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SCULPTURE OF THE MONTH #5

(Mystery Sculpture #4)

For more on this sculpture, see Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan.

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(no photo: still under copyright)

Artist:.Isamu Noguchi
Executed 1940

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Stainless steel, 22 feet high by 17 feet wide. Associated Press Building, 50 Rockefeller Plaza, between 50th and 51st Streets.

About the statue and the subject                                                          Back to top

This relief shows a group of dynamic newsmen at their trade, with state-of-the-art equipment for the 1930s: telephone, teletype, camera, wirephoto, and of course the irreplaceable failsafe, pen and pencil. The work was commissioned by the Associated Press, which still has its headquarters in the building on whose façade this relief appears.

The Associated Press was formed in 1848 by six New York newspapers (including the Herald, the Tribune, and the original Sun) as a consortium for gathering news, so that each newspaper did not have to maintain correspondents in all places. Eventually the AP spread to include radio, TV and satellite transmissions.

Looking at the stylized lines and dynamic movement of this piece, I regret that Noguchi (b. 1904) did few other figurative works. He’s now best known for his large, austere pieces: a set in the courtyard of the Beinecke Library at Yale is reminiscent of a pyramid and a donut sliced out of Swiss cheese.

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The Rockefeller Center sculptures were commissioned on the theme “New Frontiers and the March of Civilization.” Most of them, such as Lee Lawrie’s Atlas, are by members of the Social Realist school, who apparently believed that muscles moved the world; so the sort of world they thought we were moving to would probably make us wince. Among the pieces:

• Prometheus, by Paul Manship. Behind him is New York’s only public inscription from Aeschylus, one of the greatest Greek playwrights: “Prometheus, teacher in every art, brought the fire that hath proved to mortals a means to mighty ends.” The statue that we take for granted was ridiculed when it first appeared; one of its nicknames was “Leaping Louie.”

• Wisdom, flanked by Light and Sound, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, is limestone relief above, glass below. Lawrie also did the Atlas at Rockefeller Center and many other sculptures across the U.S., and you probably have a piece of his work in your wallet: he carved the profile head of FDR for the dime.

• Italian Immigrants, by Giacomo Manzu, on the wall next to the restaurant Medi, on the north side of 50^th St. in Rockefeller Center.

• Industries of the British Commonwealth, by the American Jennewein, gilt reliefs on the doors of the British Empire Building at 620 Fifth Ave.

• Look above the doorways and windows on other buildings at Rockefeller Center: nearly every one has a relief of some sort.

• J. Seward Johnson’s super-realist Taxi! hails a cab on the northwest corner of 47^th St. and Park Ave.

• The Miller Building, 1552 Broadway (at 46th St.), has sculptures of four notable early 20^th-century actress of stage and screen: Ethel Barrymore, Marilyn Miller, Mary Pickford, Rosa Ponselle.

• The public atrium of the Olympic Towers, on the north side of 50th St. (between Fifth & Madison Aves., on the north side of St. Patrick’s Cathedral) displays full-size replicas of many of the metopes (square reliefs) from the Parthenon in Athens, as well as replicas of one surviving horse’s head and the Marathon Boy (original in the National Museum, Athens).

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