TitleManhattan Lullaby
Artist
Red Grooms
(American, b. 1937)
Date1999
MediumEnamel on plaster
DimensionsOverall: 11 1/2 × 16 3/4 × 3 7/8 in.
EditionAP 1/2
SignedSigned in white paint at lower right: "Red Grooms '99".
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, December 15, 1999
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1999.132
Label TextFor more than forty years Charles Rogers "Red" Grooms has depicted life in New York City in a variety of media and always with an eye toward the humorous aspects of the city. Grooms was born in Nashville, Tennessee and attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1950s before studying with Hans Hofmann, a pioneer of Abstract Expressionism, in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Grooms rejected abstract art in favor of incorporating images of everyday life into his art. He moved to New York in the late 1950s, was an early participant in the first "Happenings" that combined absurdist performance and theater. By the early 1960s had created his first painted sculptural relief and in the mid-1990s, Grooms devoted himself to creating "New York Stories," a series of works depicting all facets of urban life.Grooms has worked in printmaking, watercolor, cut-out paper, and various other mediums to represent the travails of New York City streets. While lacking the colorful personages that often appear in his work, Manhattan Lullaby is part of a series of painted plaster reliefs the artist created in the late 1990s and suggests homage to the city which has provided him subject matter for decades. Manhattan Lullaby depicts the southern end of Manhattan in a characteristically distorted panorama. Specific monuments are recognizable and the World Trade towers can be seen in the middle left, while Battery Park is a prominent patch of green in the lower center of the composition.
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