Carina D’Urso – ARTS IN NYC

Chuck Close’s Subway Portraits

Over the summer, I directed a summer camp on the Upper East Side. As I emerged from the dark tunnels of the Q train everyday, Chuck Close’s Subway Portraits were with me. They accompanied me on my walk through the station every morning, and I observed them. The 86th street Q train station was always the first place I returned to after a long day.

Chuck Close is known for his portraits of people. In this commission, he created mosaic portraits for the subway. Close typically paints from a projected photograph, and he draws a grid onto the canvas. He fills each square of the grid with a design, such as a swirl. These shapes make up the facial details of the people he captures. His style is reminiscent of mosaics, so it is only fitting that he was commissioned to create works which would be made into stained glass masterpieces for the subway.

The Subway Portraits are readily visible. In fact, they are impossible to miss. They are enormous in size and encompass the subway station. In 2017, the 86th street station was opened to the public with the portraits in place; they were part of a vision for the new second avenue subway. Their location in the subway is an essential part of their significance. In observing these faces, we witness the lives of a diverse array of people. Although we do not know their stories, their existence is brought to our attention.

The subway is filled to the brink with people. When we sit on a subway train, we take in the faces of many people. We are engulfed in life. When we come face to face with the subway art of Chuck Close, we experience intimacy with a person whom we have never met. We wonder about the stories of the people in his portraits, just as we would about the people who surround us on the subway.

Recently, Chuck Close was accused of sexual harassment, and he confirmed and apologized for these allegations. After learning this, my opinion of him shifted. When I see his work, I cannot help but think of the stories of the women who came forward. It is hard to not think about them, because his work revolves around the faces of others. Now when I walk through the subway, I am not just curious to hear the stories of the people he paints: I yearn to know them.

Now that I know more about Chuck Close as a person, I can’t help but reflect on this when I consume his art. For me, art that was once about the faces of people, becomes largely about the interaction between individuals. It reminds me of how important it is to listen to the stories of others. Both Chuck Close’s art and the subway cars that we ride present us with the faces of ordinary people. We should not simply acknowledge these faces. We are called to hear the stories of the people behind them.

Love is Active in Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

A neighborhood is like a warm blanket or a soft embrace. It is the place to which we return and the place where people we care for exist. It is where we find comfort and love. It is where we feel safe. With Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Fred Rogers created such a space on television. Won’t You Be My Neighbor? invites the viewer to join the neighborhood of Mr. Rogers, a place where feelings and vulnerability are embraced.

Directed by Morgan Neville, the documentary film serves as a mosaic, composed of pieces of Mr. Rogers’ life. A narrative is cultivated through Mr. Rogers’ “neighbors,” his loved ones. These neighbors serve as storytellers to the viewer, as they share the wisdom that they gained from him. In an intimate and straight-forward manner, these interviewers personally convey what was special about Fred Rogers. Additionally, clips of Mr. Rogers himself pour life into the film. With a sparkle in his eye and an undeniable tenderness, he connects with each viewer.

“Music was my first language,” Mr. Rogers expressed. It would only be fitting that classical piano is what we hear as the film opens. Piano music is sprinkled throughout the film. Each time it is played, it is sparkling and colorful. This timeless music is paired with clips of children, or with images of Mr. Rogers himself enjoying a sunny day on a beach. This is a type of music which embodies all of the tenderness in the world. When we let this music wash over us, we can begin to understand the gentleness that Mr. Rogers embodied, the warmth that was his gift to the world.

In watching Won’t You Be My Neighbor? we are transported back to childhood. Mr. Rogers had a deep understanding of children, and his own inner child never left him. This is captured through the film’s component of animation. Through this, Mr. Rogers himself is represented by Daniel Striped Tiger, one of the puppets from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. This animation captures the curiosity of childhood perfectly, with Daniel waving to butterflies, playing with dragons, and winking at the sun. The viewer can climb into his headspace, so much that you feel like a child, wide-eyed and wondering.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? delves into the timely elements of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and provides uncanny parallels between Mr. Rogers’ messages and modern-day strife. In one episode, the character of King Friday the 13th is deeply afraid of change, and he threatens to build a wall around his castle in anger. The film takes clips such as this from the show and packages them neatly for us to take in and apply to today’s world.

Fred Rogers asked his friend François Clemmons, a black man, to be a part of the show, and to play a police officer. Won’t You Be My Neighbor? highlights Clemmons’ emotions and personal narrative in a way that we would never gauge from simply watching the television show. In an interview, Clemmons said that he was reluctant at first: to him, the police officer was the scariest part of the neighborhood. The film shows us clips of segregation from 1969, with hotel owners pouring chemicals into swimming pools, because they were forcing black people to leave the pool. The pair worked together and created a scene in which the two of them washed their feet together on a hot day. During that time, this was radical.

“I love you just the way you are” were words of Fred Rogers that many people held dearly. When Officer Clemmons was struggling to come out as gay, he needed to hear these words more than ever. The film portrays the relationship between Rogers and Clemmons as pure and loving. François Clemmons described Mr. Rogers as a surrogate father to him, someone who loved him intrinsically. This was something he had never experienced before.

In the words of Fred Rogers, “The greatest thing that we can do is to let somebody know that they are loved, and capable of loving.” This film, a curation of Mr. Rogers’ many moments of wisdom, feels like a cinematic hug. We all need to be reminded of our value, and Mr. Rogers consistently reminds us all that we do not need to do anything spectacular for people to love us. This film is completely human and serves as an outpouring of love and affirmation. It encourages us to communicate with our hearts, a timeless message that will certainly keep Mr. Rogers’ legacy alive.