Vanished murals from the Empire State Building rediscovered
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Saturday, November 23, 2024


Vanished murals from the Empire State Building rediscovered
Oval murals nearly eight feet tall by the German-born American artist Winold Reiss, on display in Bernard Goldberg’s gallery space in New York, April 20, 2023. The murals were part of a series of eight that originally hung in a Longchamps restaurant in the Empire State Building — they were long presumed lost or destroyed until the gallery director, Ken Sims, spotted them while browsing an online marketplace. (Karsten Moran/The New York Times)

by Eve M. Kahn



NEW YORK, NY.- Towering remnants of tropical decor from the young Empire State Building, which were believed to have vanished decades ago, will return to public view Friday in a TEFAF art fair booth at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan. Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts gallery will offer these works, two oval murals of damsels engulfed in rainbows of blossoms and foliage, which German-born artist Winold Reiss painted in 1938 for a Longchamps restaurant at the Empire State Building’s base. (It’s now a Starbucks.)

“Oh, my Lord,” art and architectural historian C. Ford Peatross said last month when he first saw the murals, nearly 8 feet tall, at the Goldberg gallery. Peatross, who has been researching Reiss since the 1980s, had previously seen only photos and sketches of the Longchamps works, mostly in black and white. “It’s a major find,” the historian said.

Renate Reiss, widow of Winold Reiss’ son, Tjark, who organizes and preserves the family’s voluminous archives, has deemed the unsigned paintings authentic, based on archival photos and sketches and decades of familiarity with the artist’s work. “This is amazing,” she said upon seeing them at the Goldberg gallery, adding that she had assumed “everything had been destroyed” when the Empire State space was redone by the 1960s.

One of the ovals’ long-tressed damsels is encountering a rearing leopard, and the other seems unfazed by a yellow serpent. They come from a set of eight that Reiss executed for a subterranean dining area sometimes called the Salle Abstraite (French for “abstract room”). The whereabouts of the other six are unknown. Reiss gave them enigmatic titles: “Temptation,” “Contemplation,” “Liberation,” “Anticipation,” “Animation,” “Fascination,” “Adoration” and “Exultation.” Bernard Goldberg, founder of the gallery, said he believes that his panel with a snake was originally called “Temptation,” and the one with a leopard was “Animation.” In vintage photos, only one oval (current whereabouts a mystery) bears a label: “Contemplation,” with a damsel perched on a leaf and gazing dreamily into space.

At 27, Reiss settled in New York in 1913 and worked at a feverish pace during his five-decade career. Renate Reiss said she and Peatross have asked each other, “When did that man sleep?” He produced “portraits, candy boxes, lettering, interiors, illustrating, advertising, murals, furniture design” and also set up art schools, his son, Tjark, an architect, told a researcher in 1978, 25 years after Reiss’ death. Among his portrait sitters were Native Americans and Harlem Renaissance leaders such as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as relatives and friends as prominent as artist Isamu Noguchi. (The family archives also include extensive documentation of the accomplishments of Reiss’ wife, Henriette, an artist, designer and writer; his longtime mistress, Erika Lohmann, an artist and modern dancer; his brother Hans, a sculptor; and Tjark.)

Peatross estimates that in mid-20th century New York, more than 100,000 people daily “dined, drank, shopped or were entertained” in spaces that Reiss had “designed or embellished.” For a dozen outposts of the Longchamps restaurant chain, Reiss provided scenery that transported diners to the South Seas, 17th century New Amsterdam and futuristic rows of gilded skyscrapers. Some furniture survives from his interiors; at TEFAF, Goldberg, whose 25-year-old gallery specializes in American art and decorative arts, will offer a pair of serrated wooden chairs (priced at $120,000) from Reiss’ medieval-theme grille room at a Manhattan hotel. But few of Reiss’ architectural elements have been preserved. His only major public art commissions still on view are mosaics with tableaus of laborers and historical figures, made in the 1930s for a rail terminal in Cincinnati.

It is unclear how the Empire State ovals (which Goldberg has priced in the low seven figures for the pair) were initially rescued from the building’s Longchamps. In the 1960s, the rooms were adapted into a Mississippi riverboat-themed restaurant inspired by Mark Twain’s writings. (A snaking staircase that Reiss designed for the restaurant endured until a few years ago, when the space was gutted to make way for the Starbucks.)

About three decades ago, the two same Salle Abstraite murals were consigned for auction at Sotheby’s in New York, without any attribution, under the generic description “Large Oval Abstract Paintings.” They reappeared in 2020, labeled “Large Art Deco Manner,” at the Showplace auction house in New York (the leopard piece brought $2,250 and the snake sold for $2,750).

A few months ago, Ken Sims, Goldberg gallery’s 38-year-old director, spotted the artworks for sale on 1stdibs.com, labeled “Monumental Art Deco Paintings of Stylized Women.” He recognized them as Longchamps relics and asked his boss (who is 90) for confirmation: “Is this what I think?” Goldberg replied: “No question, yes.” A 1stdibs dealer in Buffalo, New York, sold the two murals to the Goldberg gallery for a price in the mid-five figures. A recent appraisal report by art expert Betty Krulik calls them “immensely important.”

In the past few years, Reiss has been the subject of retrospectives at the Hirschl & Adler gallery in New York and the New-York Historical Society (with a catalog from D Giles), as well as an essay collection, “The Multicultural Modernism of Winold Reiss.” His work is scheduled to appear next year in group exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz. Renate Reiss said that, surprisingly often, “things show up that we didn’t know survived.”

Goldberg said he hopes that the six missing ovals will resurface — perhaps the TEFAF display at the Armory, through May 16, will help someone identify another unsigned panel tucked away somewhere. When the Longchamps room was dismantled, he said, “I just can’t understand that everything got thrown out.” How could it be, he has wondered, that as people maneuvered through the wreckage, “nobody had taste? Nobody knew what was beautiful?”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.










Today's News

May 8, 2023

Vanished murals from the Empire State Building rediscovered

A Pakistani artist reimagines her relationship with shame and bodies

Christie's 20th/21st Century spring season in Milan celebrates 65 years of auctions in Italy

Kenny Scharf's souped-up, decked-out Coupe De Ville speeds into Heritage's Modern & Contemporary Art Auction

Christie's to offer the Ann & Gordon Getty Collection

Judith Miller, 'Antiques Roadshow' mainstay, is dead at 71

The Würth Collection now on view at the Leopold Museum

Pablo Picasso's 'Nature Morte à la fenêtre to lead 20th Century Evening Sale

Vardaxoglou Gallery currently exhibiting work by Lewis Bander

Yasmeen Lari to receive the 2023 Royal Gold Medal for Architecture

Glass event shines with the widest array of early 20th-century works ever offered by Heritage

The Pelé Collection kicks off in Heritage's Spring Sports Catalog auction

Show surveys Gustavo Bonevardi's last fifteen years of paintings, works on paper and sculpture

4 books that offer a bouquet of design inspiration

Full line-up announced: Wandsworth Arts Fringe 2023

Menahem Pressler, pianist who co-founded the Beaux Arts Trio, dies at 99

'Documenting Israel: Visions of 75 Years' opens at the Museum of Tolerance, Jerusalem

Galleria Continua announces the representation of Eva Jospin

'Like he was going to live forever': Making Jerome Robbins' last ballet

Mo Willems finds yet another way to entertain kids: Opera

Framed Apollo 11 insignia touches down in Heritage's Space Exploration Auction May 19-20

Fondazione Antonio Dalle Nogare presents 'David Lamelas: I Have to Think About It'

Laura Pels, devoted supporter of nonprofit theater, dies at 92

Christie's to offer Maysha Mohamedi's 'Too Young to Go Steady' to benefit land conservation

Everything You Need to Know About Passport Bros Phenomenon

Online Games and Casino Games Which more Profitable?

Discover the Top Ecopayz Casino Canada sites for Safe and Easy Transactions

6 Interesting Facts About Crypto Art




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Attorneys
Truck Accident Attorneys
Accident Attorneys
Houston Dentist
Abogado de accidentes
สล็อต
สล็อตเว็บตรง
Motorcycle Accident Lawyer

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site Parroquia Natividad del Señor
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful