Untenanted+Space+in+the+World+Trade+Center+-+Winter+Sun

Date: 1998
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/2013/2013.88.3_1a.jpg?itok=jtQOCXVm width="555" height="248" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/untenanted-space-world-trade-center-winter-sun-86645"]] ||
 * Title: **Untenanted Space in the World Trade Center - Winter Sun**

Artist: **Rackstraw Downes** Born: Kent, England 1939

Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 24 1/8 x 56 1/8 in. (61.3 x 142.6 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of the James F. Dicke Family © 1998, Rackstraw Downes

Accession: 2013.88.3 ||

Rackstraw Downes has been painting panoramic scenes of the American landscape and urbanscape en plein air for over forty years. Downes began his career as a painter of geometric abstractions but by the late 1960s he abandoned this approach in favor of the landscapes for which he is best known today. Downes has painted a diverse range of subjects from oil fields and landfills, to beehive yards, expressways and housing projects. His work is often mistakenly characterized as Photorealism, but Downes never uses photographs as aids in any sense and he works almost exclusively in situ, either outdoors or within architectural interiors. He prefers never to touch up the painting in his studio in order avoid the subjective embellishments and interpretations that painting from memory inevitably produces. For Downes, painting is about creating a faithful record of exactly what the eye sees.
 * About this Artwork: **

In the proposed acquisition, Downes shows an unoccupied floor in Tower One of the World Trade Center. The painting was completed in 1998 as part of an artist residency program sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, which offered studio spaces on the 91st and 92nd floors of Tower One. The WTC residency afforded Downes his first experience depicting large architectural interiors. While other participants in the program took the opportunity to observe the city below, Downes focused on what was never meant to be seen—a luxury office building stripped to its naked core. He painted the space in the same panoramic format as many of his landscapes, but the effect is dramatically different. With no sky above, the low ceiling compresses the space and creates the impression of a wide rectangular tunnel receding into deep space. The effect is amplified by long bars of golden light that mirror the fluorescent fixtures above and penetrate far into the room. The haunting stillness of Downes’s painting takes on even greater resonance in the wake of the tragic events of September 11, 2001.

Downes’s work has been widely exhibited throughout the United States since the 1960s. Most recently, he exhibited at the Betty Cunningham Gallery in New York; the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, New York; and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Downes currently lives and works in New York City and Presidio, Texas.


 * Resources: **

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