42nd Street and 5th Ave Under Bryant Park

Above the hallway leading to the platforms at the 42nd Street 5th Ave subway reads Goethe, "The unnatural, too, is natural."  As one continues down the hall gold glass mosaic in the shape of tree roots break from the ceiling and cut through the glass tile stretching to reach bedrock, searching for water.

This particular evening a violinist plays Pacholbel's canon in D minor.

"The unnatural, too, is natural..."   Everyday about 13 million gallons of water are pumped out of the subway tunnels.  This is just the water that is already there.  When it rains, the number can be twice or three times the amount.  Once, before man pierced the sky with towers of stone, glass, and steel, before Pacholbel wrote his canon, Manhattan was 27 square miles of porous ground punctuated by living roots.  The trees, plants, and streams (more than forty ) provided for an abundance of wildlife, all of which have been virtually extinguished in the quest to transform an island; to conquer nature.

But nature is patient.

At the end of the hallway stands a fantastic glass mosaic installation showing the victory of nature over this tunnel. In granite reads Jung, "Nature must not win the game, but she cannot lose."

Within 36 hours of the pumps stopping the entire subway system will fill with water.  Nature will reclaim its ancient underground streams. Within 20 years, the steel columns that support the East Side Lexington Avenue line, by now rusted through from nature's relentless assault, will begin to buckle.  The street will cave in.  Lexington Ave will once again become a river.

Nature always wins the game.

77th Street Downtown 6

 

One of two glass mosaics, entitled "4 Seasons Seasoned," installed in 2004 by Robert Kushner in the 77th Street station of the East Side IRT, it was fabricated by the Miotto Mosaic Art Studios.

"My intention is for people to enter the station, pass through the turnstile, look up and take note, and then go on with their days feeling a little lighter, having glimpsed something beautiful for a passing moment. As people come and go from this stop, either to their job, home, Lenox Hill Hospital, Central Park, or the museums in the neighborhood, recreation, culture, work or healing are often on their minds. Flowers can be associated with all of these activities and become particuarly apt subject matter for this station."
Robert Kushner

Among Kushner's great influences are Uzbek tribal embroideries and Japanese kimonos. Author Justin Spring writes of Kushner’s vision as “work that is sensual and extravagant, but nonetheless has a certain unexpected roughness and drama. In this use of strong contrasts and cross cultural borrowing, these works remind me of other landmarks of western exoticism: the Guerlain perfume Shalimar, for example, with its dense layering of eastern and western scents (musk, flowers, citrus) into a single, heady evocation of Middle-Eastern sensuality; or Borodin’s fusion of Central Asian and Western musical tradition in his Polovetsian dances for the opera Prince Igor; or Bakst’s imaginative reinterpretation of the orient in his designs for the Ballet Russes’ Scheherezade.”

Not only may Kushner's work may be found in the NYC subway, it may also be viewed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The National Gallery of Art, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Denver Art Museum, The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, The J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles, The Tate Gallery in London, Galleria degli Ufizzi in Florence, and Museum Ludwig in St. Petersburg.