Work
Knox Martin is best known for his repertory of signs and symbols that allude to nature and, in particular, to the female form. Flatly and freely painted in brilliant colors, his works have often been executed on a grand scale, as in the outdoor wall painting, Woman with bicycle, at West Houston and MacDougal Streets in Manhattan. He mostly creates painting, sculpture and wall paintings using media such as acrylic, collage, fresco, ink drawing (Pen and Ink), Mixed-Media/Multi-Media and oil.
One of his wall paintings in New York City is the twelve-story mural Venus. Painted in 1970, Venus is located on the south side of Bayview Correctional Facility at 19th Street and the West Side Highway.
"Traditionally the goddess of love and fertility, Venus represents woman, erotic and supple, but it also conveys Knox Martin's love affair with New York. Venus is his love poem to the city where he has always lived, a place that is part of his being. The feminine, curvilinear shapes of the image are in direct contrast with the straight forms that intersect the composition. The overwhelming size of this enormous mural only intensifies the experience of female shapes, the linear aspects of the painted composition, and of the surrounding architecture. In an era when art was reaching out to the masses with pop culture, this huge mural was Knox Martin's way of touching a public that would never venture into an art gallery."
(As of 2010, Venus remains largely hidden by an adjacent building).
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Famous quotes containing the word work:
“Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
“Henry David Thoreau, who never earned much of a living or sustained a relationship with any woman that wasn’t brotherly—who lived mostly under his parents’ roof ... who advocated one day’s work and six days “off” as the weekly round and was considered a bit of a fool in his hometown ... is probably the American writer who tells us best how to live comfortably with our most constant companion, ourselves.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)
“To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can’t eat it.”
—Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)