A Bird's-Eye View

 by Helena Grubesic

The relocation and demolition of New York University's Loeb Student Center started shortly after the 1999 spring commencement. Student organizations scattered to various locations on campus and crews began dismantling the interior offices, all in preparation for the Helen and Martin Kimmel Center for Student Life. This twelve-story building, a shining example of sophisticated modern architecture, was designed by the firm of Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo Associates. Construction began in the summer.

When I learned of the fate of the Loeb Center my first thought was of the installation that adorned the south façade. Reuben Nakian had won the commission to create a sculpture for the building, dedicated in 1959.

The work - unofficially titled Birds in Flight, and completed in 1961 - derives from the wind, grass, and leaves that Nakian saw as he looked out onto Washington Square Park, at the heart of NYU's campus. Characteristically, during this distinctive period in his career, Nakian experimented by welding and bending aluminum plates into metal shapes that seemed to float atop the building's earthbound brick structure. Although he had great success with the technique, it soon gave way to a style that would dominate the remainder of Nakian's career and become his most recognizable: emotionally charged expressionistic cast bronzes depicting mythological themes.

I recently attended the opening of an exhibition, Selected Works From the Centennial Retrospective of Reuben Nakian at the Art Gallery of the University of Connecticut at Stamford. The evening's events featured a lecture by the Nakian scholar Dr. Robert Metzger, Director of the Reading (PA) Public Museum. He compared and contrasted Nakian's work with the work of sculptor Gaston Lachaise, a fellow student of Paul Manship. In a question and answer session following the lecture, my concerns for Nakian's Loeb Center Sculpture were soon laid to rest. Paul Nakian, the artist's son, informed the audience that the University was making every effort to find a building to serve as a suitable home for the immense work. Relieved that the sculpture would be spared the fate of the building that served as its foundation for over thirty years, I allowed my thoughts to drift elsewhere.

As we converge rapidly on the end of the millennium, our minds feel pressed to quantify the achievements of the last one thousand years. The media bombard us with articles, documentaries and surveys measuring the medical, archeological, technical and other advancements of our civilization. The criterion for an accomplishment or discovery remains constant throughout all disciplines - the ability for it to transcend its own time. An achievement must maintain its relevance for generations ahead, it must be malleable yet steadfast, and it must serve as a foundation to be built upon.

Art and artists can be viewed with the same metric mentality. Although spatially and technologically the students of NYU have long outgrown the Loeb Center, they still look to the wind and leaves of the park for rejuvenation, meditation and beauty. The ability of Reuben Nakian's monumental sculpture - transplanted from its original environment - to evoke the same tranquil and ephemeral emotions as it did with a bird's-eye view of these natural elements, will be a true test of its intentions.

Resources:

New York University's website provides a look at the work, Birds in Flight, as it was installed http://www.nyu.edu/inf ocenter/campus2/ws/Loeb.html

Robert Metzger's four-part biographical essay on Reuben Nakian appears in Newsletter issues 5, 6, 7, and 8.

About the author:

 Helena Grubesic favors travel, fine dining, and aspects of art history.