What do you see going on in this work of art? Is there a story depicted?

There is a present contrast between the spiritual nature of the Church amid the modern Manhattan buildings. It can also represent the past contrasted by the future. The Church has this gothic essence in a time where the stock market crashed. It feels as though the Church is observing the city and noticing all the affairs that is going on.

What different visual elements (ie: line, color, light, proportions, scale, composition, media type etc.) do you notice, and how do they help you make sense of the artwork?

The birds eye view creates this sense of scale and allows us to see how tall and elusive these buildings really are. Hartman also uses thick paint strokes to show how wide and refined these buildings are. The dark Church spires gives this feeling that the church is old and has been there for a while. These visual elements help of make sense of the artwork by letting us see how lively these buildings are and it sort of gives this personified feeling to the buildings as if they each have a purpose and are coexisting within one another.

What choices do you think the museum made about the object’s display?

They displayed this painting next to Maurice Kish’s, “Job Hunters” (1932-33) and near George Wesley Bellows, “A Morning Snow-Hudson River” (1910) to display the era before the stock market crash and after. In Kish’s “Job Hunter” he shows the Great Depression where men are looking for work. The sky in this painting is grim, muddy and the overall nature appears sad and lifeless. While Hartman’s painting has a vibrant and exclusive nature. In Wesley Bellows, “A Morning Snow-Hudson River”, we are given this two world idea where we see space for people to sit and walk among this industrial space. In this painting we can see the scintillating snow among the smoke from the factories nearby. All of these paintings depict buildings and different views of life coexisting within one another.

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