As a native New Yorker, the city was always a central source of inspiration for MacIver. Even in her work that doesn’t directly deal with the city as a subject, the vibrant light and movement that can be seen in many of her paintings reflect a lifetime of studying the twinkling, active lights of the city. While she was born and raised in the Bronx, Loren moved directly after high school to live in Greenwich Village where she lived alone for one year before marrying Lloyd Frankenberg in 1929, then a student at Columbia. She would live in Greenwich Village until her death in 1998.
The above photograph is of 61 Perry Street, where Loren and Lloyd moved in 1942. They lived on the top floor, and the large skylight was an inspiration for many of MacIver’s paintings. Loren would continue to live there until her death in 1998.
Loren MacIver playing with unknown boy in Central Park
Greenwich Village Night I, 1939, chalk on black paper, 9.5X11"
This earlier chalk drawing shows how the city remained a consistent presence in MacIver's work throughout her life. She was particularly interested in the effects of city lights at night, as we continue to see in "New York" and "Subway Lights." "Greenwich Village Night I" offers us a glimpse into the nighttime sights that surrounded MacIver in her various apartments in Greenwich Village over the years, where she was immersed in a specific culture of modernist artists and poets that were heralding in a new era of the New York art world.
New York at Night
These sketches are undated and are likely from a different period than "Greenwich Village Night I," but show the way in which concepts such as New York at night maintained a steady role in MacIver's work throughout her lifetime, even as her style and medium changed.
New York, 1952, oil on paper
"Neon City /
MacIver often wrote her ideas for paintings in poem like lists, such as the one here.
Lights that swim / deer / in the baleful waters / Chartres sculpture-stained glass / The spaces in between / ears, earrings / Piero / Elizabeth's poem / A sea of faces, regrets, etc. / One white --non panache
"Neon City Picture / Reflections of yellow, green, pink / electric tone / faces, objects, dogs, cats etc. all bathed in an exciting neon / "a beautiful mess" / large illuminated / shadowy bodies / the little invisible spaces in between"
A sketch and notes for the painting that would ultimately become New York.
citypicture
This sketch for the painting that would come to be "New York" most closely resembles the actual painting. MacIver maps out the blue and violet buildings in the background, the band of light filled with neon signs, the steps of Christopher street subway and subway signs on the left, with subway lights in the center.
Neon Signs
A detailed sketch of the neon signs painted across the center of "New York" with references to the addresses where MacIver spotted the original signs.
Subway Lights, 1959, oil on canvas, 50 x 35 in
Sketch of Christopher Street Subway
Just down the street from where she lived in Greenwich Village, Christopher Street subway was a favorite subject of Loren MacIver. The steps down to Christopher Street subway are depicted on the right side of "New York," and the subway lights she received there when they were being deinstalled were the inspiration for "Subway Lights"
Night City
Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
No foot could endure it,
shoes are too thin.
Broken glass, broken bottles,
heaps of them burn.
Over those fires
no one could walk:
those flaring acids
and variegated bloods.
The city burns tears.
A gathered lake
of aquamarine
begins to smoke.
The city burns guilt.
— For guilt disposal
the central heat
must be this intense.
Diaphanous lymph,
bright turgid blood,
spatter outward
in clots of gold
to where run, molten,
in the dark environs
green and luminous
silicate rivers.
A pool of bitumen
one tycoon
wept by himself,
a blackened moon.
Another cried
a skyscraper up.
Look! Incandescent,
its wires drip.
The conflagration
fights for air
in a dread vacuum.
The sky is dead.
(Still, there are creatures,
careful ones, overhead.
They set down their feet, they walk
green, red; green, red.)
This poem by Elizabeth Bishop, who spent time in Loren and Lloyd’s 61 Perry Street apartment in Greenwich Village while they were living in Paris in the late 1960s, shows the differing ways in which MacIver’s contemporary and friend reflected on similar themes. “Night City,” viewed in partnership with MacIver’s city paintings, shows the complex nature of the artist’s relationship to the romanticized city. It can be a wonderland of twinkling lights or a whirlwind of moving color, as we often see in MacIver’s work, or, as in “Night City,” a blazing, wrought place of human suffering.
