THE late 1960s and early 1970s were, without a doubt, an era when Fun City was descending into madness and it was thought that NYC was an ungovernable city (in fact that’s the name of a biography of Mayor John V. Lindsay that came out a few years ago). Crime was rising and subways, policing (much of the NYPD was corrupt during this period), sanitation and other basic services were slowly slipping into indifference at best and ineffectiveness at worst, and a real turnaround would not come until the early 1990s. During the World Series in 1977, ABC TV cameras panned toward buildings aflame in the South Bronx near Yankee Stadium, and controversial sports personality Howard Cosell intoned: “The Bronx is burning.”
The NYC City Walls Project was a not-for-profit organization established in 1967 by muralist Jason Crum and other artists to brighten up otherwise drab NYC locations with bright, lively artworks. The works created by Crum (who later moved to Colorado to pursue his art) and his cohorts are no longer possible as so many empty surfaces are sold to advertisers who blare their wares in empty spaces that are becoming scarcer and scarcer. City Walls addressed, in a small way, the feeling that NYC was circling down the drain. If it was, it may as well look a little brighter while it was…
A few years ago, FNY showed the City Walls Project in all its glory with the photographs of Susan Fensten. then, as now, only one of the City Walls remains: This 1970 mural by Tania on West 3rd Street near Mercer is the only remaining City Walls mural, as far as I know, that is still visible in its totality.
From wikipedia:
Tania (1920, Warsaw, Poland, Tatiana Lewin – 1982, Brooklyn, New York) was a Polish-born, New York based, Jewish American abstract painter, sculptor, collage artist, and painter of city walls. She was known by several different married names over the course of her career (including Tania Pollak, Tania Milicevic, Tania Schreiber, Tania Schreiber-Milicevic, Tania Milicevic-Mills, and Tania Mills), but decided as of 1958 to use simply her first name, Tania. She was active in the New York art world from 1949 to 1982, but is perhaps best known for her 13-story geometric wall painting of 1970, which still stands at the corner of Mercer St. & 3rd St. in Greenwich Village, New York. In 1966, she became a founding member of City Walls, Inc., a non-profit organization that commissioned abstract artists to paint walls around New York City, and which (when consolidated with the Public Arts Council in 1977) would later become the Public Art Fund.
As always, “comment…as you see fit.” I earn a small payment when you click on any ad on the site.
4/11/23
3 comments
In 1972 Mayor Jon Lindsay changed his party affiliation & announced his presidential candidacy. At a press conference, a skeptical reporter asked if his job performance as mayor might be disqualifying. He said, “Oh, that’s just NYC; it’s ungovernable”. Thusly his campaign ended almost as soon as it had begun.
Although many will say that such murals brighten up a city, the term “whited sepulcher” springs readily to mind.
The way I see it, I felt that even those murals wouldn’t cover up the conditions the city had in those days hence putting lipstick on pig, but that’s just me saying that.