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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava
“They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway
They say there’s always magic in the air.”*
Perhaps the most “famous” of the Times Square porn theater signs, the infamous Peepland sign stood on 7th Avenue (i.e. Broadway), between 47th & 48th Streets. Big Peep Eye, 2021, Oil stick on linen, 62 x 76 inches. Seen at Jane Dickson: 99c Dreams at James Fuentes, April 7, 2022.
It takes a poet to turn the lurid den of iniquity that was Times Square in the 1980s into Art. Jane Dickson has spent a good part of her career doing just that. Now, times have changed. Visitors to the place today have to look long and hard to get a sense of what it was like 30 or 40 years ago. But, has it been change for the “better?” Earlier this year I asked Jane Dickson which she liked better- the “new” Times Square, or the “old?”
“They’re equally bad,” she replied without even taking a moment to think about it.
Her answer may surprise many who don’t live here, but New Yorkers know and largely agree. I’ve lived through both, so I wanted to get her take on it since she actually lived in the middle of it in it’s most notorious heyday, while I was always ensconced at least a mile away- close enough to walk there easily, passing through it often enough, and leave when I wanted. Meanwhile she stayed in her loft on 8th Avenue near 43rd Street, right in the heart of all of it, watching it all go down from her window, or on the street.
99c Dreams Felt, 2022, Acrylic on felt, 62 x 84 inches. The titular piece from her spring, 2022 James Fuentes solo show.
The place had a look all its own. While you were looking, keeping your eyes open in “old” Times Square, best known to most from Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, was key to surviving it. Still, I was mugged once on “the Deuce” as 42nd Street was called. Keeping your eyes open in “new” Times Square is also key to surviving it, for different reasons. Now, you’re not as likely to get mugged as you are to get hit by a bike. Looking at the Art of Jane Dickson, it seems that she never closes her eyes. Her work is full of fleeting moments that may not be the “decisive moments” Henri Cartier-Bresson immortalized. They’re more like “What just happened?” moments, where the pitch black night is “stabbed by the flash of a neon light,” as Paul Simon wrote in “The Sound of Silence.”
Big Terror, 2020, Acrylic on linen. What appears to be the strip of theaters on West 42nd Street between 7th & 8th Avenues back in the day. All the marquees are gone now.
While Taxi Driver definitely captured the look and feel of the place, Travis Bickle traveled mostly by car. You can’t really get the sense of what the place was like unless you were walking it. And walking it was risky, as I said. Times Square back in the day was seedy and dirty- in most of the definitions of that word in standard usage, both of those terms ran neck and neck with each other on a daily basis to see which one would win.
Reader Advisor, 2021, Oil stick on linen, 22 x 32 inches.
It wound up a toss up, at least in my book.
Halloween Wigs, 2021, Oil stick on linen, 32 x 22 inches.
“They say the women treat you right on Broadway
But looking at them just gives me the blues
‘Cause how you gonna make some time
When all you got is one thin dime
And one thin dime won’t even shine your shoes”*
What may, or may not be, the same place, seen on 8th Avenue & West 35th Street, November 22, 2022.
So, it’s a very strange thing to say that “cleaning up,” or “disneyfying” Times Square, in honor of its most famous new anchor tenant1, wasn’t an improvement. But, it wasn’t. Times Square went from being the City’s capital of porn to being the City’s capital of tacky chain commerce porn. For my part, I’m still waiting for signs of life IN new Times Square. Though, yes, there are some good shows, like this one, on the side streets off the actual Square.
Traffic Cop Port Authority, 2020, Oil stick on linen, 34 x 20 inches. If you’re coming to NYC, crossing the street is, perhaps, THE most dangerous thing you’ll have to do. It’s not only cars, trucks, busses. Now the bigger problem are all the bikes, e-bikes, scooters, motorcycles that obey no laws or rules that are deadly. A man was hit by a bike on my corner in August. He died of his injuries. The cyclist got up and left. I’ve spoken to many cops about this problem. They’re at just as much risk! Right now, no one cares. My advice? Have eyes installed in the back of your head before you get here, and use them!
All the while, Jane Dickson has built a considerable career out of observing life in old Times Square. Her Paintings, Photos, Mosaics, Videos, works on paper, et al, show the Times Square where life happens in the living definition of a “New York Minute”- a nano-second.
Fascination Sign 1, 2020
“I chose to be a witness to my time, not to document its grand moments but to capture the small telling ones, the overlooked everyday things that define a time and place,” she said.
Her work features two recurring elements- the deepest black of the dead of night, punctuated by the glow of lightbulbs, neon tubes, or both, rendered in paint on such surfaces as Astroturf, felt, sandpaper, or carpet. A number of her subjects are faceless or indistinct. They literally could be anyone. While many others have created work in Times Square, (including Richard Estes, who has made some stunning Urban Landscapes there), no other Artist or Photographer has devoted more than 50% of their body of work to it.
Late Show Cop, 2020, 32 x 22 inches, left, and Open, 2021, 34 x 24 inches, right. Both Oil stick on linen.
Little by little, Ms. Dickson is starting to get the recognition she deserves. In 2007, her Mosaics, The Revelers, depicting Times Square New Year’s Eve celebrants, were installed in the IRT 42nd Street/Times Square Subway Station- permanently.
You’ve made your mark when your Art is rendered in the permanence of mosaics, publicly. Jane Dickson’s The Revelers partially seen here installed in the NYC Subway, fittingly right under Times Square where the titular celebrants gather each year on New Year’s Eve to…revel. Seen on July 2, 2022, when most New Yorkers look like they could use some revelry.
I’ve lauded MTA Arts previously, and once again, their selection of this Artist for this location is spot on. The Revelers is installed right under the place where the event takes place each year- New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Walking through the long corridor the piece is installed in on a summer day, I was stopped by a number of the figures.
Yes, the “confetti” around the figures is recreated in glass mosaic and embedded into the tiles surrounding the figures.
The real thing. Leftover confetti from the New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square on West 42nd Street at 7th Avenue directly beneath where the Ball was dropped. January 4, 2022.
Many of them ARE reveling. Some are hugging and kissing. Many carry or play horns. Joy & happiness abounds. Not things you see every day in the Subway. I tried to put myself in the place of those people and remember what they were feeling. New Year’s Eve isn’t a big deal to me. I haven’t celebrated any holiday in years. The pandemic sealed that. Still, it is a good thing to see here, it’s good to have a reminder of happiness & joy, which many will see almost every single day on their commute.
Installation view.
As I think about the piece, having made a few trips just to see it, I’m struck that it provides the only vestige of the feeling the holidays bring for some all year long, anywhere in the City.
Installation view of Jane Dickson in the 2022 Whitney Biennial, seen on March 31, 2022.
The first large monograph on her work, the stunning Jane Dickson in Times Square, was released in late 2018. This year, to my eyes (along with Matt Connors who I wrote about here), she was a “star” of this year’s Whitney Biennial. Concurrent with the Biennial, Ms. Dickson also showed new work in a solo show Jane Dickson: 99c Dreams at James Fuentes from April 7th through May 8th in Soho. Both shows reveal she has lost none of her power, and her eyes remain wide open.
Living the dream…Jane Dickson at the opening of Jane Dickson: 99c Dreams at James Fuentes, April 7, 2022, while her work was also starring across town in The Whitney Biennial.
“They say I won’t last too long on Broadway
I’ll catch a Greyhound bus for home, they all say
But they’re dead wrong, I know they are
‘Cause I can play this here guitar
And I won’t quit ’til I’m a star on Broadway”*
Jane Dickson is yet another example of a wonderful Artist who has been making very good work for a long time (over 4 decades) finally beginning to get the recognition her work deserves. She captured the feel and the experience of Times Square (and beyond) as no one else has. In doing so, she’s done something remarkable: she not only survived it, she created something lasting out of it all.
For me, Jane Dickson is the “Artist Laureate of Times Square,” by definition 3 of this definition of “poet laureate” from the American Heritage Dictionary:
- A poet appointed for life by a British monarch as a member of the royal household and expected to write poems celebrating occasions of national importance and honoring the royal family.
- A poet appointed to a similar honorary position or honored for artistic excellence.
- A poet acclaimed as the most excellent or most representative of a locality or group2. <–Bingo.
*- Soundtrack for this piece is “On Broadway,” by Mann, Weill, Lieber & Stoller as performed by George Benson in 1978.
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Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
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