''Venus'' is a twelve-story-high

mural A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' is a Spani ...

painting by

Knox Martin Knox Martin (February 12, 1923 – May 15, 2022) was an American painter, sculptor, and muralist. Born in Barranquilla, Colombia, he studied at the Art Students League of New York from 1946 until 1950. He was one of the leading members of the N ...

on the south side of

Bayview Correctional Facility Bayview Correctional Facility was a medium-security women's prison located at the south corner of West 20th Street and 11th Avenue in Manhattan, directly across the avenue from the Chelsea Piers sports complex. It is highly unusual to find a stat ...

at 19th Street and Eleventh Avenue in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. ''Venus'' was commissioned by

Doris Freedman Doris Chanin Freedman (1928–1981) was a pioneer in the field of public art, active in New York City. She was the daughter of architect Irwin Salmon Chanin and his wife Sylvia Schofler. Freedman graduated from Albright College, Pennsylvania ...

of CityWalls (later the

Public Art Fund Public Art Fund is an independent, non-profit arts organization founded in 1977 by Doris Freedman, Doris C. Freedman. The organization presents contemporary art in New York City's public spaces through a series of highly visible artists' projects, n ...

) in 1970. Knox Martin chose this wall for its unique location, next to Eleventh Avenue (West Side Highway), and visible from the

Verrazano-Narrows Bridge The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge ( ) is a suspension bridge connecting the New York City boroughs of Staten Island and Brooklyn. It spans the Narrows, a body of water linking the relatively enclosed New York Harbor with Lower New York Bay and th ...

, the

Statue of Liberty The Statue of Liberty (''Liberty Enlightening the World''; French: ''La Liberté éclairant le monde'') is a List of colossal sculpture in situ, colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor in New York City, in the U ...

, the

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

shore of the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

, and the West Side Highway itself. ''Venus'' was restored in 1998 with the support of the

. A new weather-resistant acrylic paint developed in collaboration with the artist and donated by

Golden Artist Colors Golden Artist Colors, or simply Golden, is an U.S. manufacturing company that focuses on paints used in fine art, decoration, and crafts. Based in New Berlin, New York, the company produces a line of acrylic paints that includes some recreations ...

was used, which will last at least 75 years. The prison is a facility of the

New York State Department of Correctional Services New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...

. The Department made this statement in 2001: Marilyn Kushner of the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

wrote:

Traditionally the goddess of love and fertility, Venus represents woman, erotic and supple, but it also conveys Knox Martin's love affair with New York. Venus is his love poem to the city where he has always lived, a place that is part of his being. The feminine, curvilinear shapes of the image are in direct contrast with the straight forms that intersect the composition. The overwhelming size of this enormous mural only intensifies the experience of female shapes, the linear aspects of the painted composition, and of the surrounding architecture. In an era when art was reaching out to the masses with pop culture, this huge mural was Knox Martin's way of touching a public that would never venture into an art gallery.

Today, ''Venus'' is almost entirely obscured by the neighboring building 100 Eleventh Avenue, completed in 2010.NYC The Blog: Visiting Knox Martin's Venus
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References

External links

Knox Martin WebsitePublic Art Fund: ''Venus''Knox Martin 1971 WNYC Radio interview about ''Venus'' with Doris Freedman of City WallsArt in Public Places, 1973 , From the Vaults , Metropolitan Museum of ArtCBS Report on the Mural
{{Public art in Manhattan Murals in New York City Public art in the United States Chelsea, Manhattan Eleventh Avenue (Manhattan) 1970 paintings

References

Further reading

External links