I’ve spent most of my life occasionally walking through Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, but until recently I’d never really thought about how it came to be such a sizable museum of art.
Sculptor Lee Lawrie, face-to-face with a scowling Atlas. George G recognized our One-Clue Mystery this week. The statue now stands at a main entrance on Fifth Avenue.
My attention was drawn to it by a (possibly temporary) exhibit mounted in the complex’s underground retail concourse; I suspect when the moment is ripe the exhibit will be replaced by the retail stores, coffee shops and more that lived there before. The exhibit uses archival photographs to tell the story of how the artwork that marks the project came about.
Or, sort of tell the story. As I did my research, I found there’s much more to the story, including enough controversy to have created a major and still famous artistic-freedom-versus-patron struggle over politics that in recent years popped up memorably in the film Cradle Will Rock.
One of the principal artworks, a lobby mural for the RCA Building, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, was assigned to Mexican muralist Diego Rivera; the title was Man at the Crossroads. And at the crossroads, Rivera placed a portrait of Lenin, and refused Rockefeller demands to remove it. In the end, Rivera (above left, very left) was fired and replaced by the very conservative Jose Maria Sert (right) and the mural was destroyed.
Robert Garrison, left, and Gaston Lachaise at work on bas reliefs for facades.
The work was on an almost industrial scale. Rockefeller’s developer, John Todd, hired Hartley Burr Alexander, an professor of, if you can believe it, mythology and symbology. Shades of Harry Potter! Alexander came up with an overall theme of ‘Man The Builder,’ but the architects didn’t like that. Next was ‘New Frontiers,’ and finally, ‘The March of Civilization.’
Rene Chambellan works on the sea creatures that adorn the Channel Gardens; Lawrie and Chambellan working on clay model of The Story of Man, and a worker prepares to finish the installation of Atlas.
Paul Manship and an assistant work on the plaster maquette for Prometheus, the best-known of Rockefeller Center sculptures. And Manship at work on Maiden, which was meant to accompany Prometheus; later Manship decided it didn’t look right and had it moved.
But Alexander was gone soon after that: the artists complained he was so specific that there was no room for creative license. And the artists who were commissioned had some weight. Even Rivera was third choice after Picasso and Matisse. Among the others are well-known names such as Lee Lawrie, Paul Manship, Rene Chambellan and Isamu Noguchi.
Noguchi at work on what was, at the time, the largest metal bas-relief ever.
In the end, despite all the controversies and infighting, through the changes of plans, and despite a lot of harsh reviews by contemporary critics, Rockefeller Center is clearly an artistic success, and it is clear that the art plays as big a role as the Raymond Hood-designed buildings themselves in making it memorable.
