When Chelseas collide, ‘Venus’ is shadowed

A rendering of Knox Martin’s yet-to-be-painted mural, “The Killing of Whales,” superimposed on its secured site, P.S. 172, in the West Village. The mural may be funded by Cape Advisors, the development company responsible for covering up Martin’s “Venus.”

By Chris Lombardi

Last fall, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s office convened a small meeting that could be called Old Chelsea versus New Chelsea. Or Artsy Chelsea versus Condo Chelsea.

You might just call it Bambi versus Godzilla.

On one side, 83-year-old painter Knox Martin, his students at the Art Students League and representatives of concerned legislators Quinn, Upper West Side councilmember Lewis Fidler and State Senator Tom Duane. On the other: Cape Advisors, a development corporation in charge of the new 100 Eleventh Ave. condominium complex.

The topic: the prospect that the 20-story glass tower, designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, would forever block from view Knox’s 1970 mural “Venus,” painted on the eight-story Bayview Correctional Facility, across the street.

Quinn had directed her staff to call the meeting after her office had received telephone calls from constituents in her district. By then, letters had poured into city officials’ mailboxes for months, ever since Martin’s students first saw signs of construction in the prison parking lot.

Admirers of Knox, and of “Venus,” asked how the city could allow the loss of a beloved work of art — one which had, as one writer put it, “become as iconic to Chelsea as the clock tower is to Soho.”

Around the table, Cape Advisers representative David Comfort told the others that Nouvel hadn’t known about the mural when he designed the site. Martin and the others asked: How could you not have known? Didn’t you take aerial photos of the site?

But Cape Advisors had long since cleared the hurdle of community boards and zoning committees, received the required approvals and issued its first offering. It was already too late, said Comfort. He wished he’d known, but it was too late to try to alter the design now.

Knox and other local artists have since accepted their defeat. But they also insist that just like the mural, Chelsea’s best, most creative energy is fast being obscured by its pricey present and even pricier future.

Martin, an 86-year-old Colombian-born artist with a boxer’s build and 60-year-old Navy tattoos on his arms, can remember when his first Chelsea studio, at 26th Street and Seventh Ave., coat $45 a month. That was in the early 1950s, long before Chelsea became “Chelsea.”

By 1970, Martin was teaching at Yale University, his work exhibited at the Whitney and the Guggenheim. Invited by the City Walls Project to contribute a mural, he found a site while driving into the city from the west side — practically “ran right into” the narrow, 80-foot-tall prison. He visited the facility, he said, and heard women shouting from behind bars.

“I thought, Why not have it be about the energy of these women?” Martin recalled.

In the years since 1971 — when the unveiling of “Venus” was heralded by TV coverage that included “Geraldo Rivera hanging from a rig” and a half-page in the New York Times’ Arts and Leisure section — the mural has been reproduced on postcards and copied in countless art classes. But its neighborhood began to bloom, Martin said, in ways less about art than commerce.

In the ’70s, artists like Martin’s Yale art students were peeling off to the meatpacking district and Soho, he said, taking over abandoned warehouses “for cheap.” Most of Chelsea was growing increasingly expensive through the 1970s and 1980s, until by 1984 the average studio rented for more than $900. By 2000, that same studio was $1,700, and the terra nova was then West Chelsea, where artists took over stables and decaying brownstones. But soon enough, shops began to join galleries there, too — and to replace some of the artists who had started it all.

“Galleries, restaurants and boutiques,” grumbled Martin, gesturing. “That’s how a neighborhood dies.”

A little over a week ago, on Jan. 30, WCBS News interviewed Martin as he and his Venus-boosters were still grieving their loss. Meanwhile, fans of innovative architecture, from the Times to the blogs exulted at the design of the new building.

They were especially thrilled to see a contribution from Jean Nouvel, known in architecture circles as the designer of towers in Abu Dhabi and Paris, the Guggenheim’s Prague space and the new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis — as well as the new 40 Mercer Street, a Village loft-condo complex whose spaces sell for approximately $2,000 a square foot.

And the Nouvel-boosters were unimpressed by the fight for “Venus.”

“Sorry, but this Jean Nouvel masterpiece trumps this cute little mural,” said one writer on the real estate blog Curbed. “It’s neither memorable nor necessary.” Another wrote, “We need buildings more than we need run-of-the-mill paintings on buildings.”

Others argued on behalf of the mural, calling Nouvel “just another over-hyped architect,” but the general consensus seemed to be in favor of the building’s edgy design in patchwork glass.

Neither Cape Advisors nor Jean Nouvel Ateliers have responded to Chelsea Now’s requests for comment. There has been little public response, too, from prison officials, who have long claimed that Bayview loves “its beautiful Venus” and wouldn’t let it be “covered over with a beer or jeans ad.”

According to Linda Foglia, public affairs officer for the New York State Department of Corrections, the department is aware of the issue, but they know these things “happen” to murals. “And besides,” said Foglia, “it’s not like the mural will be hurt in any way.”

Knox Martin, too, is ready to move on, and he may have enlisted the help of the very developers who are about to block his mural.

More than 30 years ago, after the success of “Venus,” Martin began to design an anti-whaling mural — with designs that echo Picasso’s “Guernica” — as a protest against both whaling and, now, the Iraq war. He secured a site last year, on the side of P.S. 172 in the West Village, and got the principal and parent council to go along. He agreed to do the actual work for free, but he needed about $70,000 for materials to make it happen.

So Martin e-mailed David Comfort, the Cape Advisors manager for 100 Eleventh, and presented a proposal, which was quickly accepted.

“I was giving them an opportunity to be the good guy,” Knox said, his smile wide again. “They’re covering up my mural. Let them fund the new one, now.”