Painting the Town -- Museum of the City of New York

Max Ferguson's city scenes, rendered with extraordinary precision and attention to perspective, reflect the impression that seventeenth-century Dutch interior paintings made on him as an American student visiting Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum in 1979. Mesmerized by the pictorial realism and respect for detail exemplified in the works of Vermeer and other Dutch masters, Ferguson returned to New York intent on transferring their processes and standards of craftsmanship to current urban subjects.¹

Self-Portrait in Subway I is part of a series of paintings devoted to New York's subterranean transit system dating from the early 1980s, shortly after Ferguson graduated from New York University. The subway, with its shadowy tunnels, sparse station architecture, and technological textures had fascinated him during years of ridership. Born in New York City, Ferguson was raised in Nassau County but often ventured into Manhattan and became adept at navigating this reasonably priced and speedy mode of inner-city transportation. He recalls being intrigued by the disorientation of moving through spaces divorced from natural light, whether during rush hours when anonymous commuters filled the trains or during off-peak hours when an ominous quiet settled underground.

Here, the parting doors of a graffiti-marked train yield a glimpse of a man sipping coffee on a bench at the waiting platform of the Seventh Avenue Local at 23rd Street (the exact setting is supplied in supplementary information the artist affixed to the reverse of his painting).² The viewer, who assumes the role of a passenger seated opposite the car's doors, inevitably locks gazes with the solitary stranger. The ambivalent interpretations prompted by this fleeting eye contact lend tension to the picture. Are we looking at an innocuous fellow passenger trying to revive himself with some caffeine while awaiting the next train? Or are we encountering a potential predator as he plots an assault? The joke, of course, is that the solitary urbanites portrayed in Ferguson's work are frequently self-portraits, with the artist inviting such disparate readings of his neutral persona. Ferguson's use of Triple Zero brushes, allowing for minute paint control, and masonite board as a receiving surface also combine to create an unnervingly tranquil image -one that belies the decaying reality of graffiti, crime, trash, and erratic service that beset New York's subway system in the early 1980s.

For the "Subterranean" series, Ferguson sketched and sometimes painted in the subways and also relied on photographs to guide his refinement of these studies in his studio. He dislikes having the label of Photorealism applied to his meticulous style, however, because he neither traces nor uses an airbrush. The timeless quality that distin-guishes Ferguson's work stems as much from his subject choices as from his technique. Although his paintings are autobiographical in impulse, he universalizes settings meaningful to him by depleting them of people and distilling their essential loneliness or marginality within the urban vortex. Renderings of nocturnal businesses and of a desolate, windblown Coney Island are also noted for their dark romanticism.³ More recently, Ferguson has concentrated on what he categorizes as an "anterior" study of Jewish New York prompted in part by his late embrace of his own Ellis Island heritage and his concern over the disappearance of landmarks associated with traditional Jewish culture within the city.

Notes:

1 Ferguson became interested in painting and drawing during a year spent at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. The influence of the Dutch masters on his painted New York cityscapes was noted by several critics who tracked his rising career in the early 1980s. See, for example, John Loughery, "Max Ferguson," Arts Magazine 61 (November 1986): 124.

2 The backs of Ferguson's paintings typically include detailed technical information to aid in their future conservation, and they have been likened to open scrapbooks because of his tendency to include quotes, comments, and relevant souvenirs taped to the surface.

3 The haunting qualities conveyed in many of Ferguson's cityscapes caught the attention of TDI (Transit Display, Inc.), which in 1998 used one of his paintings -showing a lone figure looking out at the Central Park Reservoir, dwarfed by the beauty of an unfolding spring -as a background for a city bus campaign with the superimposed public service message "Mental illness should not be faced alone."


Self-Portrait in Subway I 1982 Max Ferguson (b. 1959) Oil on board, 22 X 17 5/8 Signed on subway interior upper right: Max Ferguson 1982 New York Gift of Mrs. Benjamin Joelson, 82.219
Max Ferguson's city scenes, rendered with extraordinary precision and attention to perspective, reflect the impression that seventeenth-century Dutch interior paintings made on him as an American student visiting Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum in 1979. Mesmerized by the pictorial realism and respect for detail exemplified in the works of Vermeer and other Dutch masters, Ferguson returned to New York intent on transferring their processes and standards of craftsmanship to current urban subjects.¹ Self-Portrait in Subway I is part of a series of paintings devoted to New York's subterranean transit system dating from the early 1980s, shortly after Ferguson graduated from New York University. The subway, with its shadowy tunnels, sparse station architecture, and technological textures had fascinated him during years of ridership. Born in New York City, Ferguson was raised in Nassau County but often ventured into Manhattan and became adept at navigating this reasonably priced and speedy mode of inner-city transportation. He recalls being intrigued by the disorientation of moving through spaces divorced from natural light, whether during rush hours when anonymous commuters filled the trains or during off-peak hours when an ominous quiet settled underground. Here, the parting doors of a graffiti-marked train yield a glimpse of a man sipping coffee on a bench at the waiting platform of the Seventh Avenue Local at 23rd Street (the exact setting is supplied in supplementary information the artist affixed to the reverse of his painting).² The viewer, who assumes the role of a passenger seated opposite the car's doors, inevitably locks gazes with the solitary stranger. The ambivalent interpretations prompted by this fleeting eye contact lend tension to the picture. Are we looking at an innocuous fellow passenger trying to revive himself with some caffeine while awaiting the next train? Or are we encountering a potential predator as he plots an assault? The joke, of course, is that the solitary urbanites portrayed in Ferguson's work are frequently self-portraits, with the artist inviting such disparate readings of his neutral persona. Ferguson's use of Triple Zero brushes, allowing for minute paint control, and masonite board as a receiving surface also combine to create an unnervingly tranquil image -one that belies the decaying reality of graffiti, crime, trash, and erratic service that beset New York's subway system in the early 1980s. For the "Subterranean" series, Ferguson sketched and sometimes painted in the subways and also relied on photographs to guide his refinement of these studies in his studio. He dislikes having the label of Photorealism applied to his meticulous style, however, because he neither traces nor uses an airbrush. The timeless quality that distin-guishes Ferguson's work stems as much from his subject choices as from his technique. Although his paintings are autobiographical in impulse, he universalizes settings meaningful to him by depleting them of people and distilling their essential loneliness or marginality within the urban vortex. Renderings of nocturnal businesses and of a desolate, windblown Coney Island are also noted for their dark romanticism.³ More recently, Ferguson has concentrated on what he categorizes as an "anterior" study of Jewish New York prompted in part by his late embrace of his own Ellis Island heritage and his concern over the disappearance of landmarks associated with traditional Jewish culture within the city. Notes: 1 Ferguson became interested in painting and drawing during a year spent at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. The influence of the Dutch masters on his painted New York cityscapes was noted by several critics who tracked his rising career in the early 1980s. See, for example, John Loughery, "Max Ferguson," Arts Magazine 61 (November 1986): 124. 2 The backs of Ferguson's paintings typically include detailed technical information to aid in their future conservation, and they have been likened to open scrapbooks because of his tendency to include quotes, comments, and relevant souvenirs taped to the surface. 3 The haunting qualities conveyed in many of Ferguson's cityscapes caught the attention of TDI (Transit Display, Inc.), which in 1998 used one of his paintings -showing a lone figure looking out at the Central Park Reservoir, dwarfed by the beauty of an unfolding spring -as a background for a city bus campaign with the superimposed public service message "Mental illness should not be faced alone."