New Jersey Nightly News; 38; A Closer Look: Arshile Gorky and His Murals

Dylan. Dylan. The year was 1936 and passenger aviation was just climbing out of science fiction books for the first time. People were realizing they could fly without risking their necks. Newark airport became the busiest air terminal in the country for Americans in France with flight. And this man our Sheil Gorky was commissioned to capture that sense of wonder. He painted 10 murals in the second floor for year at the air top. With WPA sponsor the work as part of its depression art program. The murals were finished in 1937. Ten years later the paintings had apparently disappeared. In

1972. Under Law. Art historian Ruth Bowman. She was working on another project when she found what looked like a section of Gorky's lost murals. Then she started to hunt for the rest of them. It occurred to me to investigate why it was that people thought it was lost who would look for it. And I decided that there was not enough evidence that they were lost and that they might be. And it was a simple moment pored through old records at the Newark museum which had exhibited some of Gorky's work in the 30s. She scoured the first floor of the terminal building now a post office trying to find a trace of the Lost murals. But she drew a blank. It was an accident that finally helped uncover the paintings. A Port Authority employee found a thread of canvas hanging out of a hole on the second floor. I was thinking rescue and I was thinking well murals. And then when they were actually found it was mine. The idea that there was real pain under those 14 layers that with terrific

once the detective work was done the experts began the tedious work of restoring the two remaining girls. They stripped the glue off the back of the canvases and transfer them to new structures. Then the murals were brought to the New York museum for display. We asked Sam Hunter an art history professor at Princeton University to assess the murals Gorky call this mural the mechanics of flying. And it was a very appropriate title because he showed symbolically instruments for measuring wind force or a wind sock and related devices. The boldness of Waukee was to take a very modern subject matter the excitement of aviation in the pre-war period and try to find a matching modern style that will also excite interest. The other mural Gorky called aerial map. It shows a map in the small scale of the United States with the air routes. And Newark is very prominent because it was the center of commercial

aviation in the country at that time. It has more intimacy a feeling it's really more like a still life and at the same time has the bold design and strong edges and colors that we found in the first one. The case of the disappearing murals may be solved but there are still a lot of mystery surrounding the man who painted them are shild Gorky an Armenian immigrant. Like to invent stories about himself that were as flamboyant as his paintings. One friend called him outrageously mellow dramatic but this much about him. We know he paralyzed his painting arm in a car accident and hanged himself in 1948 when his murals were unveiled. The people of New York petition to get rid of them. But there's been a change of heart and now the fanciful paintings are considered major achievements of a major modern artist.