Skyscrapers
Thurman Rotan American
Not on view
Engineering developments in the 1880s enabled the construction of large, multistory buildings using steel frames to support non-load-bearing walls, which soon dominated urban skylines. To make this work, Rotan photographed a collage he had assembled from steeply angled views of the Daily News building, which, completed two years previously, was already a well-known symbol of modernity. With its repetitive layering of stepped, striped exteriors stretching skyward, Skyscrapers exhibits Rotan’s eye for modern architecture’s rhythms and patterns. The work is a maquette for the artist’s large-scale mural featured in the Museum of Modern Art’s 1932 exhibition “Murals by American Painters and Photographers.”
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