Report
Subway Art is one of the greatest forms of art that the city of New York has to offer. As one of the major art centers of the world, New York City is bound to attract some of the best artists in the world. It is also bound to attract some of the most talented artists who don’t display their art in a museum or gallery. Some artists want to show their work to people who don’t have a great interest in art and, where better to do that then in the subway. Also, while subway murals attract great artists, they can also attract talented amateurs, who have only a hobby in art and want to share it with the world. As an outsider to this new community, I believe that outsiders have a greater appreciation for this art than natives to the community. For example, natives to New York City, who take the subway everyday, might take for granted the art they walk by everyday as a mundane event that can be seen everywhere and at any time, while a tourist or an outsider who has not seen many of these “mundane” art pieces might find them extraordinary. As an outsider, not to the degree of a tourist from another state or country, I tried to view each new artwork as someone who has never seen art on the subway or even been on the subway. Although, I do plan to live in NYC in the future, I would still consider myself an outsider since I am not part of the community there. To do this project, my partner and I went online and found guides to all the subway murals we could find. Then, we tried to narrow down the lists to the ones we were really interested in and focus on those. After that, we actually visited all the ones we listed and discovered many things. Although we tried to determine what the creator’s intention was and why he/she put the piece in that specific location; we also noted different people’s reaction to the different art works. For example, when we saw natives of New York City, they ignored the artwork and were more worried about the subway itself. While the tourists, who obviously have never been in NYC before, were amazed by the murals. For example, we spotted a whole group of tourists just standing around a mural, photographing it and enjoying it. After that, we took a look at the murals themselves and how each one represented specific landmarks of that community. For example, communities near central park depicted more natural settings, while communities near the water incorporated that water element into their murals. Also, we noted that the most diverse and abstract art were near crowded centers. One example of this is 86th street, which was extremely crowded, housed the abstract mural “Happy City” by Peter Sis. Also Grand Central Station, which is almost like the heart of the subway system, housed “Arches, Towers and, Pyramid” by Jackie Ferrara. Although we noted this strange occurrence, we could not tell why this happened. After we examined the murals, we wrote down our first impressions of each mural without discussing it. Later we discussed what we wrote and what we thought of each piece. Some of the limitations we faced during this project are the amount of murals we saw in each community was not as much as we would have hoped. Another limitation we faced was that we didn’t have a lot of time to discuss how we each felt about every single piece.
