Poster, 25th Anniversary of New York City Center, New York, NY, from Seven Serigraphs by Seven Artists

This is a Poster. It was written by Jack Youngerman, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Robert Indiana, Jim Dine, Gerald Ogilvie Laing, Lowell Blair Nesbit and George Segal and made for (as the client) Albert A. List Art Poster Program and made for New York City Center. It is dated 1968 and we acquired it in 1995. Its medium is lithograph on paper. It is a part of the Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design department.

This object was donated by Mr. Joshua Mack. It is credited Gift of Joshua Mack.

Its dimensions are

88.7 × 63.7 cm (34 15/16 × 25 1/16 in.)

It is inscribed

Printed in silver, aligned left: The New York City Opera Poster is composed of inter-relating shapes that / form a dynamic unity with a spacial [sic] ambiguity. In an abstract sense, the / opera itself is made up of many characters juxtaposed so that their interaction / weaves a plot filled with irony leaving one to form his own conclusions. / I myself have enjoyed many performances at the City Center, and I am most / delighted to make this contribution to the List Portfolio commemorating the / twenty-fifth anniversary of the New York City Center of Music and Drama, Inc. / Richard Anuszkiewicz / I have spent the past year living and working in London, England. The tradition / of Gilbert & Sullivan is very much alive here. It shows itself in the satire of the / post “Beyond the Fringe” era in the cabaret aura of TV. I have used the anony- / mous photo fragment of a group of child clowns from some forgotten music / hall routine as the overall image and colored it mauve as that seemed to fit the / non-literal image of G&S in 1968. The forced naivete of the informal typography / is about the way I feel about the G&S lyrics. / Jim Dine / Every city should have a center, central and specific like a navel. Where I come / from (Indianapolis) it is a circle in the exact middle of the community drawn / out on the land when the capital of the Hoosiers was still swampland and forest / and therefore very easy. With New York it has been more difficult. Precariously / poised on the edge of a continent acting as a busy funnel for teeming millions / coming to settle a vast country finding its own center took a long time — almost / 300 years in fact. Here the whole island of Manhattan is core of a sprawling / five-boroughed and multi-suburbaned megalopolis too large and the wrong / shape to be all heart (especially since hundreds of acres and scores of city / blocks are total human wasteland set as they are against monuments to / extravagant wealth requiring very much a unifying social focal point). Twenty- / five years ago this came into being on West 55th in the middle of Manhattan / and the city’s center was defined. City Center — democratic and proletarian in its / original second-hand oriental temple — was offered to the people of New York / and here those eight million have contemplated for a quarter of a century / some of the better things in this most urban of all urban lives. Having watched / the goings-on there for many years myself and much of that time concerning / myself in my painting with the geometrics of centrality in a studio at 25 Coenties / Slip, I found that doing this poster for City Center’s Silver Anniversary came / naturally and easy. / Robert Indiana / The forms I use belong generally to several distinct families, all of which stem / logically from earlier figurative paintings. The chromium shapes in the poster / for the City Center Light Opera are from the group I call Pins — (cotter pin, / hairpin, safety pin, kingpin?). They constitute hero, heroine and chorus on a / green set, floodlit by yellow floodlights. / Gerald Laing / Any entrance or any exit no matter how tragic or comic during the history of the / New York City Center Drama Company could, I hope, be thought to have been / played grandly on these 25 steps. / To me the epitome of theatrical ambience including the nuances of speech / itself can be suggested by the visual and intellectual metaphorical existence of / the staircase. / So to the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the New York City Center I give you for the / future a silver stairway not a silver rose. / L. Nesbitt / I was delighted to be asked to do the poster for Balanchine’s company, the / New York City Ballet and rushed in to catch the last performance of this season’s / repertory. It was Don Quixote and the show was sold it. I eased backstage / and tried to be unobtrusive with my sketchpad. / Two presences bowled me over: one was the back of soaring twenty foot stage / flats, rough crossbars of wood, black velour, chalk writing, massive knotted / ropes. The other was the mute Balanchine in his leather armor who became / Don Quixote with his movements. At one point he sat perfectly still for 20 / minutes on stage, watching solo performers, every inch the idealistic, / imperious nobleman. / Both images appear in the poster. I hope they do some justice to a great talent. / George Segal / The red scarf over the shoulder and the big black broadbrimmed hat, all / enclosed by a green line: Aristide Bruant: Lautrec’s greatest work was a poster, / and the greatest poster. / Images in the street, where it all is, and where it all comes from. / Jack Youngerman

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