It’s a rather ironic fact that most tourists, when visiting New York City, flock to Central Park. Ironic considering that Central Park, for most residents, is a refuge from the city itself– a place where foliage insulates from the din of car horns and the sing-song sales pitches of street vendors, where the rounded crowns of elms soften the harshness of the piercing city skyline. Central Park is as far as you can get from modern urban life while still being in the heart of Manhattan.
The High Line is not Central Park.
The High Line is almost not a park at all. It’s a living collage.
French artist Marguerite Humeau’s “SPHINX JOACHIM,” which can be found standing guard over West 24th street
This idea of collage can be seen in the above photograph, which is split into three spatial and thematic sections. The lower third contains tall grass, the middle third a sculpture of a sphinx, and the upper third city buildings. So distinct are these three elements, both visually and thematically, that the photo almost appears to be a well rendered collage.
The photograph above, and indeed all of the High Line, operates on the interplay between these thirds. First, there is the dissonance between the perceived opposites of nature and civilization, as seen in the upper and lower thirds. This dissonance is expressed visually in the contrast between the unstructured greenery of nature and the strict geometry of civilization. Where the upper third is composed of straight vertical lines, the lower third consists of curves of varying intensity.
Though this contrast is engaging, the real visual interest of the photo lies with Humeau’s sculpture in the middle third. It is distinct from the surrounding thirds, with more structure than the grass beneath it but lacking in the simple severity of the skyline. The sphinx could be seen as straddling the two worlds of nature and civilization, but instead it synthesizes the photo into one surreal image.
This motif of the bizarre melding with the contradictory characterizes the High Line as the unique space (park, ar
