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).
Read more about this topic: Knox Martin
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“The pleasure of life is according to the man that lives it, and not according to the work or the place.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A man should have a farm or a mechanical craft for his culture. We must have a basis for our higher accomplishments, our delicate entertainments of poetry and philosophy, in the work of our hands.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Racism is when you have laws set up, systematically put in a way to keep people from advancing, to stop the advancement of a people. Black people have never had the power to enforce racism, and so this is something that white America is going to have to work out themselves. If they decide they want to stop it, curtail it, or to do the right thing ... then it will be done, but not until then.”
—Spike Lee (b. 1956)