Above: “Cement Mixer,” a color lithograph by Jacob Kainen (1909-2001), created while he was in the WPA’s Federal Art Project, 1937. Kainen developed left-wing views during the Great Depression, and when asked about it, he said: “Well, in the Depression, in 1929, I used to see entire blocks evicted, people with their bedding out in the street… no place to go, their mattresses out there. So I took part in the unemployed councils. We used to take the furniture back upstairs and the police gave only half-hearted resistance. So I think that got me started. The government seemed to do nothing about [the economic problems of the working class].” Image courtesy of the General Services Administration and the University of Iowa Museum of Art.
Jacob Kainen, The Search, 1952, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1979.80.9
Jacob Kainen (December 7, 1909 – March 19, 2001) was an American painter and printmaker. He is also known as an art historian, writing books on art. Kainen was a collector of German Expressionist art, and he and his second wife, Ruth, donated a collection of this work to the National Gallery of Art in 1985.
TEXT FROM WIKIPEDIA
Jacob Kainen, Tenement Fire, 1934, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1979.80.1
Jacob Kainen, Huckster, 1942, watercolor on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Christopher and Alexandra Middendorf, 1991.7.9
Jacob Kainen was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1909. As the second of three sons born to Russian immigrants, Kainen grew up in a family that appreciated culture and talent. His father’s artistry as an inventor and his mother’s love for music and literature undoubtedly fostered in Kainen an insatiable interest in art. Even at age ten, Kainen was eager to study master works, including clippings of art reproductions from The Jewish Daily Forward in his scrapbooks.
In 1918 the family moved to New York City, where Kainen’s budding passion would further advance with trips to The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library. Poetry and literature became major components of his artistic study during high school. When Kainen graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School at sixteen, he was too young to be admitted to the Pratt Institute. In the meantime he took drawing classes at the Art Students League, where Kimon Nicolaides taught him to “trust in the freedom and sureness of his hand.” It was during this period that Kainen made his first prints, drypoint etchings. Kainen used this time to further exercise his interests by working in the classics department of Brentano’s bookstore, as well as developing his skills as a boxer.
Kainen would go on to become an expert in the classics and quite a skilled amateur prizefighter. Kainen was finally granted admittance to Pratt in the fall of 1927. Though Kainen had a deep interest and appreciation for the old masters during this period of his life, he quickly found the Pratt curriculum backward, too anti-modernist, and dogmatic. Upon entering school his portraits and color choices remained warm in tone, but as he progressed they became brighter and more reminiscent of Cézanne’s palette. In Kainen’s final year of school, Pratt instituted a curriculum that focused more on commercial art and commercialized drawing styles. This catalyzed Kainen into a rebellion that resulted in his expulsion from the institute three weeks before graduation, and subjected him to further scorn from many of those associated with Pratt.
This event proved monumental in Kainen’s conceptual and artistic development. After his expulsion, Kainen sought out other avant-garde artists in the city, especially those who shared his institutional disdain. It led him to begin to engage with the emotive palette and gestures of German Expressionism and the social awareness and ferocity of social realism during the 1930s. He became a part of the New York Group, “interested in those aspects of contemporary life which reflect the deepest feelings of the people; their poverty, their surroundings, their desire for peace, their fight for life.”His expressionist and social leanings began to definitively merge in the mid-1930s in works such as Tenement Fire (1934) and The Flood (1936).
Jacob Kainen, The Bath, 1941, oil on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1979.80.6
CAREER Kainen also frequented cafeterias that had become the places where urban artists met to debate and develop ideas, both social and aesthetic. Kainen and Arshile Gorky became acquainted during a particular exchange in which they both defended the importance of copying master works and admitted to lurking in museums. The friendship with Gorky and his influence that resulted from their meeting would prove to be a lifelong one. Kainen was an active participant in the WPA‘s graphic arts program during the second half of the decade, but he eventually parted with the aesthetics of social realism in favor of abstraction. Yet his work would never lose its humanism or its concern for history: “However abstract the forms and colors seem, they should somehow give off an aura of human experience.”[2] When opportunities in New York for work with the WPA ran low, Kainen moved to Washington, DC. in 1942.[3]
Jacob Kainen, Driver’s Seat, 1938, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1979.80.3
CURATOR From 1942 to 1970 Kainen was curator of the Division of Graphic Arts at the Smithsonian’s U. S. National Museum. Though jarred by the elementary state of Washington’s then slow-paced art scene, Kainen found inspiration in the Victorian skyline and architecture that defined the buildings surrounding his studio in Dupont Circle. In the 1940s he was one of the first abstract artists working in the city, and produced abstract compositions of symbols and forms that resounded with both his physical surroundings and personal experiences.
In 1949 Kainen’s national loyalty was questioned and he was placed under investigation by the Civil Services loyalty board. During the 1930s, and the time spent in New York after his expulsion from Pratt, Kainen had written art reviews for the Daily Worker and signed legal petitions that attempted to institute social change. Such activities later put his job in jeopardy when he was being considered an “enemy of the state”.[This quote needs a citation] Kainen was not cleared of formal charges until 1954. The psychological strain and anxiety of this period became evident in his vivid abstractions with titles like Exorcist (1952), Unmoored #2 (1952) and The Listener (1952). Kainen later remembered this time as a period when: “I begin with the aesthetic balancing of forms but these psychological ghosts take over.”
Soon after his clearance by the Civil Services board, Kainen shifted from abstraction to elegant figurative work. As evidence of fervent independence, Kainen rejected the popularity of Abstract Expressionism for a return to the figure. Kainen began to participate in substantially more exhibitions in Washington after he met his wife, Ruth Cole, in 1968. Prior to their marriage Kainen painted nightly after his workday, at his unheated studio, until ten or eleven o’clock at night, then returned home to do writing or museum research until 2 a.m. because he was not allowed to do scholarly writing on government time. Kainen retired from the Smithsonian in 1970 in order to paint full-time. Kainen taught evening classes in painting and printmaking at the Washington Workshop Center for the Arts,[4] and was instrumental in introducing Morris Louis to Kenneth Noland and hiring Louis to teach painting at the Workshop. Shortly thereafter, Louis and Noland began collaborating on “staining”, the fundamental notion of Washington Color Field Painting, and a groundbreaking technique with many influential practitioners, although Kainen did not consider himself to be a member of the Washington Color School.[5] After his departure from the Smithsonian Institution in 1970, his work shifted back to pure abstraction.
Jacob Kainen died in his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, at the age of 91 as he was preparing to go to his studio to paint. He was the father of mathematician Paul Kainen and inventor Daniel Kainen.
Jacob Kainen, Residential Facades, 1949, gouache on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Christopher and Alexandra Middendorf, 1991.7.8
MOMO THE COLER HEALING HOUND CLARA BELLA GUESSED IT !!
CLARIFICATION WE ARE HAPPY TO GIVE WINNERS OF OUR DAILY PHOTO IDENTIFICATION A TRINKET FROM THE VISITOR CENTER. ONLY THE PERSON IDENTIFYING THE PHOTO FIRST WILL GET A PRIZE. WE HAVE A SPECIAL GROUP OF ITEMS TO CHOOSE FROM. WE CANNOT GIVE AWAY ALL OUR ITEMS,. PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT IN THESE DIFFICULT TIMES, WE MUST LIMIT GIVE-AWAYS. THANK YOU
EDITORIAL
Kainen was one of numerous artists and scholars who were considered enemies of the state. Many were never exonerated and their lives ruined. This article features only a small amount of his works. Please check out his pages on the Smithsonian American Arts Museum site, https://americanart.si.edu/search?query=%22Jacob+Kainen%22
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated IMAGES COURTESY OF THE SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM AND ARE COPYRIGHTED (C) TEXT COURTESY OF WIKIPEDIA
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Doggy Bags sculptures on Broadway“Doggy Bags” giant dog sculptures take over Garment District. Photo: Alexandre Ayer/Diversity Pictures
October is a great time to visit some of the newest public art installations throughout New York City — while abiding by the health and safety guideline with social distancing and mask wearing. With the Photoville festival taking place over different boroughs for the ninth year and Union Square’s climate clock making a buzz on the headlines for marking the end of civilization on Earth, October offers some new additions to the already expansive art installation checklist from September. During these challenging times, perhaps we can experience a little rest from Optical Animal’s Projection Napping at Time Square and browse through the graffiti wall in Bowery. Here are the public art installations on display in New York City this October:
Doors for Doris at Doris C. Freedman Plaza
Photo by Nicholas Knight, Courtesy Public Art Fund
Artist Sam Moyer created a massive three-part hybrid sculpture using imported stones and rock indigenous to New York in order to pay homage to Public Art Fund founder Doris C. Freedman at the plaza named for her outside Central Park.
According to Public Art Fund’s website, “these polished stones bear the markings and shapes of their original uses. They also display the unique colors, patterns, and geological history of their sources — quarries in Brazil, China, India, Italy, and beyond. Each stone in Moyer’s mosaic compositions takes on an even more striking hue against the others and the locally-quarried rock, an apt metaphor that encourages us to consider the diverse character of our city and our interconnected lives within it.” The installation will run from September 16, 2020 to September 12, 2021.
“Doggy Bags,”, the latest art installation on Broadway in the Garment District is up and is positively pooch-tastic. The works by New York-based artist Will Kurtz entitled “Doggy Bags” are all made of recycled materials. On display are multiple breeds including an English bulldog named Harriet, chihuahua called Harriet, a pug named Maisy, a bassett hound called Stanley, and a bull mastif known as Daphne. The works are part of a year-round program from the Garment District Alliance and this fall there is an additional impetus: to welcome New Yorkers back to Midtown Manhattan amidst the ongoing city reopening.
MATZU
On the Bowery graffiti wall, Groundswell has completed the newest mural to be seen at the street art site in a year. The work was designed by artist Raul Ayala and painted by a team of ten youth artists The last piece, by Japanese artist Tomokazu Matsuyama “Matzu” was completed in September of last year. The mural for 2020 coincides with the 25th anniversary of Groundswell, an organization that uses art for change. The new mural at the Bowery graffiti wall, located on Houston Street between Bowery and Elizabeth streets, incorporates numerous portraits of Black figures and also has a seafaring folklore theme with mythical creatures pulling down statues. On the left side, the skyline of Manhattan appears.
Experience New York City’s only corn maze at the Queens County Farm Museum, this year designed in the shape of Van Gogh’s sunflowers! The Amazing Maize Maze three acres large and the adventure begins with a “Stalk Talk” to prepare visitors for the challenge ahead, who must find their way to Victory Bridge “where the full vista of Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ is revealed.”
Courtesy of Jessica Bal for United Photo Industries
The Photoville festival returns for a ninth year this fall with over 60 outdoor exhibitions from September 17 to November 29, 2020. Organized by Photoville, a New York based non-profit organization, the festival takes place across five boroughs with different photo exhibitions featuring different forms of photojournalism and conceptual narrative projects. This year, due to the pandemic, Photoville features both physical public exhibitions and over 30 free online programs, including online storytelling events, artist talks, workshops, demonstrations, educational programs, and community programming.
Reverberation, a new piece by sculptor Davina Semo is now on display along the waterfront in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The large-scale installation is made up of interactive bells and is meant to evoke public modes of communication that harken back to New York City’s maritime history. Located adjacent to the Brooklyn Bridge, the piece explores our relationship to industrial material and the built environment. And yes, park visitors can ring the bells!
The installation is supported by the Public Art Fund and was curated by Daniel S. Palmer. The Public Art Fund uses contributions from individuals, corporations, and private foundations to support works of art throughout the five boroughs, including the artwork at LaGuardia Airport’s new Terminal B.
October is the beginning of our annual membership drive.
The RIHS has served the community since 1976. In ordinary times, we sponsor programs, lectures, tours, classes and many community events that the RIHS participates in.
Our dues are very reasonable and we need your support to keep our activities coming as soon as we are able.
To join the RIHS go to our membership link at: https://rihs.us/join-us/
Thanking you in advance for your support Judith Berdy
Funding Provided by: Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation Public Purpose Funds Council Member Ben Kallos City Council Discretionary Funds thru DYCD Text by Judith Berdy
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Funding Provided by: Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation Public Purpose Funds Council Member Ben Kallos City Council Discretionary Funds thru DYCD Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT RIHS. 2020 (C) PHOTOS IN THIS ISSUE (C) JUDITH BERDY RIHS
The best way to see North Brother Island is taking the Bronx Bound NYCFerry which passes as close by the island you can get.
INTRODUCTION
Both North Brother Island and South Brother Island were claimed by the Dutch West India Company in 1614 and were originally named “De Gesellen”, translated as “the companions” in English.
The islands were both originally part of Queens County. On June 8, 1881, North Brother Island was transferred to what was then part of New York County (later to become the Bronx). On April 16, 1964, South Brother Island was also transferred to the Bronx.
The islands had been incorporated into Long Island City in 1870, before the consolidation of New York City in 1898. North Brother Island The northern of the islands was uninhabited until 1885, when Riverside Hospital moved there from Blackwell’s Island (now known as Roosevelt Island). Riverside Hospital was founded in the 1850s as the Smallpox Hospital to treat and isolate victims of that disease. Its mission eventually expanded to other quarantinable diseases.
The last such facility to be established on the island was the Tuberculosis Pavilion, which opened in 1943. The Pavilion was rendered obsolete within the decade due to the increasing availability, acceptance, and use of the tuberculosis vaccine after 1945.
The island was the site of the wreck of the General Slocum, a steamship that burned on June 15, 1904. Over 1,000 people died either from the fire onboard the ship, or from drowning before the ship beached on the island’s shores.
According to Joseph Mitchell, a reporter for newspapers and for The New Yorker, the island was the site of many outings of “The Honorable John McSorley Pickle, Beefsteak, Baseball Nine, and Chowder Club” organized by John McSorley of McSorley’s Old Ale House; photos of the outings are featured on the walls of the bar.
Mary Mallon, also known as Typhoid Mary, was confined to the island for over two decades until she died there in 1938. The hospital closed shortly thereafter. Following World War II, the island housed war veterans who were students at local colleges and their families. After the nationwide housing shortage abated, the island was again abandoned until the 1950s, when a center opened to treat adolescent drug addicts.
The facility claimed it was the first to offer treatment, rehabilitation, and education facilities to young drug offenders. Heroin addicts were confined to this facility and locked in a room until they were clean. Many of them believed they were being held against their will. Staff corruption and cost forced the facility to close in 1963. The facility is said to have been the inspiration for the Broadway play Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?, which helped to launch the career of Al Pacino.
Since the mid-1960s, New York City mayors have considered a variety of uses for the island. John Lindsay, for instance, proposed to sell it, and Ed Koch thought it could be converted into housing for the homeless. The city also considered using it as an extension of the jail at Rikers Island.
Now serving as a sanctuary for herons and other wading shorebirds, the island is presently abandoned and off-limits to the public. Most of the original hospitals’ buildings still stand, but are heavily deteriorated and in danger of collapse, and a dense forest conceals the ruined hospital buildings. Wikipedia(c)
Aerial View of island with lighthouse in forefront and buildings of Riverside Hospital to the left
Neat and tidy view from above. Only 20 acres of land, 1/7th the size of Blackwell’s Island
Closeup of Hospital Buddings..Riverside Hospital was originally housed in our former Smallpox Hospital
The lighthouse at the southern tip is no longer visible from the river.
Passengers boarding the General Slocum. Carrying over 1,000 mostly women and children, it caught fire at Hell Gate, north or Blackwell’s Island and finally ran aground on North Brother Island. The island is off the coast of 135 Street in the Bronx. The patients and staff worked to rescue passengers while many died and their remains were brought to the island. It was the worst single day tragedy until 9/11.
Part of the boat lying near North Brother Island.
Many walked away with minor sentences the story of the General Slocum was lost to history for many years. The passengers were working class women and children from the Lower East Side German immigrant community.
Due to extensive and persistent tracing by a public health physician Mary Mallon was confined to North Brother Island in Quarantine twice. After being discharged the first time she went back to cooking an infecting others. This time she was sent to the Island permanently.
Mary Mallon’s cottage on North Brother Island.
Rendering of the Tuberculosis Hospital which was designed by Isadore Rosenfield, the architect of Goldwater Hospital on Welfare Island.
Rounded design to deflect germs and large open rooms were common beliefs in the treatment of Tuberculosis.
Parts of the building are still visible in winter
Probably a great nesting place for the wild birds that are now protected residents of the island.
JACOB A. RIIS VISITED NORTH BROTHER ISLAND IN 1892. THIS IS HIS REPORT FROM AN ISLAND OF QUARANTINE FOR COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE
The Storehouse was located where the lawn is by the Tram Station
When I chose to write about North Brother Island I remembered that I had copy of an article from Cosmopolitan Magazine about the island. No, not the current Cosmo, but a literary journal of 1892. On-line I found this reprint of it from a university library via Google.
The story by the famous photographer Jacob Riis is a tender recounting of those who are taken to this island for care and treatment.
Most survive and leave the island, treated by staff who live there their entire careers.
I got a e-mail the the other day from Guy Ludwig, who is encamped in the wilds of Vermont for the duration. He tells of his early visit sneaking onto the not yet completed island.
It is a dreary day and even Beano the cat has no interest in stirring.
I got an artwork from my friend Henry yesterday for my birthday.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
“I am a social painter or photographer…I find difficulty in making distinctions between photography and painting. Both are pictures.”–Ben ShahnA surge in radical political movements, efforts at social reform, and attempts by diverse populations to establish a national identity contributed to the upheaval that engulfed the United States during the Depression. Many artists who were radicalized by the events of the day became activists and sought work on New Deal relief programs. Among them was Ben Shahn (1898–1969), an artist whose socialist Jewish family had fled czarist Russia in 1906 and settled in Brooklyn.In the early 1930s, Shahn abandoned his interest in European modern art, creating instead incisive realist images, depicting what he called the “social view,” that addressed the issues dominating public debate. The development of Shahn’s social-realist vision was infused by his commitment to leftist politics and his interest in the cultural force of mass media during the 1930s. Shahn first became interested in photography at a time when rotogravure reproductions of photographs in newspapers and magazines served as essential source material for his polemic paintings and satiric caricatures. News photographs inspired Shahn to imbue such works as his famous gouache series The Passion of Sacco–Vanzetti as well as The Mooney Case with a quality of reportage that was favorably noted by many of his contemporaries. Although he became widely known at this time as a painter, muralist, and graphic artist, he was also making formidable photographs.Between 1932 and 1935, Shahn joined the vanguard of the social-documentary movement, making street photographs that defined life in New York City through the prosaic activities and expressive gestures of ordinary people. In addition to photographing activity on the sidewalks of lower and midtown Manhattan, he documented demonstrations for expanded work-relief programs and protest marches against social injustice in and around Union Square and City Hall. In preparation for one of his earliest murals, he also photographed inmates and prison officials at Blackwell’s Island Penitentiary and the New York City Reformatory. All of Shahn’s New York photographs address such topical issues as unemployment, poverty, immigration, and social reform and their connection to race and class.Shahn used a handheld 35-millimeter Leica camera. This tiny, lightweight apparatus allowed him to move unobtrusively through the crowded immigrant neighborhoods of New York City, documenting daily life. He oriented his camera horizontally and tended to photograph at eye level and at fairly close range, thereby placing the viewer in the midst of the scene. He found that by affixing to his camera a miniature periscope-style attachment known as an angle viewfinder, he could capture passersby unaware. The artist could thus present his subjects “immersed in a private world,” as Bernarda Bryson Shahn observed. This “arresting of unconscious mood,” she affirmed, constituted “one of the distinguishing marks of all of Shahn’s photographic work.”Compelling examples of social-realist art in their own right, Shahn’s New York photographs also inspired many of his most important paintings, murals, and drawings. Ben Shahn’s New York explores how the artist’s earliest photographs provided him with a fundamental means of interpreting urban life in modern times and shaped a highly influential documentary aesthetic that would influence and characterize his work for decades.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
This is the sixth in our series of historical articles from the RIHS Archives
It was “bring your own seating” for outdoor activities at the Penitentiary
BEN SHAHN was a Lituanian born artist.
These are some of the images Shahn took of the Penitentiary.
Editorial
As I sit here writing this edition, a show is on TV about the “Food that Built America”,. Other favorites are any “Law and Order”, for early morning entertainment try “How It’s Made” on the Science Channel. Yes, I watch the news but the soothing voice of Sam Waterson makes me feel better.
I have to thank my great support system at the CARTER BURDEN SENIOR CENTER. I volunteer there and we “seniors” are being well taken care of with meals to go, boxed shelf stable meals, and the support you get from hearing from the staff; Lisa, Fred, Ulisa, Pat, Nancy and Brenda.
Our building staff, tram staff, RIOC staff, are all at work whether in person or from home keeping the island on an even keel.
Thanks to our neighbors who took out their sewing machines and made masks for our island workers.
To my friends at Coler, we miss you. We miss the guys from Open Doors. We know how hard it is to be confirmed to the campus and not be able to travel the island and beyond, To the Coler staff and the incoming Bellevue staff, we salute you. We will welcome our ROOSEVELT ISLAND MEDICAL CENTER patients starting this week.(The name of the 350 bed hospital units being set-up at Coler).
There is a quote from Revered Oliver Chapin “Keep on keeping on”
