Weiwei’s powerful show Laundromat on the Refugee Crisis

Banner #5 – Chelsea, February, 2017. Seeing this reminded me of my boxed-in upbringing, as I wrote in my 10th Anniversary of Cancer treatment piece. This space is now the location of the Hauser & Wirth mega-gallery.

Banner #6 – The High Line, March, 2017. January, February and early March are the only times I’ll hit the High Line, which is too crowded the rest of the year. I’ve still never been to Hudson Yards (15 blocks behind me here). By choice.

Banner #7 – The Strand Bookstore, minutes after closing, December, 2017, back when it closed at 10:30pm every night. Not at 9pm as it does now!

Banner #8 – Madison Square, January, 2018

Banner #8 – Unpublished experiment featuring my dear friends, the Birdies from my “On The Fence” series, seen on their infamous perch on West 24th Street.

Banner #11 – The Entrance to Michelangelo at The Met, February, 2018. Behind the screen is the faux scaffolding for the Sistine Ceiling section.

Banner #18 – Hell’s Kitchen, March, 2018

Banner #21 – 7th Avenue, April, 2018. A sort of “nighthawks” at the all-night coffee house…

Banner #23 – 18th Street, May, 2018

Banner #11 – The steam pipe explosion on 5th Avenue. Looking uptown from 5th Avenue and 18th Street to the Empire State Building as repairs to the surrounding buildings damaged by the explosion continues, July 26, 2018.

Banner #22 – Meatpacking District, September, 2018,

Banner #25 – Live on the D Train, November, 2018

Banner #32 – March, 2019, West 19th Street. My banner as it was before everything hit the fan. I ran this one longer than any other so far.

Banner #32a – March 22, 2020. The covid shutdown is a week old. I’m home, like everyone else.

Banner #32b – July 20, 2020. NighthawkNYC.com is 5 years old! Restaurants & cafes are allowed to open for take out and delivery orders, only.

Banner #34 – Unpublished experiment in response to everything being boarded up here. It showed a lack of trust in the community, their customers, which angered me when I was living with all of it, so I made it as a joke but didn’t run it.

May 3, 2021 – The vaccine has kicked in and I’ve returned after a year away from the banner. At least to Eddie’s Cafe. I had yet to go inside any other restaurant.

Banner 32c – NighthawkNYC.com is 6! July, 2021. Twyla’s quote still fits.

Banner #26 – With Richard Estes Double Self-Portrait, May, 2022.

Banner #27 – Parking Eddie’s Cafe in the middle of 6th Avenue in the Flatiron facing south, June, 2022, One World Trade Center next to my left ear. Working on that logo!

If you had told me at a number of points this past year, I’d be hanging a “7 Years” Banner, I’d have seriously doubted it!

August, 2022. On East 42nd Street.

October, 2022. From Chelsea Piers looking south.

February, 2023. Sunset from Hudson River Park.

June 9, 2023. Edward Hopper’s New York Corner, 1913, one of my favorites in Edward Hopper’s New York, my obsession at the time, at the Whitney Museum.

July 15, 2023. NighthawkNYC.com turns 8 years old!

August 28, 2023- Pondering Rod Penner’s 212/House with Snow, 1998. The 31st Banner I’ve run.

September 22nd, 2023. The view from the MoMA/PS1 Courtyard, LIC, NY, in 20022.

December 17, 2023. Looking north on 5th Avenue. Views of the Empire State Building from the south are disappearing due to new construction. Here, the building is partially hidden by a new tower going up just to the right of it in this view. Oh, and I was named a Finalist for the 2023 Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Award.

January 27, 2024. Slowly getting back on my feet after a bad illness, this harkens back to my late summer trips to the Guggenheim to see Sarah Sze: Timelapse.

March 8, 2024. Banner 51- Trees in Clement Moore Park, February, 2024. Finally back on my feet after a rough six-week illness, this picture captured how I was feeling.

April 9, 2024. Kobra’s Mural on 10th Avenue, his idea of a “Mount Rushmore” for the Chelsea Art District which it directly faces. I’m not sure who would be on my Art Mt. Rushmore. Who’s on yours?

July 15, 2024. Banner 60- NighthawkNYC.com is 9! Yes, this is influenced by Ed Ruscha’s Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights, 1962, which was on display at MoMA’s Ed Ruscha/Now Then, subject of my 3-part series on it.

September 4, 2024, the day I was diagnosed with ovid for the first time, a look at better times. Here I am living a dream, taking the place of my alter-ego in this fabulous recreation of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks Diner, which I wrote about here. I named this site after that guy in the Painting that no one ever talks about (a “nighthawk.” The Painting is titled Nighthawks). My thanks to the iconic Lucas for the coffee and convo and Nilo for the priceless pic. By the way! The frame is the ACTUAL frame that housed Nighthawks when I saw it last at Hopper Drawing at the old Whitney in 2013!

September 27, 2024- Unable to find a way to survive financially from writing, I announced on Instagram that I was taking a break from Art writing. I left 3 pieces unfinished including my NoteWorthy Art & PhotoBooks of the 21st Century (thus far) pieces.

April 16, 2025- The “Golden Oof,” named for my Avatar, the statuette I’ve had made for my NoteWorthy Art & PhotoBook Lists perched on my picture of the Brooklyn Bridge shot from the Brooklyn side before the pandemic. This Oof is for my NoteWorthy Art & PhotoBooks of the 21st Century (thus far) pieces. After six months of hard work, this banner honors my Art Book piece FINALLY being published today.

June 15, 2025- Banner 64a marks the completion of two pieces that took 9 months of hard work built on 25 years of equally hard looking. The twin “Golden Oofs” fly over a fiery sunset Photo by my Muse, Lana Hattan, 2025.

July 15, 2025. Banner 65 marks 10 Years of NighthawkNYC.com! With the actual frame of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, again!

That makes it 41 banners I’ve run- about 4 a year. It turns out to have been a bit of a circuitous journey, with my getting to live out my dream seen in Banner #1 ten years ago.

January 28, 2026. Banner 86. A new year brings the return of my original drawing in the Hopper Nighthawks frame this time.

Banner 87, June 8, 2026. If you blinked, you missed it! I went back to Banner 86 a few days later as the count rose.

The site welcomed its 200,000th visitor on June 8th! Since the number quickly passed 210,000, I felt it had served its purpose in commemorating a moment in time, so I retired it.

Banner 89, July 15, 2026. Eddie’s Cafe is engulfed by the throngs of people celebrating the Knicks Championship, June 13th, less than an hour after they won on the corner of West 28th Street & 7th Avenue, 4 short blocks from Madison Square Garden, as close as I could get. What better way to honor Year 11 of NighthawkNYC.com than by honoring the most joyous moment I’ve experienced in all my years in NYC.

To commemorate Year 11, I superimposed a shot I took late on the night of June 13th right after the Knicks won the NBA Championship to honor the spontaneous outpouring of emotion, the likes of which I’ve never seen here. It was immortalized on a New Yorker cover, and I wrote a piece about it pondering why, here.

Until next July 15th, Universe willing, my Thanks to all those who’ve seen one of them, most of them, even all of them along the way!

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “I Contain Multitudes,” by Bob Dylan from Rough and Rowdy Ways, 2020

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free since 2015! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate securely by PayPal below to allow me to continue. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art books & Music from my collection!
Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.
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Posted on July 15, 2026July 30, 2026 by Kenn Sava Posted in About Me Tagged Banners, NighthawkNYC

Living The Dream: The Knicks & New York City

This site is Free & Ad-Free!
If you find this piece worthwhile, please donate via PayPal to support it & independent Art writing.
Other ways to support it at the end. Thank you!

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited)

Basketball in NYC is old school. Boys’ High School Bulletin, #7, May 4, 1898! *- Board of Education Collection, NYC Municipal Archives Photo.

A lot of places in the U.S. are passionate about basketball, and since it was accepted as an Olympic sport in 1930, so are a lot of places around the world. New Yorkers feel a special kinship with the sport, which has been called “the city game,” and NYC, and/or Madison Square Garden (MSG), referred to as “the Mecca” of basketball. NYC has produced 257 NBA players, tops among U.S. cities¹, but that may be a byproduct of how long basketball has been played here. According to the NYC Department of Records & Informations Services, “Basket ball (there was some early confusion whether it was basket ball, basket-ball or basketball) was introduced in New York City schools in the 1890s. It was promoted not just as physical training, but as a moral exercise, whereby. students could be taught the value of teamwork and self-sacrifice.”

No foul?? Where have I seen refereeing like this recently? *-NYC Municipal Archives Photo.

That’s 135, or so, years of hoops in NYC.

The legendary Walt “Clyde” Frazier at The Metropolitan Museum in front of a display of some of his wardrobe. NYC has seen nothing like the backcourt of Clyde & Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, until this year. *- June 3rd, @metmuseum Photo.

Those 2019 Department of Records words epitomized the 1973 Knicks team that last won the NBA Championship. A true team, of Walt “Clyde” Frazier, Willis Reed, Bill Bradley, Dave DeBusschere and Dick Barnett who won their second title in 4 years (the great Earl “The Pearl” Monroe joining them for the ’73 ride). Their teamwork bordered on telepathic. Do I need say that 53 years on, there were a lot of basketball lovers in NYC hungry to experience a title.

A woman in a Knicks shirt passes a street vendor selling nothing but Knicks, June, 2026.

Yet, with all due respect to them, it doesn’t quite add up to what I’ve been experiencing around town during the 2026 NBA Playoffs. When I’ve walked the streets during the Playoffs, it seems that 25% of everyone passing by had a NY Knick item on, or was wearing Knicks team colors blue and/or orange. It’s been a while now, but NYC is no stranger to winning championships. The Yankees have won 27 times, the last in 2009, the Giants (in 2007 & 2011) and Rangers (in 1994) have also won in living memory. I’ve experienced all of that, seeing the 1999 Yankees win the World Series at the original Yankee Stadium (the last time they won there) and I was at Game 7 when the Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1994, and their subsequent Parade).

My ticket stub for Game 2 of the 1973 Knicks Playoffs versus Wes Unseld & The Baltimore Bullets at MSG, the last time they won the NBA Championship, until June 13th. Previously, The Bullets beat the Knicks in the Playoffs led by Unseld & star guard Earl Monroe. The Knicks then traded for Monroe, and the rest is history.

I also saw the Knicks in the first round of the 1973 Playoffs at The Garden versus the Baltimore Bullets on their way to their last title until now, but nothing has come close to what happened in my neighborhood, and in every other neigborhood in town when the Knicks FINALLY won the NBA Championship late on June 13th. NONE of what came before in all of those Championships prepared me for what I experienced walking the streets (or trying to), in the hour after the Knicks won the clinching Game 5 of the Finals & the title late on June 13th.

Even NYC Busses got into the spirit- one of many things I’ve never seen here before. East 79th Street, June, 2026.

I turned my corner and stepped into a SEA of people filling the sidewalks on both sides of the street. When I got to West 23rd Street, they overflowed into the street, Seventh Avenue- one of the busiest streets in the country- home to Macy’s, Times Square & MSG, completely filling it, a crowd that had to number in the tens of thousands of people, extending as far north as I could see.

Here’s the scene on West 28th Street & 7th Avenue, as far north as I got-

I got home and posted this on Instagram-

Revelers unfurl the Knick colors on top of the 1 Train Subway Station at 7th Avenue & 28th Street.

]To clarify- I lived a little over a mile and a half north of Ground Zero on 9/11. The first plane that hit WTC 1 flew down my block. The streets were crowded with people watching and wondering what was going on, while others tried to leave the area, but they all moved along, and traffic moved above Canal Street, where the frozen zone began. The NYC Halloween & Gay Pride Parades pass through my neighborhood, which is also 20 blocks from Times Square and the huge New Year’s Eve Ball Drop. We’re used to crowds here. Still, I’ve NEVER seen ANYTHING remotely like what I saw that night.

Everyone was stuck in place after the crowd stopped making progress heading north. Some tried to get a better view, but all they saw were more people. 7th Avenue & 27th Street.

I was only able to get 5 more blocks north to 28th Street, leaving me 4 short blocks from MSG, when the sea stopped in its tracks. After 15 minutes, I gave up and turned west, where it was exactly the same.

8th Avenue & West 28th Street. This truck is not parked. It’s in the middle of 8th heading towards MSG. It looked to me that the driver opened the passenger door to allow fans to climb up top to dance. The truck never moved while I was there.

I eventually reached 8th Avenue- same thing there, with cars and trucks surrounded in place by the crowd. When I finally got home, I found out why we were stopped in our tracks-

When I said ” a SEA of humanity,” I meant a SEA! This is why I couldn’t get any further than 4 blocks away (to the right). The scene outside MSG. at West 33rd Street & 8th Avenue (where the cars are nearer the camera ), 7th Avenue about halfway up the picture. *- Unknown Photographer.

How to explain it?

I can only speak for myself as one New Yorker. Watching videos from the innumerable Gane 5 watch parties going on around all over the City it seems the reaction was universally cathartic, it was like watching a million people win the lottery at the same time, or watching them in the happiest moment of their lives that just happened to be happening in all these other lives here at the same time.

Even Trader Joe’s is on board. June 20, 2026.

Yes, a good deal of it is the team. Time and time again they came back and won, showing the moxie NYC identifies with & loves, along with a belief in each other, and incredible leadership from Captain Jalen Brunson. In Game 4 of the Finals, they overcame a 29-point deficit to win- the largest comeback in NBA Finals history. They were down 20 points in the 4th quarter. You just don’t come back against a Finals-caliber team. Somehow it seemed like they were never out of it. They always found a way- this year. The past two years in the Playoffs, they came up short, and that hurt, big-time. Maybe in the end, it helped them. In the end the ’26 Knicks had reserves of character.

June 14, 1994, the Rangers win the Stanley Cup in Game 7 of the Finals after 54 years! STILL THE greatest moment in Manhattan sports history, and I was there. This is what happens when you hand your camera to a total stranger and the flash doesn’t go off. Sorry, I tried to fix it…

Still, watching Games 3 & 4 of the Finals at MSG on TV, I noticed something interesting- no matter how much they were down, the fans never booed them. That’s remarkable. I was at Game 5 of the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals at Madison Square Garden when the Rangers were up 3 games to 1 and had their first opportunity of winning the Stanley Cup in 54 years, and at home. They went down 0-3 entering the third and final period. People were booing! I couldn’t believe it. COME ON! THEY HAVE A CHANCE TO WIN THE CUP TONIGHT! They wound up losing that game, and losing Game 6. Game 7 was at The Garden, and they won, 3-2. I was there, again. It still ranks as the greatest sports event in Manhattan history ². So, given my experience with the Rangers Game 5, I was VERY surprised there was no booing for the Knicks. Ranger fans waited 54 years for the team to win. Knicks fans waited 53, but they seemed to have more patience. Obviously, most people who are Knicks fans now weren’t even born by 1973. So, most of them haven’t been waiting 53 years. A long time, no doubt, but not 53 years for most. I wonder if there’s something else at work – beyond the love of a great team, a long-term passion for the franchise, or even a love of basketball.

But, what?

Covid gave birth to the now iconic (at least here), “New York or Nowhere!” slogan (something many of us who stayed here during and after the horrors on the pandemic rejoined when asked WHY we were still here), which sees a Knicks update on this bag. June 20, 2026.

Another thing I found interesting was that as the Playoffs went on, people began speaking to each other. It happened to me. A stranger would ask if I saw last night’s game, I’d nod yes, and they’d tell me their experience. A fan I’d never met told me he had a ticket for Game 3 of the Finals (at MSG) that night but wasn’t going to go for fear of the security because Trump was going. That reminded me of how I got my 1994 Rangers Game 5 ticket. A woman with a broken arm in a cast sold it to me because she was afraid of the crowd if they won. After the Rangers did win, the crowd was great- joyous and fun. Sure, it was packed all around MSG, but there was no trouble. I saw NYPD lounging around their cars relaxing with their caps sitting on the hood. Same thing last night. While I did not see a single cop, I saw no trouble beyond it being packed, but nobody jostled or pushed.

“10 Weeks.” A helluva team seen here in this hella expensive $3,500.00 Signed Photo. *-Fanatics Photo.

What about this unique group of individual players? Jalen Brunson and a few of the other Knicks, have remarkable backstories. They overcame much to get to this point. Mr. Brunson, in particular, on his way to becoming the focal point, revealed he has that “something else,” a self-confidence and belief that his teammates feed on, and becomes charisma to the public. You can see one possible reason for it here. Still, it took time to hapoen. NBA Extra TV succinctly sums up his evolution in NYC after he signed here as a free agent on July 12, 2022-

“New York was watching. New York was waiting. What happened next wasn’t an explosion. It was something slower and more powerful than that. In his first season with the Knicks, Brunson simply won. He led New York to 47 wins and their first playoff series victory since 2013. He was calm under pressure, unshakable in the fourth quarter, and utterly immune to the noise that swallows so many players in that city. Fans didn’t immediately crown him. They observed. They tested him. They waited to see if he would flinch. He never flinched. The 2023-24 season was when the conversation began to shift. Brunson averaged 28.7 points per game, a career high, and earned his first NBA All-Star selection and his first All NBA birth, finishing fifth in MVP voting.

He was, as one observer put it, us except very good at basketball.”

NYC has had a LOT of great pro-athletes from Babe Ruth Joe D., The Mick, and Joe Willie, through Mark Messier, Derek Jeter, Eli Manning and Aaron Judge. I can’t say any of them are like Jalen Brunson. They weren’t “us.” He has a bit of Walt Frazier’s cool, but Clyde was a defensive master. Jalen may be more like Earl Monroe, but Monroe was a shooting guard, not a point guard. He’s got Messier’s legendary leadership, and like Jeter & Manning, comes through in the big moments of the big games. Dare I wonder- Is he more like a shorter Michael Jordan (who is 6’6, as was Kobe Bryant)? No. He’s Jalen Brunson, and that’s MORE than enough!

Ummm…Jalen’s not taller than most of his teammates.

At 6’2, Jalen is undersized for his position the pundits say. It’s been held against him his entire pre-Knicks career, even though he won 2 NCAA National Championships and a State Basketball Championship. Judge is a BIG man, so it’s easy to expect him to be super-human. Still, being “shorter,” Jalen may be more relatable. Though 6’2 is big, in team pictures he’s obviously not as tall as some of his teammates, and that may make him easier to identify with.

What becomes a legend most? Street cred.

I think a lot of people also relate to him being someone who was never given a chance until he came to NYC. I think a lot of people relate to him “overachieving” (which is wrong when you consider he won the 2016 and 2018 NCAA National Championships), I think a lot of people relate to how he relates to his teammates, which is obvious when you hear them talk about him, two of them, Josh Hart & Mikael Bridges, were with him when he won in 2016 & 18). The three of them form a nucleus that seems to pull the rest of the team in to its sphere. The Finals were a true test of ALL of this. They were up against a very formidable opponent. San Antonio led for 72% of the series. The Knicks winning margin for their 4 wins was 12 points. ON the other hand, during their remarkable Playoff run, they lost 3 of the 19 games they played- by a total of 6 points!

Complete with a rendition of O.G. Anunoby’s miraculous put back, upper center. June, 2026.

As remarkable as all of that is, I believe there’s something more at work here.

Most of the Photos I took for this piece show something I’ve never seen before, like this- The Grand Staircase at The Metropolitan Museum of Art goes all out for the Knicks. June 19th, the day after their Parade drew 2 million+.

I think the Knicks are so very popular because they come across as a family. A good deal of the credit for this has to go to thier president, Leon Rose, who built this team over the past 6 years. It started crazily early- Knicks fun fact- Mr. Rose, Rick Brunson’s agent at the time, met newborn Jalen Brunson before his dad Rick Brunson (a former Knick player, and now an assistant coach & Jalen’s dad) who was playing in Australia, did! In his interview after the Knicks got the Trophy, Mr. Rose said as much, that he wanted a team that was a family, and he and the organization has made a point of treating them that way. It showed In their interviews after the game, player after player talked about how special it was to win it all with THIS group. That nucleus of 3 I mentioned had won before. They came in knowing how to win, yes, but they also have close personal bonds. All of these are reasons Leon Rose probably brought them together here. It appears to have been contagious.

NYC has been different since 9/11. Something of the City’s soul was stolen from us (and from countless other people in Washington, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere) that day. We lost close to 3,000 people that were an essential part of the fabric of the City, and two towers that were signature pieces of our identity. I remember walking by that space when the World Trade Center was being built in the 1970s. It’s STILL hard for me to believe that two structures so INCREDIBLY BIG are gone. You had to stand there, in their shadows, to really know what I mean.

The celebration continues. 8th Avenue & 28th Street, late on June 13th.

It seems to me that somehow, based on everything I’ve seen & experienced these past 2 months almost 25 years later already, these Knicks are helping to heal the City. There may not be a lot of Knicks fans who were around in 1973, but I’m sure there are a lot who were around in 2001.

And on 28th Street near 7th Avenue

Walking the streets of my neighborhood, 10 blocks from MSG, there was a dull roar that was omnipresent in the background. It wasn’t the NYPD helicopters, it was the sound of continual and constant yelling off in the distance. I hadn’t heard it before. It was drowned out by yelling and cheering closer to me most of the time, but when that died down, it was there. It took A LOT of people yelling & screaming at the same time to produce, and I’ll never forget it.

Ditto.

I was at the Rangers Parade in 1994, which drew 2 million, I managed to get a block away from the procession, reached up as high as I could, and snapped a picture as the Stanley Cup went by. Two million people returned to the Canyon of Heroes this past Thursday for the Knicks. Now that it’s all over, while fans will continue to celebrate in their own smaller ways, I wonder if the new-found togetherness & openness will continue. I wonder what the lasting impact of this Knicks Championship will be on NYC.

Court of dreams. Perhaps, no basketball court in NYC is more famous, and more daunting to play on, than the West Fourth Streets Courts, aka The Cage (fittingly seen here from outside). Former NBA stars Stephon Marbury and Rod Strickland, among others, got their starts here. July, 2026.

Walking around late on June 13th, I saw New York City at its best- something I haven’t seen since 9/11. I saw a City, like its basketball team, that kept on keeping on, and overcame everything in its path to get to this shining moment.

“We believed,” it says.

I hope we keep finding them.

*- Soundtrack for this piece is, what else? Hell’s Kitchen’s own Alicia Keys’ performance of “Empire State of Mind ” with her son, Egypt, at the Knicks Championship Celebration at City Hall, June 18, 2026-

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https://www.olbg.com/blogs/major-league-stars-city ↩

The Knicks won on the road in San Antonio this year. They won their first-ever Championship in 1970 at MSG in the game in which an injured Willis Reed came hobbling through the tunnel and intimidated LA by hitting his first two shots. But, the Knicks, or the NBA, weren’t nearly as popular as they are now, and it had “only” been 24 years that they’d been in existance. They won their second Championship in 1973, again against the Lakers, this time in LA. Still, it didn’t have the same impact. There were no parades for Championships in those days. Still, these were great teams, that many feel were the greatest Knicks team. I’ve always thought the 1973 team was the best I’d seen. At least until now. The Yankees play in the Bronx, the Mets in Queens, the Giants & Jets in Jersey. ↩

Posted on June 27, 2026August 5, 2026 by Kenn Sava Posted in Alicia Keys, Life, NYC Tagged Championship 2026, NY Knicks, NYC

Marc Chagall’s Granddaughter: An Artist In Her Own Right

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Introduction by Kenn Sava-
Lana Hattan is the person responsible for my starting NighthawkNYC.com in 2015, so it’s only fitting that she is now the first person besides myself to write a piece published here. A lifelong admirer of Marc Chagall’s Art, she has also been a Chagall researcher for over a decade on two continents. She has lectured and created & presented slideshows on various aspects of Chagall’s life, including his & his wife, Bella’s, lives in NYC.
On May 15th, 2015, Lana interviewed Marc Chagall’s granddaughter, the renowned flower designer Bella Meyer, at her popular fleursBella studio in Greenwich Village. I am proud to present it here accompanied by Photos she & I took that day.

Written & Photographed by Lana Hattan
Exclusive to NighthawkNYC.com
(*-Additional Photos by Kenn Sava.)

Lana Hattan at Bella Meyer’s fleursBella, May 15, 2015.

Visitors to Manhattan’s fleursBella are usually taken aback by the floral studio’s unique beauty and spectacular designs. Once the visitors learn that the owner and creative director of the award-winning studio, Bella Meyer, also happens to be Marc Chagall’s granddaughter, they may come away with the feeling that Chagall’s mastery of color lives in her work.

Bella Meyer was born in Paris, and she grew up in Switzerland. She studied Art History Sorbonne University in Paris and earned a Ph.D. in Medieval Art History. In the early eighties, she moved to New York. Today, she is the owner of the studio & shop fleursBella in Manhattan where this interview took place.

Meeting Bella. May 15, 2015.

Could you share your earliest memories of your grandfather, Marc Chagall?

“Although we didn’t live with grandfather, he was a very important person in my family. My mother, his daughter, was always very close to her father. We talked about him all the time. I was always surrounded by his paintings, which like family.

When we visited Chagall in Southern France, where he lived, we liked to go for walks and talk. He would tell us about his childhood and our grandmother, his wife, who unexpectedly died in the year 1944. He called her only ’my Bella’. My grandfather said that she could always understand him.

I liked watching as grandfather painted in his studio. Once I witnessed how long it took him to choose a gray tone, which wasn’t his favorite.

Grandfather was always kind to us grandchildren. I remember how he would hug me, touch my cheek, take my hand into his palms. I have this memory of being touched as if it were a miracle. Sometimes, it is very hard to describe the feeling. My feelings are deep inside, and it’s hard to find the words.”

Bella Mayer at fluersbella.

If you were to decide to describe your childhood memories about your grandfather, not in words, but color, what color would you choose?

“I would use very, very soft colors. I wouldn’t use very contrasting colors.”

I know that you have liked drawing since early childhood. Who taught you to draw?

“My mother taught me how to draw. She drew and painted very well but then stopped doing it. Grandfather liked her paintings.”

You went to study Art History at the University. Was it your decision?

“Yes, I didn’t want to study anything else. When I entered the University I said that I wanted to study art. They asked, “you want to learn how to paint”. I repeated that I want to study Art. It was funny. ( Bella said with a smile).”

Did you talk about Art with your grandfather while you were studying?

“While I was a student, he came to Paris, and we visited galleries, walked and talked about Art. He was an amazing narrator.”

Books on Chagall, top, and on flowers, below, at fleursBella.

Why did you decide to move to New York?

“I was attracted to New York’s popular culture, contemporary art, and certainly to jazz.”

Did your grandfather like this idea?

“My grandfather didn’t like my decision. He had sad memories associated with New York. His wife and muse, my grandmother, died when they lived in New York. It was an awful time for him.”

When you came to New York you designed costumes, masks, and puppets for theater, but in 2003 you founded a floral design company and in 2009 you opened a floral in Manhattan. Why did you decide to create with flowers?

“I have always loved flowers, I bought it for my mother and grandfather. He loved to paint bouquets. I also liked to work with color and texture. Once a day, I visited the big flower market in New York, where there are a lot of flowers. I realized that only flowers can have such as a rich variety of colors and textures that I was always looking for, and it is the amazing source of my creativity.”

I saw a small chair near your studio’s door with a sign “Please, Take a flower”….

“When I founded the fleursBella company, I wanted to give people a little moment of joy and we would leave small bouquets into street or subway stations. My husband called it “Graffiti Flowers!” Now, we don’t have time and, so, we put flowers or small bouquets outside on a little chair, for anyone to take along with them. Perhaps, it is not a very good idea for a business.”

What are your favorite flowers?

“My tastes are constantly changing. Flowers are so beautiful. Now, peonies are my favorite. They have an amazing color, texture, and smell.”

(She looked at a bouquet of peonies with admiration).

What projects are you currently working on?

“We are making an installation for The Brooklyn Academy of Music. (Bella thought for a moment ) I want to make something just as touching as the music!”

Do your children connect with Art?

“Yes, they do.”

In one of your interviews, you said: “Grandfather always urged us to look for, as he said, for an ideal”. What do you think is your ideal?

“The ideal is a constant search. This is not something static. I try to do things from my heart and to follow that.”

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free since 2015! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate securely by PayPal below to allow me to continue. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art books & Music from my collection!
Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

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Posted on May 22, 2026August 22, 2026 by Kenn Sava Posted in Art, Bella Meyer, Lana Hattan, Marc Chagall, NYC, Painting & Drawing Tagged Bella Meyer, Flower Design, Marc Chagall

Jack Whitten: The Black Monolith

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited).

Show seen: Jack Whitten: The Messenger, MoMA, 2025.

After a quiet Summer, 2024, Summer Blockbusters brought the heat back to Manhattan in 2025. Four shows stood out to me: a pair at the Whitney¹ and two at MoMA. Having already written about MoMA’s Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers, here, simultaneously upstairs on 6, Jack Whitten: The Messenger, was the kind of show that made MoMA what it is for many around the world: one of, if not THE, leader in presenting excellent Modern (even Contemporary) Art shows. I’ve written about many of them in these e-pages these past 10 1/2 years.

Few Artists were more Contemporary than Jack Whitten. In fact, he invented some of its language, and a good deal of its emphasis/focus/center.

Man about town. Jack Whitten, a transplant from Alabama, was an NYC resident for 58 years, spending most of that time Downtown, before moving to Queens- except when he was “gone fishing,” as he wrote in his Notebooks on his departure for Crete each summer. The Artist is seen here on the corner of Broadway & Broome Street in the early 1970s on the Introductory wall card. When I see this Photo, I’m reminded that later he owned a building on Lispenard Street, a few blocks north of The World Trade Center. I tell the story of Jack Whitten on 9/11 further on.

Still, it left me with a deep sadness that after decades of struggle, Jack Whitten (1939-2018) didn’t live to see it.

Installation view of the first gallery of Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture 1963-2017. The Met Breuer, November 24, 2018

He didn’t live to see the other great show of his work either- Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture 1963-2017, the Retrospective of his Sculpture which he mostly kept from public display, which came to NYC at The Met Breuer in 2018, and which I wrote about here. Together, they make a very compelling case for Mr. Whitten’s extraordinary creative & imaginative range, the extremely wide range of his talent & skill, his accomplishment, and his place as a 20th & 21st century Master.

Installation view of the first gallery of the final Jack Whitten solo show during his lifetime at Hauser & Wirth, February 7, 2017. It was the first time I had seen one of his Sculptures. Quantum Wall (A Gift for Prince), is on the back wall. It can be seen in full in my piece on Jack Whitten: Odyssey, here, an installation view of which is shown above.

Both shows point out a sorry reality for too many great Artists. Jack Whitten is just one of many who waited in vain for their U.S. Retrospective. Meanwhile, numerous deceased Artist receive show after show (I’ve seen ten shows of the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat in NYC since 2012, for example, and written about almost all of them), while too many deserving living Artists go ignored, until years- even decades, after their passing.

Jack Whitten: The Messenger, Installation view, MoMA, July 31, 2025.

Nonetheless, all the while, his Art continued to ascend the ranks of appreciation and acceptance. It wasn’t always thus. Getting to this point has. been a rough and rocky road. An excerpt from MoMA’s Exhibition Catalogue (which is recommended as the most comprehensive book on Jack Whitten ever, in spite of its cardboard binding) looks back to his beginnings-

“Whitten made some of his earliest images as a teenager, painting hand-lettered signs for local businesses in his hometown of Bessemer, Alabama, in the 1950s. One of his first paid jobs was for a Civil Rights protest on the steps of the county courthouse. These images were meant to travel: to say something, to have reach. Whitten learned the technique using tools left behind by his mother’s first husband, James Monroe Cross, a commercial sign-painter who died before Whitten was born. It was unusual for Cross, a Black man, to have a skilled occupation and own his own business in the deeply segregated Jim Crow South. The artist suggested that Cross was always under threat of suspicion, even violence, for his profession. Making images was a rebellion and a risk… ‘Transmission is the key,’ he said²,'”

The earliest work in the show reveals Jack Whitten’s life long passion for Jazz. The Messenger (For Art Blakey), 1990, left, and Homecoming: For Miles (Davis), 1992 (the year after Miles passed), right. Both Acrylic on canvas.

Reading that, my thoughts turned back to another MoMA blockbuster that was full of “signs,” literal and figurative: Ed Ruscha/Now Then, which occupied these same galleries not long ago, the subject of a 3-part series I wrote. There are surprising similarities, and differecnes, between them. Largely contemporaries, Mr. Ruscha (b. 1937, Mr. Whitten born two years later in 1939), is perhaps best-known for his word Paintings. Though he started with a paying job making protest signs bearing words, Jack Whitten’s Art is almost exclusively wordless, except for its titles. His Art transcended words while honoring his mantra, “Transmission is the key.” Both Artists were born and raised in the South. Jack Whitten in Alabama- “in apartheid,” he said, Ed Ruscha in Tusla, Oklahoma, considered part of the South by some. Both left and attended Art schools, Mr. Whitten at Cooper Union, NYC,³, and Ed Ruscha at CalArts in L.A.. Both stayed put in their new locales for the rest of their lives and their extraordinarily long careers. Both used their Art to regularly comment on the world around them, though Jack Whitten seemed more the Activist. It’s also interesting that both Artist oeuvres are almost entirely devoid of images of people.

NY Battle Ground, 1967, Oil on canvas

As for their significant differences, Jack Whitten had to survive the 1960s, including the violence that surrounded the Civil Rights Protests. Deeply effected hearing Dr. Martin Luther King speak at the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955-56 after Rosa Parks’s arrest, the event that brought Dr. King to prominence (and the event at which Jack Whitten met Dr. King), he soon became fed up with the violence surrounding the Civil Rights Movement, so he moved to NYC in 1960, then graduated from Cooper Union with a bachelor’s degree in 1964, before finding his voice through the influence of the Jazz Musicians he met and the 1st generation Abstract Expressionists who he encountered here. His work would remain abstract his entire career. In spite of all of this history, Jack Whitten skips it and begins his riveting, 568-page collection of his studio notes from 1962 to 2017, Notes from the Woodshed, (the closest thing we have to an autobiography), with the 1960s & with his move to NYC.

Light Sheet I, 1969, Acrylic on canvas

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would reach thirty years of age without self-destructing. . . . The 1960s were coming to an end; I was still alive and in one piece.”

He would go on to live and work for another forty-eight years.

“1970 was the turning point,” he recalled⁴. At the start of a new decade, the Artist moved to a studio on Broome Street and had a breakthrough. He stopped making figurative art and got rid of his paintbrushes(!), which may be unprecedented among Painters in Western Art history to his time. The studio became a laboratory designed to experiment with acrylic paint⁵. The medium, a recent innovation made from plastic, offered a vastly expanded range of color, texture, and handling. Seizing the opportunity, Whitten invented tools and techniques that were entirely new to the history of Western art.

Welcome to Jack Whitten’s post-1970 practice in which he “made” Paintings (he said) without using paint brushes. With this, they were “developed,” akin to how Photographs were. Introducing The Developer. At 12 feet long, creating Art with it is the other part of the equation. Especially since none of the Art I’ve seen that Jack Whitten may have made with The Developer have a dimension of 12 feet. He’s using this on pieces that are smaller than the tool.

From an Afro-comb to a twelve-foot-long wooden rake, which he called The Developer (a reference to photography), novel implements were maneuvered by the artist to pull layers of acrylic paint across canvases laid on his studio floor in one sweeping movement⁶.” Inventing a technique is impressive. Making Art using it takes mastering it first. Easier said than done with a 12-foot long rake in your hands! In this extraordinary video from 2017, Jack Whitten talks about growing up in “American Apartheid,” as he calls it, meeting Dr. King, and demonstratesThe Developer-

What stands out to me is that Jack Whitten, when faced with violence, met it with non-violence. He turned his anger into Art. Art without words. Abstract Art, at that. Revolutionary for a Black Artist. An Art that continued to represent those he admired and “transmitted” what he experienced in ways never before seen. It seems to me that that says all you need to know about the man.

Back at MoMA, the result of all the techniques he invented and perfected and his seemingly endless creativity made Jack Whitten’s work is so unique, and different from itself, that MoMA’s curators chose to install the show with numerous one-work walls. I previously experienced this in diane arbus: in the beginning at The Met Breuer.

Installation view. Installing one work on a wall is something that works extremely well for Jack Whitten’s work, in my view, since so much of it is so different from everything else. It allowed each piece to be considered singly, and then as the viewer moved around, as part of his whole. It made it very easy to “get lost” in the work & the show, something I went back to it to experience again.

Here, I thought this worked brilliantly and the resulting installation of these walls is one of the features I’ll long think of when I think of Jack Whitten: The Messenger.

The First Loading Zone, 1973, Acrylic on canvas

Today, Gerhard Richter gets a lot of notoriety as a “squeegee master,” yet he didn’t begin using the technique until 1985⁷! Still, techniques do not make a work “Art,” with a capital “A,” as I write it. Yet, at least to my eyes, having seen Gerhard Richter: Painting After All on its last day (my look at it here), and the last day of the lost & lamented Met Breuer, what I saw over both shows left me feeling that Jack Whitten’s “Developer” works will continue to rise in esteem & appreciation. Since I believe that comparing Artists or Art works is subjective, I’ll leave it at that.

Chinese Doorway, 1974, All work are Acrylic on canvas unless stated. At 89 1/2 × 43 1/4 inches, it’s hard to say if this was created with The Developer, but if not, it appears he used another of his scraping tools.

But his “Developer” works are just one part of the work Jack Whitten created over his 58 year career, a part that fit in seamlessly with everything else he created as was to be seen in the incredibly rare opportunity to experience a large body of his work. This is in itself, remarkable. I’ve seen countless group exhibitions where different styles didn’t mesh well with each other. Yet, in The Messenger they meshed brilliantly and coalesced into telling one story: his.

Black Monolith II (Homage To Ralph Ellison The Invisible Man), 1994, Acrylic, molasses, copper, salt, coal, ash, chocolate, onion, herbs, rust, eggshell, with razor blade on canvas. As close as Jack Whitten comes to “traditional Portraiture.”

Walking through it left me realizing that it’s hard to think of another Black Artist who captured the times he lived in and so many of its leading figures in her or his Art, besides Charles White. For me, at least, when these works (including his Black Monolith series) are taken as a whole, the result is something of a Self-Portrait of the Artist: a man of his time, in his time, who rose above his time and all the travails he encountered to create something completely new and completely Jack Whitten, leaving echoes & impressions of his experiences.

Chalk editor’s note- Insert “This” in front of “was once.” (No, I did not write it.) NYC is “only” 402 years old, still you can be sure that with every step you take here you’re walking on history. So it is here in front of this nondescript residential building. But back in the late 1950s and early 1960s this was the location of “the hippest place on earth”- the now legendary Five Spot nightclub. The list of Jazz immortals who performed here is only matched by the legends of Art, Music, & Literature who hung out here to hear them.

Among the leading, now legendary, figures of his day that Jack Whitten encountered and even spoke with are Jazz Masters Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, the latter, who was embarking on his own spiritual quest after a period of drug use, had an especially deep and lasting impact on Whitten’s Art.

John Coltrane: Giant Steps, 1960. One classic that’s in both of our collections (Jack’s on LP as shown in the catalog. My LP was replaced with this CD after wearing out), John Coltrane is shown here, Photographed on the cover by Lee Friedlander, around the time he was frequenting The Five Spot.

Jack Whitten frequented the legendary Five Spot nightclub on East 5th Street, and came to amass a terrific Jazz record collection.

Asa’s Palace, 1973, Acrylic on canvas

Another thing that stands out for me is that Jack Whitten was one of the earliest Black Artists to adopt abstraction, something that has continued in the work of Mark Bradford among quite a few others.

“There are two kinds of abstraction, the abstraction of Pollock and the abstraction of [Piet] Mondrian,” Jack Whitten wrote in 1969. “It is possible to create a third abstraction based on the theory of transcending these two⁸*

His titles often “ground” the work, but then the viewer is left largely on her or his own, often with a staggering amount of detail to consider. This last puts the lie to theory that abstract Art is “dashed off,” perhaps born of a misunderstanding of Jackson Pollock’s “dripping” technique, or the appearance of Franz Kline’s brushwork. Walking through The Messenger, I was hard pressed to find a single work that looked “dashed off.” On the contrary there were works where Mr. Whitten first had to invent, then perfect, the technique he used before the work could begin!

Atlantis Rising, 1966, Acrylic on canvas

Jack Whitten was an eyewitness to the first plane flying into World Trade Center 1 on 9/11 from 14 blocks away! Incredibly, his voice is heard on the only video there is of that plane impacting the North Tower, by the Naudet brothers who were making a documentary on the New York Fire Department. Following them around, that morning they answered a call about a gas leak at the building Jack Whitten owned on Lispenard Street. The Naudets happened to be filming the firemen who were trying to find it when the plane flew right over their heads! Jack Whitten’s voice is the one heard making the expletive as it crashes into the North Tower⁹. The NYFD immediately jumped in their trucks, accompanied by the French crew under the direction of the Naudet brothers and James Hanlon (making the renowned documentary 9/11) and headed off to Ground Zero. Mr. Whitten-

“I was in the street that morning. This plane came right overhead, and when that sound came overhead, you could feel your flesh crawling, I mean, seriously, rippling. We looked up, this plane was right on top of us. At first you didn’t see any flame, any smoke. You just saw this big gap and hole, and the sky was filled with a chandelier of glass. It was later you saw the smoke and the flames. My gut feeling told me that that was not an accident. This is what I call the particularities of violence—close to 3,000 people were murdered in my neighborhood. People were screaming, crying.”

He stopped making Art, except for this piece, which took him five years to complete-

9.11.01, 2006. Acrylic, ash, animal blood, hair, and mixed media on canvas, 120 × 240″ (304.8 × 609.6 cm). In what I think was a brilliant move, the Baltimore Museum sold some of its older masterpieces, inciting an uproar, and used some of those funds to buy it, saddening me that an NYC museum hadn’t stepped up. After five years of agonizing over it, Jack Whitten created one of the most stunning pieces of Art to come out of the tragedy.

“I wanted that painting to be more raw and visceral. A lot of emotional stuff in there. I’ve had people that stand before that painting and cry,” he said¹⁰.

Jack Whitten’s signature and inscription on the right edge of 9.11.01. This also shows a detail of the mosaic tiling the work consists of, each tile hand-crafted.

The work is also created with another technique he invented. Beginning in the 1990s, the Artist cut hardened sheets of acrylic paint into thousands of mosaic tiles that he used to assemble 9.11.01 and other works. In my piece on Jack Whitten: Odyssey, “Jack Whitten: Secretes from the Woodshed,” I show an Art21 video that shows Mr. Whitten actually creating one of his “mosaic” works.

Southern Manor, 1974, Acrylic on canvas

“Perhaps the ideal approach to the work of literature would be the one allowing for insight into the deepest psychological motives of the writer at the same time that it examined all external sociological factors operating within a given milieu. For while objectively a social reality, the work of art is, in its genesis, a projection of a deeply personal process, and any approach that ignores the personal at the expense of the social is necessarily incomplete,” Ralph Ellison speaking of a way of engageing Literature, c.1946¹¹.

Though he was here (NYC) during the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, arriving in 1960 on the tail end of the first generations’s success, he doesn’t seem to have been overly influenced by them directly when looking at his work. Their influence seems to me to have been more in freeing the young Artist to explore other ways of communicating in paint. Maybe this can be seen when he said his Paintings weren’t Painted, they were “made.” In fact, it seems to me his attendance at the numerous Jazz clubs that were in a golden age at the time may have had a deeper last effect. In the Music, he found other Artists who were familiar with what he had experienced, whereas the first gen AbEx Artists had not. Their influent may have helped Jack Whitten focus on what was most important for him to express. They were doing it without words. He would do it without representational images using techniques he invented.

One recognition Jack Whitten did live to receive was the National Medal of Arts by President Obama. “WASHINGTON, DC – On Thursday, September 22, in the East Room of the White House, President Barack Obama awarded the 2015 National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal to distinguished recipients. First Lady Michelle Obama attended the ceremony.” *- Photo by Cheriss May, www.cherissmay.com. White House caption in quotes.

It’s become apparent that Jack Whitten is the spiritual and influential “godfather” of much of what we see today, less than a decade after his passing. He turned his back on so-called representational Art and found a new way of “transmitting” all of what he had witnessed, all he had heard, and all he had inside, in abstraction, forging a new path forward that others have turned into a highway.

For Michael Merriweather.

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “Nutty” by Thelonious Monk, heard here with John Coltrane, recorded live at The Five Spot in 1957-58, with some rare Photos of them performing in the club-

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Amy Sherald: American Sublime, which I wrote about here, and Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night, which I wrote about here. ↩

Jack Whitten: The Messenger, Michelle Kuo, P.37. ↩

After attending Tuskegee Institute as a pre-med student. ↩

ibid, P.47 ↩

ibid ↩

MoMA wall card ↩

https://www.christies.com/en/artists/gerhard-richter?lotavailability=All&sortby=relevance ↩

ibid, P.45, 47 ↩

Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting, P.43-4. ↩

https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/345/4715 ↩

Ralph Ellison, “Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black Mask of Humanity,” in Shadow and Act, 27 n. 1. ↩

Posted on May 1, 2026July 30, 2026 by Kenn Sava Posted in 9/11, Jack Whitten, John Coltrane, Lee Friedlander, MoMA, NYC Art Shows 2025, Painting & Drawing, Sculpture, The Met Breuer (TMB)

Christine Sun Kim: All Day Every Day

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Show Seen: Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night, Whitney Museum, February 8 to September 28, 2025.

My look at the 4 summer blockbusters mounted here in 2025 continues with the second of two must-see shows at The Whitney: Christine Sun Kim’s landmark All Day All Night was up concurrently with Amy Sherald; American Sublime. I began this series with a look at Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers at MoMA, where Jack Whitten: The Messenger was installed on 6 (with links to my piece on each).

Degrees of My Deaf Rage in the Art World, 2018 Charcoal and oil pastel on paper

Detail.

“Landmark?” All Day All Night is the first major museum Retrospective devoted to the work of a younger Disabled Artist in NYC in my memory. Christine Sun Kim is deaf.

As I’ve said more than once, Disabled Artists continue to be THE most overlooked Artists in the world. Why? I can’t figure it out. “Inclusion” has been the headline in the Art world since 1989, yet, the Disabled continue to be left behind. The Whitney has a long-standing relationship with Christine Sun Kim (B.1980) going back to 2007, when she worked there fresh out of grad school as an educator. During her tenure, she began giving tours in ASL (American Sign Language) for the deaf. In 2025, the Whitney & the Walker Arts Center (who also have a long-standing relationship with Ms. Kim) mounted the early mid-career Retrospective Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night, featuring works “full of sharp wit and incisive commentary,” per the press release. Indeed.

Gallery Cards include Braille. I can count on one hand how often I’ve seen this in every other show I’ve ever visited.

Come to think of it, I can’t even recall an NYC museum Retrospective of one of the more established Disabled Contemporary Artists like Chuck Close, Frida Kahlo, or Yayoi Kusama this century¹. I’ve been scouring my records and racking my brain to come up with one. If you know of one, please let me know. Among other younger Artists, I think the Japanese Artist Mari Katayama may well be the next Disabled Artist to receive NYC museum attention.

Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, ATTENTION, 2022, Kinetic Sculpture, Nylon, locally sourced rock, two blowers, and control board. From the Audio Guide- “This large, moving sculpture includes two inflatable bright-red nylon arms extending from opposite gallery walls toward a jagged rock on the floor between them. One nylon arm has been sewn such that it is reaching its pointer finger out toward the rock, its four other fingers pulled into its palm. The other reaches with an entirely outstretched hand, its palm toward the floor. Both are larger-than-life and are propelled into an intermittent flapping movement by air-blowers mounted high on the walls of the gallery space. When the blowers are off, the arms drift down onto the floor. When the blowers are on, the hands repeatedly dance and brush the rough surface of the locally-sourced rock on the floor of the gallery.” Continued.

ATTENTION Audio Guide continues- “In ASL, one common method of getting someone’s attention involves waving with your palm downward in another person’s field of vision.”

ATTENTION. Audio Guide continues, “Alternatively deaf people often tap each other on the shoulder to get their attention. In this kinetic sculpture, by Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, the stone is shaped so as to suggest being eroded by the fingers’ touch, alluding to the process of “trying to get one’s attention or bring attention to something forever.”

The 6 works in the Rage series. Seen at the 2019 Whitney Biennial returned to the Whitney in All Day All Night as seen below.

Another example of the Whitney’s long-standing relationship with Christine Sun Kim, I discovered Ms. Kim at the 2019 Whitney Biennial where I found her work a showstopper. Raymond Pettibon came to mind, as another Artist who works with words and images on paper, but her Rage series is much more personal (as she explains in the video below). It stood out as completely from somewhere else in the show and it stayed with me to this day.

The same series seen in All Day All Night in 2025.

The Rage series hadn’t lost any of its power when it was included in All Day All Night six years later.

Christine Sun Kim, circled in the sliver dress, lower left & below, Signing at the 2020 Super Bowl.

Ms. Kim is, perhaps, most well-known to the general public for her appearance at the 2020 Super Bowl where she Signed the “America the Beautiful” and the National Anthem, though her performance was cut on TV leaving her frustrated. She spoke out about it in a subsequent Op-Ed in The New York Times.

Degrees of Deaf Rage in Everyday Situations, 2018 Charcoal and oil pastel on paper

Detail.

Let’s hope that All Day All Night will be the beginning of increased attention for Disabled Artists, and not an isolated event.

My look is only a sample of the show. Here’s Christine Sun Kim to give you a personally guided tour of All Day All Night full of additional insights I didn’t get the benefit of during my visits-

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “No Words” by Denny Laine (who was born mostly deaf and relied on hearing aids when he performed) & Sir Paul McCartney, and included on the Wings alum Band on the Run-

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The Met did host Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration, a Retrospective of his graphics back in 2004. ↩

Posted on April 29, 2026July 30, 2026 by Kenn Sava Posted in Art, Christine Sun Kim, Denny Laine, Painting & Drawing, Paul McCartney, Sculpture, Whitney Museum

Amy Sherald’s Second Chance

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Preface-
In honor of those who saved my life 19 years ago on February 7th, 2007, as one way of giving Thanks, this piece honors another survivor (of a different ailment): the Painter Amy Sherald. Amy’s remarkable story is told here better than I could tell it. My look at her Art follows.

Shows seen:
Amy Sherald: the heart of the matter…, Hauser & Wirth, October, 2019, and
Amy Sherald: American Sublime, Whitney Museum, Summer, 2025

The Whitney & MoMA went toe-to-toe with dueling summer blockbusters in 2025, with each institution mounting two. I began this series with a look at Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers at MoMA, where Jack Whitten: The Messenger was installed on 6. All the while, 40 blocks south, Amy Sherald: American Sublime was up at the same time as Christine Sun Kim’s landmark All Day All Night, comprising the Whitney share of the four must-see Summer shows.

Hauser & Wirth, October 15, 2019.

I first saw Amy Sherald’s work at her NYC debut show, “the heart of the matter…,” at Hauser & Wirth in October, 2019, a show that contained 8 Paintings.

The select content allowed for more space around each that worked extremely well in my view. Handsome, 2019, Oil on canvas, 54 x 43 inches, was also shown in American Sublime. Seen at Hauser & Wirth, October 15, 2019.

Fast forward to April 9, 2025, American Sublime contains 44 Paintings, the earliest dating from 2007- just 18 years prior! In those last two sentences hides the remarkable fact that Ms. Sherald (B. 1973) went from NYC debut show to an NYC early mid-career major museum Retrospective in a little more than five years! There aren’t a lot of Artists I can say that about.

Whitney Museum, July 25, 2025

Installation view. July 25, 2025.

What’s more remarkable is that just seven years before her Hauser show, on December 18, 2012, Amy Sherald underwent a heart transplant at age 39! That concluded a harrowing 10 years she spent after being diagnosed with congestive heart failure at age 30, and a two-month wait in the hospital for a donated heart (as is recounted in the piece I linked up top). Today, Amy Sherald is yet another fine Painter who burst on the scene this past decade and has wasted no time solidifying a place in museums around the world.

Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance), 2014. Oil on canvas. The Painting that brought Amy Sherald to national attention was inspired by Alice in Wonderland.

And, “burst on the scene…” she did as her 2019 NYC debut show came just three years after Amy won the 2016 National Portrait Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition with Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance), becoming both the first woman and the first African-American woman to win it.

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama aka First Lady Michelle Obama, 2018, Oil on linen. (The first title was on the wall card.) After being personally selected by Mrs. Obama to Paint her official Portrait, a prescient choice at the time. Amy Sherald’s stature has only continued to grow. The former First Lady selected the Michelle Smith Milly label dress she is wearing that channels Piet Mondrian through Gee’s Bends Quilt Making, blending the modern with the historic. Gee’s Bend is a remote Black Alabama community of the descendants of former slaves.

Most well-known today, perhaps, for her Portraits of Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor, Amy Sherald: American Sublime revealed the depth of her accomplishment (already) in works that are almost always forthright, with subjects usually facing the viewer head-on, while steeped in a subtlety that rewards extended and repeated looking. Adding a unique twist is that the faces, hands, arms, legs of each of her subjects are gorgeously rendered in grisaille(!), something I’ve never seen done in a color Painting before, and something that has become her trademark. She uses grisaille as a way of “challenging the concept of color as race¹.”

Untitled (Opal), 2019, Oil on linen. Standing in front of Opal, I found myself wondering why I’d never seen a Painting like this before. It seems so incredibly straight-forward, yet only Amy Sherald could have Painted it and made it as unique as it is. From the grisaille, to the position of her hands & fingers, to her expression and the choice of colors, which Wes Anderson might admire, it’s a remarkable blend of a Portrait of Opal through the eyes of an Artist with a vision.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s I spent much time wondering what new developments would come to Portraiture after the work of great 20th Century Artists, like Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, Alice Neel, Marlene Dumas, Picasso, and others. 25+ years in, the genre is continually being reinvented, yet again, by a number of Artists who have come to prominence this decade- including Amy Sherald, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, and Frank Auerbach (who passed away in 2024).

Bo Bartlett, Oligarchy, 2016, Oil on linen. See at Ameringer McEnery Yohe, August 12, 2016.

Interestingly, Amy credits the Painter Bo Bartlett with showing her the possibilities. Others have posited that Ms. Sherald’s use of grisaille goes back to old black & white Photos of Black subjects, and not Painting or Painted Portraiture. However, on 19th Century Photographs Ms. Sherald said-

“It wasn’t what inspired my work, but it’s what affirmed my journey with it, and it’s where I was finally able to find these representations of black Americans that spoke to me in the same way that I wanted my work to speak to the world. They were family photographs, similar to the image of my grandmother that I oftentimes mention, where she had her picture taken.”

The Artist’s grandmother, Jewel Hendricks, as seen on page 28 of the excellent American Sublime catalog.

“Looking at how they represented themselves— they’re quiet, regal, graceful. It was an outward action that had inward meaning. They don’t smile, but there’s something there-this is what I look for in people— the feeling that you get when you look at those old photographs. When you look into their eyes, you are being told a story. It’s almost as if they’re standing in front of you, and they have a living and breathing kind of energy. There is something so captivating about that. And it’s not frivolous. It’s a very serious, deliberate kind of thing, having your picture taken, especially then².”

Breonna Taylor, 2020 Oil on linen.

In work after work, American Sublime reveals that Amy Sherald is a master of Portrait story telling. Her Portrait of Michelle Obama, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, is a classic case in point that manages to subtly weave multiple threads. Crossing cultural boundaries by dialoguing Mondrian-like elements and Gee’s Bends Quilt Making is artistically ground-breaking, topped off with a natural and wonderfully relaxed pose, enhanced by the background pale blue, that is just stunning.

This is what Amy Sherald does.

Commissioned to Paint the late Breonna Taylor, her first posthumous Portrait, Ms. Sherald visited her family and spent time with her mother, Tamika Palmer, who spoke of Breonna’s interest in fashion. Amy commissioned a dress for the Portrait, and also added an engagement ring on her finger “to represent the love between Taylor and her partner, Kenneth Walker… Sherald incorporated the ring to give him solace and to suggest a brighter future³.” Of the finished Painting she said, “I don’t think I thought much about the viewer so much as I thought about her family when I was making this portrait….but when you’re speaking about violence against women and police brutality, she’s become the face for that movement,” she said⁴.

The intro for the Audio Guide for her 2019 Painting, The Girl Next Door says, “The artist discusses how she transforms the historical function of portraiture…” That’s a lot to have accomplished in 18 years already. Along the way, she renders a wide range of subjects that encompass an equally wide range of Black Americans, including more than a few who are new to museum walls showing the scope of her vision.

American Grit, 2024 Oil on linen.

As soon as she was able to, she sought out the family of the woman, Kristen, whose heart she now has. Amy was 39 when she received Kristin’s heart. Kristin died at 38. Amy calls it “a perfect match.”

Kingdom, 2022 Oil on linen

“What kind of person was she? What kind of things did she like. Who did she love? I romantically believe in muscle memory, heart memory. It means a lot for me to be able to just kind of get to know her family a little bit. When I met her father he made me feel her heart beat. … I still call it Kristen’s heart.”

Trans Forming Liberty, 2024 Oil on canvas

“I live without fear. I work without fear. I wake up and produce these ideas without thinking so much about painting something stupid or people not liking it. I’m living this moment: I wake up every day, and I have to make sure that my work continues to speak to generations. I need to make things that are going to resonate in that way.”

For Love, and for Country, 2022 Oil on linen.

She continues, “But I also truly believe in who I am as a human. I believe in my power. I believe in timing. I believe that this is my “now,” and that nothing can go wrong now. I understand that as a fact. I’ve been through the worst of the worst, and it was still okay. I wake up, and I keep it moving every day for Kristin and my brother Michael. You don’t waste second chances⁵.”

A God Blessed Land (Empire of Dirt), 2022 Oil on linen.

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “I Can See Clearly Now,” written & performed by Johnny Nash from the 1972 album of the same name, which he performs here the following year-

For those who kept me here, and for Lisa, who gave this total stranger her extra ticket to the sold-out Basquiat show at the Brant Foundation in Spring, 2019, enabling me to see it and share it with the world. As she was leaving she told me she was looking forward to seeing Amy Sherald: the heart of the matter….

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https://nmwa.org/art/artists/amy-sherald/ ↩

“Amy Sherald in Conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates” in Amy Sherald: The World We Make, P.184 ↩

https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2021.117 ↩

ibid. ↩

ibid. P.186 ↩

Posted on February 28, 2026July 30, 2026 by Kenn Sava Posted in Amy Sherald, Art, Johnny Nash, NYC Art Shows, NYC Art Shows 2019, NYC Art Shows 2025, Painting & Drawing, Whitney Museum Tagged Amy Sherald, NYC Art Shows 2025

CJ Hendry: Colored Pencil Mastery to Art SuperStar

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Show seen- CJ Hendry, Flower Market 2.0, Rockefeller Center, September 19-21, 2025

Having just written about Hilma af Klint’s Flower Paintings (with guest star Georgia O’Keeffe), there is another Artist who garnered quite a bit of attention with Flower Art in NYC in 2025: the Artist known as CJ Hendry. Learning about her and experiencing her work in 2025 turned out to be an adventure, the likes of which I’ve never experienced in the NYC Art world.

What do I mean, “quite a bit of attention…”, and “The likes of which I’ve never experienced…”? Check out the 5 city-block long line of people (on the far side of the barricade) waiting to get into her show, sped-up 400%-

I sped it up 400%(!) so you wouldn’t have to spend the 10 minutes I spent walking to the end of what was the longest line I’ve ever stood in in NYC, let alone for an Art event. What’s it all about? Why are so many people interested in CJ Hendry?

Ms. Hendry first came to my attention this past Spring while I was researching the current State-of-the-Art in Colored Pencil Drawing, and discovered this-

Detail of Light Peach Rose, the whole 41 x 41 inches shown next, Colored Pencil, on paper or board (not specified), Date unknown. The Artist works on a detail with a Caran D’ache Luminance Color Pencil. *- CJ Hendry Studio Photo.

The full work, Light Peach Rose, 41 x 41 inches, mounted on a wall, as the Artist adds a detail, or holds the pencil there ostensibly so we know it’s not a Photograph. *- CJ Hendry Studio Photo.

Astounded by her work, as numerous others have been, I searched deeper, looking for answers about how she gets such spectacular results.

One of her most remarkable Flower Drawings. Title, size, date, materials besides Colored Pencils, unknown. Ms. Hendry loves to play with the picture plane and the picture “frame,” here, with a large part of the composition seeming to extend out of the frame and appear to be 3-D. In some of her pieces she even Draws an intricate gilded frame. *- CJ Hendry Studio Photo.

Details are few and far between. It’s not that she’s overly secretive, I think she’s just busy. The closest I’ve come are a few yt videos she’s posted where you can actually watch her Draw. One lasts SIX HOURS! Yes, I’ve watched all of it, and parts of it more than once. It’s not a lesson per se, it’s the Artist at work, and there’s no sound (Ms Hendry usually listens to audiobooks or shows during her marathon Drawing sessions), but it’s revealing nonetheless.

My most recent piece on Hilma af Klint focused on her Nature Series Portfolio consisting of 42 Watercolor Paintings containing renderings of 100 varieties of flowers that was on view at MoMA this Spring and Summer. The piece focused on Art depicting individual flowers, which is exactly what CJ Hendry is doing here. As the year went on, I found myself pondering the similarities, and differences, between CJ Hendry, Hilma af Klint and Georgia O’Keeffe on a regular basis. I’ll get to that.

Flower, Colored Pencil on Paper or board, Date unknown. One of her source Drawings for her Plush Flowers, seen further below. *- CJ Hendry Studio Photo.

Having spent 2025 looking at Flower Art almost exclusively, I was immediately struck by another series of Flowers she’s drawn, that includes this one. I’ve seen twelve of these Drawings, though there are likely more given she & her team proceeded to make them into a series of about 27 different Plush Flowers that were given away and sold in the two Flower Markets she’s set up on Roosevelt Island in 2024, and in Rockefeller Center in September, 2025- the show all those folks in the video were waiting to get in to see5¹. Looking at these reminded me of Georgia O’Keeffe’s famous quote about “realism”-

Busy lady. The Artist moves past a wall of 12 of her Flower Drawings. *- CJ Hendry Studio Photo.

“Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things,” Georgia O’Keeffe.

Plush Flower, 2024-5. Each 20 inches tall. Each meticulously crafted, with a double-sided tag. *- CJ Hendry Studio Photo.

I don’t know if Ms. Hendry knows that quote, or has been influenced by it, yet looking at her Plush Flowers and the Drawings they’re based on, I’m struck by how sensitively she’s “edited” nature’s creations while still retaining species recognition. Frankly, it’s darn remarkable.

The Artist with a full Bouquet of her Plush Flowers. *- CJ Hendry Studio Photo.

As we’ve seen up top, she’s as capable as any human being currently alive/known to me this side of Robert Longo and Andrew Holmes at being able to Draw hyper-realistic (her term for her work) flowers. That she hasn’t here I find very interesting. She opted to create her own take on these Flowers that look like Roses, Sunflowers, et al, riffing on their essence. Were these Drawn/designed to make mass-manufacturing of them more affordable? I tend to doubt it because the attention to detail on each Plush Flower, as the end result result is known as, is there. When I say “mass-manufacturing,” CJ Hendry deals in hundreds of thousands of them! In her own way, it seems to me that has done something not all that different from what Hilma af Kint did in her Nature Studies Portfolio on view at MoMA as I said in my piece on it: her Plush Flowers and the Drawings they’re base on speak to the essence of each species, as she sees it.

Original Drawing, left, resulting Plush Flower as sold at her Flower Market, right. *- CJ Hendry Studio Photo.

A grid I put together of 25 of the 27 CJ Hendry 2025 Plush Flowers based on her Drawings available at her 2025 NYC Flower Market. *-Photos by CJ Hendry Studio.

Beyond her Flowers speaking to the essence of the flowers they replicate, they also speak to A LOT of people, as you saw in the video I posted up top, taken on Saturday, September 2o, 2025. That 5 city-block long line for a flower show (CJ Hendry’s Flower Market 2.0 at Rockefeller Plaza), or an Art show, must be a record. Here’s a map of the route I took in the video-

The map of the line, September 20, 2025.
Map Key-
Sunflower (one of CJ Hendry’s Plush Flowers)- Location of CJ Hendry’s Flower Market.
Red Line- My path to the end of the line of those waiting to get in.
Oof- Kenn Sava’s position at the end of the line.
Note- The distance from Rockefeller Plaza to 6th Avenue is about 2 City blocks.

In it we’re walking west on West 49th Street, before turning right onto Sixth Avenue, past Radio City Music Hall, and up to just short of the corner of West 52nd Street! The gent in the blue suit at the end of the line is selling tickets for Top of the Rock (i.e. the roof deck of 30 Rockefeller Plaza), directly behind the location of Flower Market, which offered an exclusive 28th Plush Flower to those who went.

At the other end of the line, the wait for these visitors near the entrance of Flower Market (the white tent) is just about over.

The wait to get in was TWO HOURS! When I finally reached the end of the line to begin my wait I found myself standing so far from the show’s entrance I was within feet of the corner of West 52nd Street on 6th Avenue. It dawned on me that I was now a block away from MoMA where at that very moment Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers was beginning its final week! Flowers, flowers everywhere…When Flower Market opened on September 19th, I heard that over 100,000 Pluh Flowers were available. After the show ended, those remaining were sold on her site in bouquets of the all 27 Flowers. They sold out within days.

Bouquet up! Inside Flower Market 2.0, Visitors can have one of any one of the 27 designs for free. Each additional Flower is $5.00. I happened to notice that Crate & Barrel sells their decorative flowers for $19.95 to about $50 EACH, and they’re not designed by a known Artist (as far as I know). September 20, 2025.

After possibly being the first to put Georgia O’Keeffe and Hilma af Klint together last time, I now might well be the first to put Hilma af Klint & CJ Hendry together, but for that weekend, anyway, they weren’t all that far apart. CJ Hendry’s Flower Market was up (from September 19-22, 2025) 3 blocks directly south and parallel of MoMA smack dab in the heart of Rockefeller Plaza, as the map earlier shows, behind the famous skating rink, steps away from Fifth Avenue, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Radio City Music, Hall, etc., etc., and smack dab in front of the iconic Art Deco RCA Building at 30 Rock. Yes, the big time. Real Estate in NYC doesn’t come any more expensive than this.

Just HOW popular is CJ Hendry? In an interview last year Ms. Hendry stated that she grossed $20 million in a prior year. Putting that in perspective, that’s $20 million…

-WITHOUT a dealer or gallery representation- ever. (Her Colored Pencil Drawings currently go for $85,000 to $500,000. depending on size. But before you reach for your wallet, there’s another line to get on, this one “for years,” for the chance to buy one, only through her website.)
-WITHOUT a traditional white-wall “show.”
-WITHOUT a book out. In fact, there are surprisingly few articles written on her work.

So, HOW did this. happen? CJ Hendry (she’s gone by her initials for as far back in her youth as I could go) is a mid-30-something transplanted Aussie Artist born in Durban, South Africa before growing up in Brisbane. She now lives & works in Brooklyn. She spent seven years in college studying Architecture and finance but left without a degree(!). In fact, she quit “days before I was kicked out for failing grades².” While she was in school she worked as an $18./hour waitress, spending all her money on high-end luxury fashion & accessories. After quitting college, she decided to sell her wardrobe on eBay and with the proceeds take 365 days and devote herself to something she knew she had always been good at: Drawing, to see if she could make any headway with it. Now, I don’t think I need to tell anyone that making a living Drawing is something that has really only been accomplished (after YEARS of struggle) by comic book Artists & graphic novelists, like R. Crumb and Chris Ware. In Art, Drawing is seen as a means to an end (in another medium), and almost never the end itself. She put in 16-hour days Drawing born of the discipline she learned becoming a professional swimmer who failed twice to make Australia’s Olympic Team. She decided not to put in another four years to try a third time. Still, “I owe everything to that (discipline)³,” she says now. It enabled her to create a portfolio she took around to Brisbane galleries. There was no interest.

“I didn’t take the traditional route because no one wanted to sign me. Fuck, I guess I’m on my own….I just did it on my own.”

She decided to post her work on Instagram. It took a while until she received a DM expressing interest in buying her work. The sender came out to her parent’s house, where she was still living, saw the work in her bedroom and paid CJ the amount she asked (“in the thousands,” she says) for the piece. With the proceeds she bought herself a Chanel Surf Board, which I believe still hangs in her studio, and she took things from there.

“Everything I draw would sell, and I’m so grateful for that. I went to a university for finance. I get business. I love business. I think I’m better at business than I am art. I’m a hopeless artist. I’m an ok artist, but I’m really good at strategy & business. and I love that. I think art is the byproduct of strategy and business. I think there are a lot of artists who are very good artists but don’t maybe have that business side⁴.”

As a result of her Flower Market and her Plush Flowers, I realized that Colored Pencil Drawing is far from all she does. She’s mounted events/shows that have garnered notoriety for their unique concepts and installations to the point that they draw crowds, then live on in legend after (clicking on each entry in that link will show you what I mean). As part of these events, she created pieces (original Drawing-inspired objects in a you-name-it wide range of materials) that seem to me, and no doubt others, to bring her very close to the realm of something akin to 21st Century “Pop.” (For the sake of keeping this piece from getting VERY long, and since she has released so many other items, I’ll keep the focus here to her Flowers.) She now Draws with a few assistants, part of the “small team” she’s enlisted to facilitate and realize her many projects, shows, multi-media pieces, etc. So, CJ Hendry has become her own factory, now headquartered in a 22,000 square foot studio in Greenpoint, BKLYN. As I pealed her onion, discovering more and more about her, the name Andy Warhol repeatedly came to my mind.

Andy Warhol, Flowers, Screenprints, 1964-65 seen at Andy Warhol: From A to B And Back Again, Whitney Museum, December 21, 2018

I began to wonder- Is she Andy Warhol 2.0,? Seriously.

CJ Hendry, Blomma, 2025, Painted canvas Flower and Beech wood frame. This design has become her de facto symbol. *- CJ Hendry Studio Photo.

From an Art & business perspective, I think thee is a very strong case to be made that she is at least one of those that could be said about, while remaining resolutely CJ Hendry. Unlike the vivacious, omni-present Mr. Warhol, however, CJ appears to have no “social life.” She was quoted on August 9th on Instagram saying her life is “work and kids…not much else, ” which is a change from the 24/7 she said she worked since she started making Art. She is never seen at parties, or out on the town, or with media stars. The only “CJ Hendry Superstars” are her products, which have always sold out to this point. Yet, in an interview she recommended “not investing” in her⁵, but rather buy the work of up-and-coming Artists who need the support. Her Art is also noteworthy for the lack of human subjects in it to date. I’ve only seen one CJ Hendry Portrait- a commission from 4 years ago. Like Andy, CJ began her Drawing career rendering luxury products, including shoes, boots, and fashion accessories. From them she’s moved on to “things that are always around us,” like well-worn sneakers, cigarette butts and flowers. On Drawing the latter she said-

Who says a Drawing isn’ t Art? Unknown title, date, Caran d’Ache Luminance colored pencil (in her hand) on paper or board. *- CJ Hendry Studio Photo

“Ever since I started mucking around with being an artist, flower imagery kind of frustrated me…It always seemed like the obvious and basic direction to go. I held off for many years because I just couldn’t figure them out. So somehow petals make sense, the flower being broken down, not full of life. Each petal looks so different like its own mini sculpture…”

I can’t say I’ve seen an Artist take this approach to them. Who else has Drawn or Painted a flower petal as their finished piece? In Art classes, students are taught to study anatomy in order to render the figure. Ms. Hendry is taking the same approach to flowers. It can only help her when she comes to depicting the whole.

Right now, it looks like flowers may be a anomaly in her work. Looking back, Ms. Hendry turned her focus to a subject, produced a series of Drawings of it, perhaps released some related items, and moved on. Though she recently Drew a character named “Juju,” and released a batch of (now sold-out) related items, her Flowers will continue to be a part of her work. She has announced Flower Markets will be mounted in Abu Dhabi and Hong Kong early this year.

The Artist works on one of her Complementary Colors series of Drawings circa 2018. Notice the pencil point. It looks to me like a right out-of-the-box Prismacolor Premier! In fact, in the videos I’ve seen, she uses very basic accessories. Electric sharpener (an Xacto seen in one), spray fixative, painter’s tape to hold down copy paper shielding white areas while she works flat on a very large wood table. I haven’t seen her erase (in what I’ve seen), use a mahlstick, a pencil extender or an easel. (She puts a sheet of something unknown, possibly, glassine, under her drawing hand as she works over finished areas.) Oh, and there’s an entire shelving unit of boxes holding thousands of colored pencils arranged by color. Drawings in progress, or finished, are kept in suitably sized clear archival sleeves. *- CJ Hendry Studio gif

Among the numerous striking pieces in her career to date is a stunning 2018 series called Complementary Colors. Like all of her work, it speaks for itself.

Possibly the paint blob she was just seen working on. Colored pencil(!) on ? Title, size, date unknown from her Complimentary Colors series. c.2018. *- CJ Hendry Studio Photo.

“I’ve peaked! It is downhill from here for me.” CJ Hendry, TedTalk, 2018.

She couldn’t have been more wrong when she said those words in 2018 at about the time she created the paint blob above. Her career has gone straight up, like an arrow into the weightlessness of space since, hitting that $20M she mentioned a year or two ago! Still, the market and the public are fickle. The CJ Hendry buzz may subside one of these days, but with Drawing talent like she has I doubt she’s entirely going away.

While the future is unwritten, we can take stock of the recent past. In addition to the facts that she’s brought more attention to Drawing as a medium & an Art form, which sorely needs it, and colored pencil Drawing (DITTO!), the thing I admire most about Ms. Hendry is that she’s succeeded entirely by her own devices. She’s proven it can be done, but, IT’S NOT THAT EASY!

“If you try to follow in someone’s footsteps exactly it won’t work for you. You’ve got to find your own thing. I haven’t had anyone to follow. There’s no one who’s done it this way. I’m a huge anomaly in the art world².”

When repeatedly asked about how she did it, she stresses the HARD work she put in to get here- those 16-hour drawing sessions, 24/7. All the sacrifices she made (i.e. a social life, college, etc.) AND the fact that she has a background in finance. Hilma af Klint and Georgia O’Keeffe had to work to succeed in a male-dominated world. Georgia had a champion in Alfred Stieglitz who helped her navigate it early on. Hilma wasn’t so lucky. She never found her champion and decided her work was for the future. Whether that future is now, or not…the jury is out in my view.

I wonder how many visitors chose a Sunflower and thought about Van Gogh. I did.

That brings me to the similarities and differences between Hilma and CJ Hendry. As I wrote in my recent piece on her, Hilma didn’t live to realize the Temple she envisioned to house her Art, partly because she was seeking to have her work installed by existing spiritual organizations. As I said, I believe her work has been left in a quandary as a result.

Flower Market 2.0, Rockefeller Center, NYC, September 20, 2025.

CJ Hendry built her own “temple.” Actually, she’s already built a whole series of them. She uses temporary spaces for her shows/events, including some that have involved complete renovations of buildings, to realize her visions. Ironically, at the moment I took this picture, Flower Market 2.0, was pointed directly & poignently at MoMA & Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers three blocks north (to the left). What stands behind these Flowers is a woman who’s a force of nature. “Carpe diem” could well be CJ Hendry’s motto. While Hima af Klint’s work’s place is, it seems, still undecided, and appears stuck between today’s Art machine & the Artist’s intentions, as I said last time, CJ Hendry stands at the opposite end of that spectrum, as someone who relishes and uses the Art machine’s focus on “materialism” while skating rings around the usual dictates of today’s Art establishment, remarkably achieving success without its help or involvement, on her own terms.

She’s right, no one can follow in someone else’s footsteps and expect the same results. Still, there is much to be learned from her example. Perhaps, most importantly, that it CAN be done.

I don’t think CJ Hendry will be the last Artist to “make it” on their own terms.

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “God Bless the Child,” by Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog, Jr, 1939, seen here in this incredibly rare live recording by the immortal Lady Day with the equally immortal Count Basie, who I had the honor of meeting-

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With Flower Markets being announced for 2026 in Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi. ↩

Short Story Long podcast #162, CJ Hendry. ↩

ibid. ↩

Both quotes ibid. ↩

ibid ↩

Short Story Long podcast #162, CJ Hendry. ↩

Posted on January 31, 2026July 30, 2026 by Kenn Sava Posted in Art, CJ Hendry, Count Basie, Georgia O'Keeffe, Hilma af Klint, NoteWorthy Shows, NYC Art Shows, NYC Art Shows 2025, Painting & Drawing Tagged CJ Hendry, Colored Pencil Drawing, Flower Art, Flower Market, Plush Flowers, Rockefeller Center

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