Artist/Maker Ernest Fiene (American, 1894 – 1966)

Union Square Park

after 1930

Charcoal and white heightening on paper

Unframed: 16 × 19 in. (40.6 × 48.3 cm)
Framed: 23 × 25 1/2 in. (58.4 × 64.8 cm)

Promised gift of Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld, Scenes of New York City

IL2021.51.69

Ernest Fiene’s monochromatic cityscape shows Union Square Park looking north and enlivened by pedestrians and a diagonal of airborne pigeons. In the atmospheric distance rise two familiar skyscrapers; at the right is the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, colloquially known as the Met Life Tower, while at the left looms the Empire State Building. The structure at the north end of the park resembles the edifice in the same position at the Twenty-sixth Street edge of Madison Square Park, which probably led to the drawing’s former title Madison Square Park. The equestrian statue of George Washington occupies the park foreground at Fourteenth Street and Fourth Avenue. In 1929–30, the monument was moved to this spot where it has stood ever since. It was subsequently set in an oval plaza with steps and a large area leading to the street, all surrounded by undulating walls with benches, beyond which were grass and trees, as preserved in photographs like one of 1933 by Samuel H. Gottscho. In his drawing, Fiene foreshortened and compressed these areas, as well as adding other embellishments to the setting. The result is a disquieting combination of elements revealing the influence of Surrealism. The French Surrealist artists and writers active from the early 1920s believed in the creative possibilities of chance and surprising juxtapositions, best characterized by a quotation from the Comte de Lautréamont: “beautiful as the chance meeting, on a dissection table, of a sewing machine and an umbrella.”4 Fiene’s haunting scene contrasts with his more crisply rendered, abstracted and colorful painting Changing Old New York (1931) in the N-YHS collection. Union Square is named for its historic intersection of two thoroughfares—Broadway and the former Bowery Road, now Fourth Avenue—which came together in the early nineteenth century. Its park is bordered by Fourteenth Street on the south and Seventeenth Street on the north. Fiene faithfully delineated the bronze statue of Washington by Henry Kirke Brown, which was dedicated in 1856 and mounted on Richard Upjohn’s granite pedestal. With atmospheric perspective, Fiene positioned the Met Life Building (1905–09) as nearer than the Empire State Building. The former, at Madison Avenue, Park Avenue South, and Twenty-fourth Street, was designed by the firm of Napoleon LeBrun and Sons on the inspiration of the campanile of St. Mark’s in Venice; it was the tallest building in the world until 1913. Farther uptown, between West Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth streets, rises the 102-story Empire State Building (1930– 31) by Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon. The artist’s inclusion of this Art Deco skyscraper, together with the George Washington monument’s installation, establishes a terminus post quem for the drawing. Until 1971, when the World Trade Center was topped out, it was the tallest building in the world. Ernest Fiene, who studied at the NAD and the Art Students League, was known for his lithographs and etchings and for his cityscapes, notably those representing New York City, whose everchanging cityscape delighted him.8 In demand as a teacher, he taught at the Art Students League and at the NAD, which elected him a full academician in 1952. His sense of design and emphatic forms, evident in Union Square Park, demonstrate why he was well suited to the painting of murals, including a two thousand-square-foot fresco with two hundred figures for New York’s High School of Needle Trades (1937–40). COMMUNITY VOICE Union Square has served as a gathering spot for free speech and public assembly for over a century. This October, it is home to our SEEINJUSTICE exhibit, which features three monumental bronzed sculptures by artist Chris Carnabuci of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Congressman John Lewis. I am both amazed and thrilled that the city approved our John Lewis statue to be placed right in front of the George Washington monument. The juxtaposition shows that as time changes, the monuments we value and admire can change too—and that Union Square will continue to be the stage that pushes forward the voice of many movements. Lindsay Eshelman Co-Founder, Confront Art

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