Living The Dream: The Knicks & New York City

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- Unless otherwise credited).

Basketball in NYC is old school. Boys’ High School Bulletin, #7, May 4, 1898! *- Board of Education Collection, NYC Municipal Archives Photo.

A lot of places in the U.S. are passionate about basketball, and since it was accepted as an Olympic sport in 1930, so are a lot of places around the world. New Yorkers feel a special kinship with the sport, which has been called “the city game,” and NYC, and/or Madison Square Garden (MSG), referred to as “the Mecca” of basketball. NYC has produced 257 NBA players, tops among U.S. cities1, but that may be a byproduct of how long basketball has been played here. According to the NYC Department of Records & Informations Services, “Basket ball (there was some early confusion whether it was basket ball, basket-ball or basketball) was introduced in New York City schools in the 1890s. It was promoted not just as physical training, but as a moral exercise, whereby. students could be taught the value of teamwork and self-sacrifice.”

No foul?? Where have I seen refereeing like this recently? *-NYC Municipal Archives Photo.

That’s 135, or so, years of hoops in NYC. 

The legendary Walt “Clyde” Frazier at The Metropolitan Museum in front of a display of some of his wardrobe. NYC has seen nothing like the backcourt of Clyde & Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, until this year. *- June 3rd, @metmuseum Photo.

Those 2019 Department of Records words epitomized the 1973 Knicks team that last won the NBA Championship. A true team, of Walt “Clyde” Frazier, Willis Reed, Bill Bradley, Dave DeBusschere and Dick Barnett who won their second title in 4 years (the great Earl “The Pearl” Monroe joining them for the ’73 ride.). Their teamwork bordered on telepathic. Do I need say that 53 years on,  there were a lot of basketball lovers in NYC hungry to experience a title.

A woman in a Knicks shirt passes a street vendor selling nothing by Knicks, June, 2026.

Yet, with all due respect to them, it doesn’t quite add up to what I’ve been experiencing around town during the 2026 NBA Playoffs. When I’ve walked the streets during the Playoffs, it seems that 25% of everyone passing by had a NY Knick item on, or was wearing Knicks team colors blue and/or orange. It’s been a while now, but NYC is no stranger to winning championships. The Yankees who have won 27 times, the last in 2009. The Giants (in 2007 & 2011) and Rangers (in 1994) have both won in living memory. I’ve experienced all of that, seeing the 1999 Yankees win the World Series at the original Yankee Stadium (the last time they won there) and I was at Game 7 when the Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1994, and their subsequent Parade). I also saw the Knicks in the first round of the 1973 Playoffs at The Garden on their way to their last title until now,  but nothing has come close to what happened in my neighborhood, and in every other neigborhood in town when the Knicks FINALLY won the Championship late on June 13th.  NONE of what came before in all of those Championships prepared me for what I experienced walking the streets (or trying to), in the hour after the Knicks finally won Game 5 & the title late on June 13th.

Even NYC Busses got into the spirit- one of many things I’ve never seen here before. East 79th Street, June, 2026.

I turned my corner and stepped into a SEA of people filling the sidewalks on both sides of the street. When I got to West 23rd Street, they overflowed into the street, Seventh Avenue- one of the busiest streets in the country- home to Macy’s, Times Square & MSG, completely filling it, a crowd that had to number in the tens of thousands of people, extending as far north as I could see.

Here’s the scene on West 28th Street & 7th Avenue, as far north as I got-

I got home and posted this on Instagram-

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Revelrs unfurl the Knick colors on top of the 1 Train Subway Station at 7th Avenue & 28th Street. The tops of the railings some of those folks are standing on are maybe 4 inches wide and lined with spikes!

To clarify- I lived a little over a mile and a half north of Ground Zero on 9/11. The first plane that hit WTC 1 flew down my block! The streets were crowded with people watching and wondering what was going on, while others tried to leave the area, but they all moved along, and traffic moved above Canal Street, where the frozen zone began. The NYC Halloween & Gay Pride Parades pass through my neighborhood, which is also 20 blocks from Times Square and the huge New Year’s Eve Ball Drop. We’re used to crowds here. Still, I’ve NEVER seen ANYTHING remotely like what I saw that night.

Everyone was stuck in place after the crowd stopped making progress heading north. Some tried to get a better view, but all they saw was more people. 7th Avenue & 27th Street.

I was only able to get 5 more blocks north to 28th Street, leaving me 4 short blocks from MSG, when the sea stopped in its tracks. After 15 minutes, I gave up and turned west, where it was exactly the same.

8th Avenue & West 28th Street. This truck is not parked. It’s in the middle of 8th heading towards MSG. It looked to me that the driver opened the passenger door to allow fans to climb up top to dance. The truck never moved while I was there.

I eventually reached 8th Avenue- same thing there, with cars and trucks surrounded in place by the crowd. When I finally got home, I found out why we were stopped in our tracks-

When I said ” a SEA of humanity,” I meant a SEA! This is why I couldn’t get any further than 4 blocks away (to the right). The scene outside MSG. at West 33rd Street & 8th Avenue (where the cars are nearer the camera ), 7th Avenue about halfway up the picture. *- Unknown Photographer.

How to explain it? 

I can’t. I can only speak for myself as one New Yorker. Watching videos from the innumerable watch parties going on around all over the City it seems the reaction was universally cathartic, it was like watching a million people win the lottery at the same time, or watching them in the happiest moment of their lives that just happened to be happening in all these other lives here at the same time. 

Even Trader Joe’s is on board. June 20, 2026.

Yes, a good deal of it is the team. Time and time again they came back and won, showing the moxie NYC loves, along with a belief in each other, and incredible leadership from Captain Jalen Brunson. In Game 4 of the Finals, they overcame a 29-point deficit to win- the largest comeback in NBA Finals history. They were down 20 points in the 4th quarter. You just don’t come back against a Finals-caliber team. Somehow it seemed like they were never out of it. They always found a way- this year. The past two years in the Playoffs, they came up short, and that hurt, big-time. Maybe in the end, it helped them. In the end the ’26 Knicks had reserves of character. 

June 14, 1994, the Rangers win the Stanley Cup in Game 7 of the Finals after 54 years! STILL THE greatest moment in Manhattan sports history, and I was there- slightly left of dead center, in shadow. That’s what happens when you hand your camera to a total stranger and the flash doesn’t go off. There is a bit of detail there. Hopefully, I’ll find someone to fix it one of these days.

Still, watching Games 3 & 4 of the Finals at MSG on TV, I noticed something interesting- no matter how much they were down, the fans never booed them. That’s remarkable. I was at Game 5 of the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals at Madison Square Garden when the Rangers were up 3 games to 1 and had their first opportunity of winning the Stanley Cup in 54 years, and at home. They went down 0-3 entering the third and final period. People were booing! I couldn’t believe it. COME ON! THEY HAVE A CHANCE TO WIN THE CUP TONIGHT! They wound up losing that game, and losing Game 6. Game 7 was at The Garden, and they won, 3-2. I was there, again. It still ranks as the greatest sports event in Manhattan history 2 So, given my experience with the Rangers Game 5, I was VERY surprised there was no booing for the Knicks. Ranger fans waited 54 years for the team to win. Knicks fans waited 53, but they seemed to have more patience. Obviously, most people who are Knicks fans now weren’t even born by 1973. So, most of them haven’t been waiting 53 years. A long time, no doubt, but not 53 years for most. I wonder if there’s something else at work – beyond the love of a great team, a long-term passion for the franchise, or even a love of basketball.

But, what?

Covid gave birth to the now iconic (at least here), “New York or Nowhere!” slogan, which sees a Knicks update on this bag. June 20, 2026.

Another thing I found interesting was that as the Playoffs went on, people began speaking to each other. It happened to me. A stranger would ask if I saw last night’s game, I’d nod yes, and they’d tell me their experience. A fan I’d never met told me he had a ticket for Game 3 of the Finals (at MSG) that night but wasn’t going to go for fear of the security because Trump was going. That reminded me of how I got my 1994 Rangers Game 5 ticket. A woman with a broken arm in a cast sold it to me because she was afraid of the crowd if they won. After the Rangers did win, the crowd was great- joyous and fun. Sure, it was packed all around MSG, but there was no trouble. I saw NYPD lounging around their cars relaxing with their caps sitting on the hood. Same thing last night. While I did not see a single cop, I saw no trouble beyond it being packed, but nobody jostled or pushed. 

“10 Weeks.” A helluva team seen here in this $3,500.00 Signed Photo. *-Fanatics Photo.

What about this unique group of individual players? Jalen Brunson and a few of the other Knicks, have remarkable backstories. They overcame much to get to this point. Jalen Brunson, in particular, on his way to becoming the focal point has revealed he has that “something else,” a self-confidence and belief that his teammates feed on, and becomes charisma to the public. You can see one possible reason for it here. Still, it took time. NBA Extra TV succinctly sums up his evolution in NYC after he signed here as a free agent on July 12, 2022-

“New York was watching. New York was waiting. What happened next wasn’t an explosion. It was something slower and more powerful than that. In his first season with the Knicks, Brunson simply won. He led New York to 47 wins and their first playoff series victory since 2013. He was calm under pressure, unshakable  in the fourth quarter, and utterly immune to the noise that swallows so many players in that city. Fans didn’t immediately crown him. They observed. They tested him. They waited to see if he would flinch. He never flinched. The 2023-24 season was when the conversation began to shift. Brunson averaged 28.7 points per game, a career high, and earned his first NBA All-Star selection and his first All NBA birth, finishing fifth in MVP voting.
He was, as one observer put it, us except very good at basketball.”

NYC has had a LOT of great pro-athletes from Babe Ruth through Mark Messier, Derek Jeter, Eli Manning and Aaron Judge. I can’t say any of them are like Jalen Brunson. They weren’t “us.” He has a bit of Walt Frazier’s cool, but Clyde was a defensive master. Jalen may be more like Earl Monroe, but Monroe was a shooting guard, not a point guard. He’s got Messier’s legendary leadership, and like Jeter & Manning, comes through in the big moments of the big games. Dare I wonder- Is he more like a shorter Michael Jordan (who is 6’6, as was Kobe Bryant)?

Ummm…Jalen’s not taller than most of his teammates.

At 6’2, Jalen is undersized for his position the pundits say. It’s been held against him his entire pre-Knicks career, even though he won 2 NCAA National Championships and a State Basketball Championship. Judge is a BIG man, so it’s easy to expect him to be super-human. Still, being “shorter,” Jalen may be more relatable. Though 6’2 is big, in team pictures he’s obviously not as tall as some of his teammates, and that may make him easier to identify with.

What becomes a legend most? Street cred.

I think a lot of people also relate to him being someone who was never given a chance until he came to NYC. I think a lot of people relate to him “overachieving” (which is wrong when you consider he won the 2016 and 2018 NCAA National Championships),  I think a lot of people relate to how he relates to his teammates, which is obvious when you hear them talk about him, two of them, Josh Hart & Mikael Bridges, were with him when he won in 2016 & 18). The three of them form a nucleus that seems to pull the rest of the team in to its sphere. The Finals were a true test of ALL of this. They were up against a very formidable opponent. San Antonio led 72% of the series. The Knicks winning margin for their 4 wins was 12 points. ON the other hand, during their remarkable Playoff run, they lost 3 of the 19 games they played- by a total of 6 points!

As remarkable as all of that is, I believe there’s something more at work here. 

Most of the Photos I took for this piece show something I’ve never seen before, like this- The Grand Staircase at The Metropolitan Museum of Art goes all out for the Knicks. June 19th, the day after their Parade drew 2 million.

I think the Knicks are so very popular because they come across as a family. A good deal of the credit for this has to go to Leon Rose, who built this team over the past 7? years.It started crazily early- Knicks fun fact- Knicks President, Leon Rose, the Architect of this team, and Rick Brunson’s agent at the time, met newborn Jalen Brunson before Jalen’s dad, Rick Brunson, who was playing in Australia, did! In his interview after the Kicks got the Trophy, he said as much, that he wanted a team that was a family, and he and the organization has made a point of treating them that way. It showed. In their interviews after the game last night, players after player talked about how special it was to win it all with THIS group. That nucleus of 3 I mentioned had won before (probably a reason Mr. Rose brought them together here), came in knowing how to win, yes, but they also have close personal bonds. It appears contagious. 

NYC has been different since 9/11. Something of the City’s soul was stolen from us (and from countless other people in Washington, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere) that day. We lost close to 3,000 people that were an essential part of the fabric of the City, and two towers that were signature pieces of our identity. I remember walking by that space when the World Trade Center was being built in the 1970s. It’s STILL hard for me to believe that two structures so INCREDIBLY BIG are gone. You had to stand there, in their shadows, to really know what I mean. 

The celebration continues. 8th Avenue & 28th Street, late on June 13th.

It seems to me that somehow, based on everything I’ve seen & experienced these past 2 months almost 25 years later already, these Knicks are helping to heal the City. There may not be a lot of Knicks fans who were around in 1973, but I’m sure there are a lot who were around in 2001. 

And on 28th Street near 7th Avenue

Walking the streets of my neighborhood, 10 blocks from MSG, there was a dull roar that was omnipresent in the background. It wasn’t the NYPD helicopters, it was the sound of continual and constant yelling off in the distance. I hadn’t heard it before. It was drowned out by yelling and cheering closer to me most of the time, but when that died down, it was there. It took A LOT of people yelling & screaming at the same time to produce, and I’ll never forget it.

Ditto.

I was at the Rangers Parade in 1994, which drew 2 million, I managed to get a block away from the procession, reached up as high as I could, and snapped a picture as the Stanley Cup went by. Two million people returned to the Canyon of Heroes this past Thursday for the Knicks. Now that it’s all over, while fans will continue to celebrate in their own smaller ways, I wonder if the new-found togetherness & openness will continue. I wonder what the lasting impact of this Knicks Championship will be on NYC.

Court of dreams. West 21st Street, June, 2026.

Walking around late on June 13th, I saw New York City at its best- something I haven’t seen since 9/11. I saw a City, like its basketball team, that kept on keeping on, and overcame everything in its path to get to this shining moment.

“We believed,” it says.

I hope we keep finding them.

*- Soundtrack for this piece is, what else? Hell’s Kitchen’s own Alicia Keys performance of “Empire State of Mind ” with her son, Egypt, at the Knicks Championship Celebration at City Hall, June 18, 2026-

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free for 10 1/2 years, during which over 340 full-length pieces have been published! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate securely by PayPal below to allow me to continue. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art & Photography books, and Music from my collection! Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

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  1. https://www.olbg.com/blogs/major-league-stars-city ↩
  2. The Knicks won on the road in San Antonio this year. They won in 1970 in Los Angeles, and, though they won their second Championship in 1973 at MSG, it didn’t have the same impact because they had won it in 3 years previously. The Yankees play in the Bronx, the Mets in Queens, the Giants & Jets in Jersey. ↩

Marc Chagall’s Granddaughter: An Artist In Her Own Right  

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You can also support it by buying Art & books. Details at the end. Thank you! 

Introduction by Kenn Sava-
Lana Hattan is the person responsible for my starting NighthawkNYC.com in 2015, so it’s only fitting that she is now the first person besides myself to write a piece published here. A lifelong admirer of Marc Chagall’s Art, she has also been a Chagall researcher for over a decade on two continents. She has lectured and created & presented slideshows on various aspects of Chagall’s life, including his & his wife, Bella’s, lives in NYC.
On May 15th, 2015, Lana interviewed Marc Chagall’s granddaughter, the renowned flower designer Bella Meyer, at her popular fleursBella studio in Greenwich Village. I am proud to present it here accompanied by Photos she & I took that day. 

Written & Photographed by Lana Hattan
Exclusive to NighthawkNYC.com
(*-Additional Photos by Kenn Sava.)

Lana Hattan at Bella Meyer’s fleursBella, May 15, 2015.

Visitors to Manhattan’s fleursBella are usually taken aback by the floral studio’s unique beauty and spectacular designs. Once the visitors learn that the owner and creative director of the award-winning studio, Bella Meyer, also happens to be Marc Chagall’s granddaughter, they may come away with the feeling that Chagall’s mastery of color lives in her work.

Bella Meyer was born in Paris, and she grew up in Switzerland. She studied Art History Sorbonne University in Paris and earned a Ph.D. in Medieval Art History. In the early eighties, she moved to New York. Today, she is the owner of the studio & shop fleursBella in Manhattan where this interview took place.

Meeting Bella. May 15, 2015.

Could you share your earliest memories of your grandfather, Marc Chagall?

“Although we didn’t live with grandfather, he was a very important person in my family. My mother, his daughter, was always very close to her father. We talked about him all the time. I was always surrounded by his paintings, which like family.

When we visited Chagall in Southern France, where he lived, we liked to go for walks and talk. He would tell us about his childhood and our grandmother, his wife, who unexpectedly died in the year 1944. He called her only ’my Bella’. My grandfather said that she could always understand him.

I liked watching as grandfather painted in his studio. Once I witnessed how long it took him to choose a gray tone, which wasn’t his favorite.

Grandfather was always kind to us grandchildren. I remember how he would hug me, touch my cheek, take my hand into his palms. I have this memory of being touched as if it were a miracle. Sometimes, it is very hard to describe the feeling. My feelings are deep inside, and it’s hard to find the words.”

Bella Mayer at fluersbella.

If you were to decide to describe your childhood memories about your grandfather, not in words, but color, what color would you choose?

“I would use very, very soft colors. I wouldn’t use very contrasting colors.”

I know that you have liked drawing since early childhood. Who taught you to draw?

“My mother taught me how to draw. She drew and painted very well but then stopped doing it. Grandfather liked her paintings.”

You went to study Art History at the University. Was it your decision?

“Yes, I didn’t want to study anything else. When I entered the University I said that I wanted to study art. They asked, “you want to learn how to paint”.  I repeated that I want to study Art. It was funny. ( Bella said with a smile).”

Did you talk about Art with your grandfather while you were studying?

“While I was a student, he came to Paris, and we visited galleries, walked and talked about Art. He was an amazing narrator.”

Books on Chagall, top, and on flowers, below, at fleursBella.

Why did you decide to move to New York?

“I was attracted to New York’s popular culture, contemporary art, and certainly to jazz.”

Did your grandfather like this idea?

“My grandfather didn’t like my decision. He had sad memories associated with New York. His wife and muse, my grandmother, died when they lived in New York. It was an awful time for him.”

When you came to New York you designed costumes, masks, and puppets for theater, but in 2003 you founded a floral design company and in 2009  you opened a floral in Manhattan. Why did you decide to create with flowers?

“I have always loved flowers, I bought it for my mother and grandfather. He loved to paint bouquets. I also liked to work with color and texture. Once a day, I visited the big flower market in New York, where there are a lot of flowers. I realized that only flowers can have such as a rich variety of colors and textures that I was always looking for, and it is the amazing source of my creativity.”

I saw a small chair near your studio’s door with a sign “Please, Take a flower”….

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“When I founded the fleursBella company, I wanted to give people a little moment of joy and we would leave small bouquets into street or subway stations. My husband called it “Graffiti Flowers!” Now, we don’t have time and, so, we put flowers or small bouquets outside on a little chair, for anyone to take along with them. Perhaps, it is not a very good idea for a business.”

What are your favorite flowers? 

“My tastes are constantly changing. Flowers are so beautiful. Now, peonies are my favorite. They have an amazing color, texture, and smell.”

(She looked at a bouquet of peonies with admiration).

What projects are you currently working on?

“We are making an installation for The Brooklyn Academy of Music. (Bella thought for a moment ) I want to make something just as touching as the music!”

Do your children connect with Art?

“Yes, they do.”

In one of your interviews, you said: “Grandfather always urged us to look for, as he said, for an ideal”. What do you think is your ideal? 

“The ideal is a constant search. This is not something static. I try to do things from my heart and to follow that.”

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free for 10 1/2 years, during which over 340 full-length pieces have been published! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate securely by PayPal below to allow me to continue. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art & Photography books, and Music from my collection! Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

Jack Whitten: The Black Monolith

This site is Free & Ad-Free! If you find this piece worthwhile, please donate via PayPal to support it & independent Art writing!
You can also support it by buying Art & books. Details at the end. Thank you! 

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava. (*- Unless otherwise credited)

Show seen: Jack Whitten: The Messenger, MoMA, 2025.

After a quiet Summer, 2024, Summer Blockbusters brought the heat back to Manhattan in 2025. Four shows stood out to me: a pair at the Whitney1 and two at MoMA. Having already written about MoMA’s Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers, here, simultaneously upstairs on 6,  Jack Whitten: The Messenger, was the kind of show that made MoMA what it is for many around the world: one of, if not THE, leader in presenting excellent Modern (even Contemporary) Art shows. I’ve written about many of them in these e-pages these past 10 1/2 years.

Few Artists were more Contemporary than Jack Whitten. In fact, he invented some of its language, and a good deal of its emphasis/focus/center.

Man about town. Jack Whitten, a transplant from Alabama, was an NYC resident for 58 years, spending most of that time Downtown, before moving to Queens- except when he was “gone fishing,” as he wrote in his Notebooks on his departure for Crete each summer. The Artist is seen here on the corner of Broadway & Broome Street in the early 1970s on the Introductory wall card. When I see this Photo, I’m reminded that later he owned a building on Lispenard Street, a few blocks north of The World Trade Center. I tell the story of Jack Whitten on 9/11 further on.

Still, it left me with a deep sadness that after decades of struggle, Jack Whitten (1939-2018) didn’t live to see it.

Installation view of the first gallery of Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture 1963-2017. The Met Breuer, November 24, 2018

He didn’t live to see the other great show of his work either- Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture 1963-2017, the Retrospective of his Sculpture which he mostly kept from public display, which came to NYC at The Met Breuer in 2018, and which I wrote about here. Together, they make a very compelling case for Mr. Whitten’s extraordinary creative & imaginative range, the extremely wide range of his talent & skill, his accomplishment, and his place as a 20th & 21st century Master.

Installation view of the first gallery of the final Jack Whitten solo show during his lifetime at Hauser & Wirth, February 7, 2017. It was the first time I had seen one of his Sculptures. Quantum Wall (A Gift for Prince), is on the back wall. It can be seen in full in my piece on Jack Whitten: Odyssey, here, an installation view of which is shown above.

Both shows point out a sorry reality for too many great Artists. Jack Whitten is just one of many who waited in vain for their U.S. Retrospective. Meanwhile, numerous deceased Artist receive show after show (I’ve seen ten shows of the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat in NYC since 2012, for example, and written about almost all of them), while too many deserving living Artists go ignored, until years- even decades, after their passing.

Jack Whitten: The Messenger, Installation view, MoMA, July 31, 2025.

Nonetheless, all the while, his Art continued to ascend the ranks of appreciation and acceptance. It wasn’t always thus. Getting to this point has. been a rough and rocky road. An excerpt from MoMA’s Exhibition Catalogue (which is recommended as the most comprehensive book on Jack Whitten ever, in spite of its cardboard binding) looks back to his beginnings-

“Whitten made some of his earliest images as a teenager, painting hand-lettered signs for local businesses in his hometown of Bessemer, Alabama, in the 1950s. One of his first paid jobs was for a Civil Rights protest on the steps of the county courthouse. These images were meant to travel: to say something, to have reach. Whitten learned the technique using tools left behind by his mother’s first husband, James Monroe Cross, a commercial sign-painter who died before Whitten was born. It was unusual for Cross, a Black man, to have a skilled occupation and own his own business in the deeply segregated Jim Crow South. The artist suggested that Cross was always under threat of suspicion, even violence, for his profession. Making images was a rebellion and a risk… ‘Transmission is the key,’ he said2,'”

The earliest work in the show reveals Jack Whitten’s life long passion for Jazz. The Messenger (For Art Blakey), 1990, left, and Homecoming: For Miles (Davis), 1992 (the year after Miles passed), right. Both Acrylic on canvas.

Reading that, my thoughts turned back to another MoMA blockbuster that was full of “signs,” literal and figurative: Ed Ruscha/Now Then, which occupied these same galleries not long ago, the subject of a 3-part series I wrote. There are surprising similarities, and differecnes, between them. Largely contemporaries, Mr. Ruscha (b. 1937, Mr. Whitten born two years later in 1939), is perhaps best-known for his word Paintings. Though he started with a paying job making protest signs bearing words, Jack Whitten’s Art is almost exclusively wordless, except for its titles. His Art transcended words while honoring his mantra, “Transmission is the key.” Both Artists were born and raised in the South. Jack Whitten in Alabama- “in apartheid,” he said, Ed Ruscha in Tusla, Oklahoma, considered part of the South by some. Both left and attended Art schools, Mr. Whitten at Cooper Union, NYC,3, and Ed Ruscha at CalArts in L.A.. Both stayed put in their new locales for the rest of their lives and their extraordinarily long careers. Both used their Art to regularly comment on the world around them, though Jack Whitten seemed more the Activist. It’s also interesting that both Artist oeuvres are almost entirely devoid of images of people.

NY Battle Ground, 1967, Oil on canvas

As for their significant differences, Jack Whitten had to survive the 1960s, including the violence that surrounded the Civil Rights Protests. Deeply effected hearing Dr. Martin Luther King speak at the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955-56 after Rosa Parks’s arrest, the event that brought Dr. King to prominence (and the event at which Jack Whitten met Dr. King), he soon became fed up with the violence surrounding the Civil Rights Movement, so he moved to NYC in 1960, then graduated from Cooper Union with a bachelor’s degree in 1964, before finding his voice through the influence of the Jazz Musicians he met and the 1st generation Abstract Expressionists who he encountered here. His work would remain abstract his entire career. In spite of all of this history, Jack Whitten skips it and begins his riveting, 568-page collection of his studio notes from 1962 to 2017, Notes from the Woodshed, (the closest thing we have to an autobiography), with the 1960s & with his move to NYC.

Light Sheet I, 1969, Acrylic on canvas

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would reach thirty years of age without self-destructing. . . . The 1960s were coming to an end; I was still alive and in one piece.”

He would go on to live and work for another forty-eight years.

“1970 was the turning point,” he recalled4. At the start of a new decade, the Artist moved to a studio on Broome Street and had a breakthrough. He stopped making figurative art and got rid of his paintbrushes(!), which may be unprecedented among Painters in Western Art history to his time. The studio became a laboratory designed to experiment with acrylic paint5. The medium, a recent innovation made from plastic, offered a vastly expanded range of color, texture, and handling. Seizing the opportunity, Whitten invented tools and techniques that were entirely new to the history of Western art.

Welcome to Jack Whitten’s post-1970 practice in which he “made” Paintings (he said) without using paint brushes. With this, they were “developed,” akin to how Photographs were. Introducing The Developer. At 12 feet long, creating Art with it is the other part of the equation. Especially since none of the Art I’ve seen that Jack Whitten may have made with The Developer have a dimension of 12 feet. He’s using this on pieces that are smaller than the tool.

From an Afro-comb to a twelve-foot-long wooden rake, which he called The Developer (a reference to photography), novel implements were maneuvered by the artist to pull layers of acrylic paint across canvases laid on his studio floor in one sweeping movement6.” Inventing a technique is impressive. Making Art using it takes mastering it first. Easier said than done with a 12-foot long rake in your hands! In this extraordinary video from 2017, Jack Whitten talks about growing up in “American Apartheid,” as he calls it, meeting Dr. King, and demonstratesThe Developer-

What stands out to me is that Jack Whitten, when faced with violence, met it with non-violence. He turned his anger into Art. Art without words. Abstract Art, at that. Revolutionary for a Black Artist. An Art that continued to represent those he admired and “transmitted” what he experienced in ways never before seen. It seems to me that that says all you need to know about the man.

Back at MoMA, the result of all the techniques he invented and perfected and his seemingly endless creativity made Jack Whitten’s work is so unique, and different from itself, that MoMA’s curators chose to install the show with numerous one-work walls. I previously experienced this in diane arbus: in the beginning at The Met Breuer.

Installation view. Installing one work on a wall is something that works extremely well for Jack Whitten’s work, in my view, since so much of it is so different from everything else. It allowed each piece to be considered singly, and then as the viewer moved around, as part of his whole. It made it very easy to “get lost” in the work & the show, something I went back to it to experience again.

Here, I thought this worked brilliantly and the resulting installation of these walls is one of the features I’ll long think of when I think of Jack Whitten: The Messenger.

The First Loading Zone, 1973, Acrylic on canvas

Today, Gerhard Richter gets a lot of notoriety as a “squeegee master,” yet he didn’t begin using the technique until 19857! Still, techniques do not make a work “Art,” with a capital “A,” as I write it. Yet, at least to my eyes, having seen Gerhard Richter: Painting After All on its last day (my look at it here), and the last day of the lost & lamented Met Breuer, what I saw over both shows left me feeling that Jack Whitten’s “Developer” works will continue to rise in esteem & appreciation. Since I believe that comparing Artists or Art works is subjective, I’ll leave it at that.

Chinese Doorway, 1974, All work are Acrylic on canvas unless stated. At 89 1/2 × 43 1/4 inches, it’s hard to say if this was created with The Developer, but if not, it appears he used another of his scraping tools.

But his “Developer” works are just one part of the work Jack Whitten created over his 58 year career, a part that fit in seamlessly with everything else he created as was to be seen in the incredibly rare opportunity to experience a large body of his work. This is in itself, remarkable. I’ve seen countless group exhibitions where different styles didn’t mesh well with each other. Yet, in The Messenger they meshed brilliantly and coalesced into telling one story: his.

Black Monolith II (Homage To Ralph Ellison The Invisible Man), 1994, Acrylic, molasses, copper, salt, coal, ash, chocolate, onion, herbs, rust, eggshell, with razor blade on canvas. As close as Jack Whitten comes to “traditional Portraiture.”

Walking through it left me realizing that it’s hard to think of another Black Artist who captured the times he lived in and so many of its leading figures in her or his Art, besides Charles White. For me, at least, when these works (including his Black Monolith series) are taken as a whole, the result is something of a Self-Portrait of the Artist: a man of his time, in his time, who rose above his time and all the travails he encountered to create something completely new and completely Jack Whitten, leaving echoes & impressions of his experiences.

Chalk editor’s note- Insert “This” in front of “was once.” (No, I did not write it.) NYC is “only” 402 years old, still you can be sure that with every step you take here you’re walking on history. So it is here in front of this nondescript residential building. But back in the late 1950s and early 1960s this was the location of “the hippest place on earth”- the now legendary Five Spot nightclub. The list of Jazz immortals who performed here is only matched by the legends of Art, Music, & Literature who hung out here to hear them.

Among the leading, now legendary, figures of his day that Jack Whitten encountered and even spoke with are Jazz Masters Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, the latter, who was embarking on his own spiritual quest after a period of drug use, had an especially deep and lasting impact on Whitten’s Art.

John Coltrane: Giant Steps, 1960. One classic that’s in both of our collections (Jack’s on LP as shown in the catalog. My LP was replaced with this CD after wearing out), John Coltrane is shown here, Photographed on the cover by Lee Friedlander, around the time he was frequenting The Five Spot.

Jack Whitten frequented the legendary Five Spot nightclub on East 5th Street, and came to amass a terrific Jazz record collection.

Asa’s Palace, 1973, Acrylic on canvas

Another thing that stands out for me is that Jack Whitten was one of the earliest Black Artists to adopt abstraction, something that has continued in the work of Mark Bradford among quite a few others.

“There are two kinds of abstraction, the abstraction of Pollock and the abstraction of [Piet] Mondrian,” Jack Whitten wrote in 1969. “It is possible to create a third abstraction based on the theory of transcending these two8*

His titles often “ground” the work, but then the viewer is left largely on her or his own, often with a staggering amount of detail to consider. This last puts the lie to theory that abstract Art is “dashed off,” perhaps born of a misunderstanding of Jackson Pollock’s “dripping” technique, or the appearance of Franz Kline’s brushwork. Walking through The Messenger, I was hard pressed to find a single work that looked “dashed off.” On the contrary there were works where Mr. Whitten first had to invent, then perfect, the technique he used before the work could begin!

Atlantis Rising, 1966, Acrylic on canvas

Jack Whitten was  an eyewitness to the first plane flying into World Trade Center 1 on 9/11 from 14 blocks away! Incredibly, his voice is heard on the only video there is of that plane impacting the North Tower, by the Naudet brothers who were making a documentary on the New York Fire Department. Following them around, that morning they answered a call about a gas leak at the building Jack Whitten owned on Lispenard Street. The Naudets happened to be filming the firemen who were trying to find it when the plane flew right over their heads! Jack Whitten’s voice is the one heard making the expletive as it crashes into the North Tower9. The NYFD immediately jumped in their trucks, accompanied by the French crew under the direction of the Naudet brothers and James Hanlon (making the renowned documentary 9/11) and headed off to Ground Zero. Mr. Whitten-

“I was in the street that morning. This plane came right overhead, and when that sound came overhead, you could feel your flesh crawling, I mean, seriously, rippling. We looked up, this plane was right on top of us. At first you didn’t see any flame, any smoke. You just saw this big gap and hole, and the sky was filled with a chandelier of glass. It was later you saw the smoke and the flames. My gut feeling told me that that was not an accident.  This is what I call the particularities of violence—close to 3,000 people were murdered in my neighborhood. People were screaming, crying.”

He stopped making Art, except for this piece, which took him five years to complete-

9.11.01, 2006. Acrylic, ash, animal blood, hair, and mixed media on canvas, 120 × 240″ (304.8 × 609.6 cm). In what I think was a brilliant move, the Baltimore Museum sold some of its older masterpieces, inciting an uproar, and used some of those funds to buy it, saddening me that an NYC museum hadn’t stepped up.  After five years of agonizing over it, Jack Whitten created one of the most stunning pieces of Art to come out of the tragedy.

“I wanted that painting to be more raw and visceral. A lot of emotional stuff in there. I’ve had people that stand before that painting and cry,” he said10.

Jack Whitten’s signature and inscription on the right edge of 9.11.01. This also shows a detail of the mosaic tiling the work consists of, each tile hand-crafted.

The work is also created with another technique he invented. Beginning in the 1990s, the Artist cut hardened sheets of acrylic paint into thousands of mosaic tiles that he used to assemble 9.11.01 and other works. In my piece on Jack Whitten: Odyssey, “Jack Whitten: Secretes from the Woodshed,” I show an Art21 video that shows Mr. Whitten actually creating one of his “mosaic” works.

Southern Manor, 1974, Acrylic on canvas

“Perhaps the ideal approach to the work of literature would be the one allowing for insight into the deepest psychological motives of the writer at the same time that it examined all external sociological factors operating within a given milieu. For while objectively a social reality, the work of art is, in its genesis, a projection of a deeply personal process, and any approach that ignores the personal at the expense of the social is necessarily incomplete,” Ralph Ellison speaking of a way of engageing Literature, c.194611.

Though he was here (NYC) during the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, arriving in 1960 on the tail end of the first generations’s success, he doesn’t seem to have been overly influenced by them directly when looking at his work. Their influence seems to me to have been more in freeing the young Artist to explore other ways of communicating in paint. Maybe this can be seen when he said his Paintings weren’t Painted, they were “made.” In fact, it seems to me his attendance at the numerous Jazz clubs that were in a golden age at the time may have had a deeper last effect. In the Music, he found other Artists who were familiar with what he had experienced, whereas the first gen AbEx Artists had not. Their influent may have helped Jack Whitten focus on what was most important for him to express. They were doing it without words. He would do it without representational images using techniques he invented.

One recognition Jack Whitten did live to receive was the National Medal of Arts by President Obama. “WASHINGTON, DC – On Thursday, September 22, in the East Room of the White House, President Barack Obama awarded the 2015 National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal to distinguished recipients. First Lady Michelle Obama attended the ceremony.” *- Photo by Cheriss May, www.cherissmay.com. White House caption in quotes.

It’s become apparent that Jack Whitten is the spiritual and influential “godfather” of much of what we see today, less than a decade after his passing. He turned his back on so-called representational Art and found a new way of “transmitting” all of what he had witnessed, all he had heard, and all he had inside, in abstraction, forging a new path forward that others have turned into a highway.

For Michael Merriweather.  

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “Nutty” by Thelonious Monk, heard here with John Coltrane, recorded live at The Five Spot in 1957-58, with some rare Photos of them performing in the club-

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You can also support it by buying Art, Art & Photography books, and Music from my collection! Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

  1. Amy Sherald: American Sublime, which I wrote about here, and Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night, which I wrote about here. ↩
  2. Jack Whitten: The Messenger, Michelle Kuo, P.37. ↩
  3. After attending Tuskegee Institute as a pre-med student. ↩
  4. ibid, P.47 ↩
  5. ibid ↩
  6. MoMA wall card ↩
  7. https://www.christies.com/en/artists/gerhard-richter?lotavailability=All&sortby=relevance ↩
  8. ibid, P.45, 47 ↩
  9. Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting, P.43-4. ↩
  10. https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/345/4715 ↩
  11. Ralph Ellison, “Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black Mask of Humanity,” in Shadow and Act, 27 n. 1. ↩

Christine Sun Kim: All Day Every Day

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Show Seen: Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night, Whitney Museum, February 8 to September 28, 2025.

My look at the 4 summer blockbusters mounted here in 2025 continues with the second of two must-see shows at The Whitney: Christine Sun Kim’s landmark All Day All Night was up concurrently with Amy Sherald; American Sublime. I began this series with a look at Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers at MoMA, where Jack Whitten: The Messenger was installed on 6 (with links to my piece on each).

Degrees of My Deaf Rage in the Art World, 2018 Charcoal and oil pastel on paper

Detail.

“Landmark?” All Day All Night is the first major museum Retrospective devoted to the work of a younger Disabled Artist in NYC in my memory. Christine Sun Kim is deaf.

As I’ve said more than once, Disabled Artists continue to be THE most overlooked Artists in the world. Why? I can’t figure it out. “Inclusion” has been the headline in the Art world since 1989, yet, the Disabled continue to be left behind. The Whitney has a long-standing relationship with Christine Sun Kim (B.1980) going back to 2007, when she worked there fresh out of grad school as an educator. During her tenure, she began giving tours in ASL (American Sign Language) for the deaf. In 2025, the Whitney & the Walker Arts Center (who also have a long-standing relationship with Ms. Kim) mounted the early mid-career Retrospective Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night, featuring works “full of sharp wit and incisive commentary,” per the press release. Indeed.

Gallery Cards include Braille. I can count on one hand how often I’ve seen this in every other show I’ve ever visited.

Come to think of it, I can’t even recall an NYC museum Retrospective of one of the more established Disabled Contemporary Artists like Chuck Close, Frida Kahlo, or Yayoi Kusama this century1. I’ve been scouring my records and racking my brain to come up with one. If you know of one, please let me know. Among other younger Artists, I think the Japanese Artist Mari Katayama may well be the next Disabled Artist to receive NYC museum attention.

Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, ATTENTION, 2022, Kinetic Sculpture, Nylon, locally sourced rock, two blowers, and control board. From the Audio Guide- “This large, moving sculpture includes two inflatable bright-red nylon arms extending from opposite gallery walls toward a jagged rock on the floor between them. One nylon arm has been sewn such that it is reaching its pointer finger out toward the rock, its four other fingers pulled into its palm. The other reaches with an entirely outstretched hand, its palm toward the floor. Both are larger-than-life and are propelled into an intermittent flapping movement by air-blowers mounted high on the walls of the gallery space. When the blowers are off, the arms drift down onto the floor. When the blowers are on, the hands repeatedly dance and brush the rough surface of the locally-sourced rock on the floor of the gallery.” Continued.

ATTENTION Audio Guide continues- “In ASL, one common method of getting someone’s attention involves waving with your palm downward in another person’s field of vision.”

ATTENTION. Audio Guide continues, “Alternatively deaf people often tap each other on the shoulder to get their attention. In this kinetic sculpture, by Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, the stone is shaped so as to suggest being eroded by the fingers’ touch, alluding to the process of “trying to get one’s attention or bring attention to something forever.”

The 6 works in the Rage series. Seen at the 2019 Whitney Biennial returned to the Whitney in All Day All Night as seen below.

Another example of the Whitney’s long-standing relationship with Christine Sun Kim, I discovered Ms. Kim at the 2019 Whitney Biennial where I found her work a showstopper. Raymond Pettibon came to mind, as another Artist who works with words and images on paper, but her Rage series is much more personal (as she explains in the video below). It stood out as completely from somewhere else in the show and it stayed with me to this day.

The same series seen in All Day All Night in 2025.

The Rage series hadn’t lost any of its power when it was included in All Day All Night six years later.

Christine Sun Kim, circled in the sliver dress, lower left & below, Signing at the 2020 Super Bowl.

Ms. Kim is, perhaps, most well-known to the general public for her appearance at the 2020 Super Bowl where she Signed the “America the Beautiful” and the National Anthem, though her performance was cut on TV leaving her frustrated. She spoke out about it in a subsequent Op-Ed in The New York Times.

Degrees of Deaf Rage in Everyday Situations, 2018 Charcoal and oil pastel on paper

Detail.

Let’s hope that All Day All Night will be the beginning of increased attention for Disabled Artists, and not an isolated event.

My look is only a sample of the show. Here’s Christine Sun Kim to give you a personally guided tour of All Day All Night  full of additional insights I didn’t get the benefit of during my visits-

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “No Words” by Denny Laine (who was born mostly deaf and relied on hearing aids when he performed) & Sir Paul McCartney, and included on the Wings alum Band on the Run-

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  1. The Met did host Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration, a Retrospective of his graphics back in 2004. ↩

Amy Sherald’s Second Chance

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Preface-
In honor of those who saved my life 19 years ago on February 7th, 2007, as one way of giving Thanks, this piece honors another survivor (of a different ailment): the Painter Amy Sherald. Amy’s remarkable story is told here better than I could tell it. My look at her Art follows.

Shows seen:
Amy Sherald: the heart of the matter…, Hauser & Wirth, October, 2019, and
Amy Sherald: American Sublime, Whitney Museum, Summer, 2025

The Whitney & MoMA went toe-to-toe with dueling summer blockbusters in 2025, with each institution mounting two. I began this series with a look at Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers at MoMA, where Jack Whitten: The Messenger was installed on 6. All the while, 40 blocks south, Amy Sherald: American Sublime was up at the same time as Christine Sun Kim’s landmark All Day All Night, comprising the Whitney share of the four must-see Summer shows.

Hauser & Wirth, October 15, 2019.

I first saw Amy Sherald’s work at her NYC debut show, “the heart of the matter…,”  at Hauser & Wirth in October, 2019, a show that contained 8 Paintings.

The select content allowed for more space around each that worked extremely well in my view. Handsome, 2019, Oil on canvas, 54 x 43 inches, was also shown in American Sublime. Seen at Hauser & Wirth, October 15, 2019.

Fast forward to April 9, 2025, American Sublime contains 44 Paintings, the earliest dating from 2007- just 18 years prior! In those last two sentences hides the remarkable fact that Ms. Sherald (B. 1973) went from NYC debut show to an NYC early mid-career major museum Retrospective in a little more than five years! There aren’t a lot of Artists I can say that about.

Whitney Museum, July 25, 2025

Installation view. July 25, 2025.

What’s more remarkable is that just seven years before her Hauser show, on December 18, 2012, Amy Sherald underwent a heart transplant at age 39! That concluded a harrowing 10 years she spent after being diagnosed with congestive heart failure at age 30, and a two-month wait in the hospital for a donated heart (as is recounted in the piece I linked up top). Today, Amy Sherald is yet another fine Painter who burst on the scene this past decade and has wasted no time solidifying a place in museums around the world.

Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance), 2014. Oil on canvas. The Painting that brought Amy Sherald to national attention was inspired by Alice in Wonderland.

And, “burst on the scene…” she did as her 2019  NYC debut show came just three years after Amy won the 2016 National Portrait Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition with Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance), becoming both the first woman and the first African-American woman to win it.

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama aka First Lady Michelle Obama, 2018, Oil on linen. (The first title was on the wall card.) After being personally selected by Mrs. Obama to Paint her official Portrait, a prescient choice at the time. Amy Sherald’s stature has only continued to grow. The former First Lady selected the Michelle Smith Milly label dress she is wearing that channels Piet Mondrian through Gee’s Bends Quilt Making, blending the modern with the historic. Gee’s Bend is a remote Black Alabama community of the descendants of former slaves.

Most well-known today, perhaps, for her Portraits of Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor, Amy Sherald: American Sublime revealed the depth of her accomplishment (already) in works that are almost always forthright, with subjects usually facing the viewer head-on, while steeped in a subtlety that rewards extended and repeated looking. Adding a unique twist is that the faces, hands, arms, legs of each of her subjects are gorgeously rendered in grisaille(!), something I’ve never seen done in a color Painting before, and something that has become her trademark. She uses grisaille as a way of “challenging the concept of color as race1.”

Untitled (Opal), 2019, Oil on linen. Standing in front of Opal, I found myself wondering why I’d never seen a Painting like this before. It seems so incredibly straight-forward, yet only Amy Sherald could have Painted it and made it as unique as it is. From the grisaille, to the position of her hands & fingers, to her expression and the choice of colors, which Wes Anderson might admire, it’s a remarkable blend of a Portrait of Opal through the eyes of an Artist with a vision.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s I spent much time wondering what new developments would come to Portraiture after the work of great 20th Century Artists, like Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, Alice Neel, Marlene Dumas, Picasso, and others. 25+ years in, the genre is continually being reinvented, yet again, by a number of Artists who have come to prominence this decade- including Amy Sherald, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, and Frank Auerbach (who passed away in 2024).

Bo Bartlett, Oligarchy, 2016, Oil on linen. See at Ameringer McEnery Yohe, August 12, 2016.

Interestingly, Amy credits the Painter Bo Bartlett with showing her the possibilities. Others have posited that Ms. Sherald’s use of grisaille goes back to old black & white Photos of Black subjects, and not Painting or Painted Portraiture. However, on 19th Century Photographs Ms. Sherald said-

“It wasn’t what inspired my work, but it’s what affirmed my journey with it, and it’s where I was finally able to find these representations of black Americans that spoke to me in the same way that I wanted my work to speak to the world. They were family photographs, similar to the image of my grandmother that I oftentimes mention, where she had her picture taken.”

The Artist’s grandmother, Jewel Hendricks, as seen on page 28 of the excellent American Sublime catalog.

“Looking at how they represented themselves— they’re quiet, regal, graceful. It was an outward action that had inward meaning. They don’t smile, but there’s something there-this is what I look for in people— the feeling that you get when you look at those old photographs. When you look into their eyes, you are being told a story. It’s almost as if they’re standing in front of you, and they have a living and breathing kind of energy. There is something so captivating about that. And it’s not frivolous. It’s a very serious, deliberate kind of thing, having your picture taken, especially then2.”

Breonna Taylor, 2020 Oil on linen.

In work after work, American Sublime reveals that Amy Sherald is a master of Portrait story telling. Her Portrait of Michelle Obama, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, is a classic case in point that manages to subtly weave multiple threads. Crossing cultural boundaries by dialoguing Mondrian-like elements and Gee’s Bends Quilt Making is artistically ground-breaking, topped off with a natural and wonderfully relaxed pose, enhanced by the background pale blue, that is just stunning.

This is what Amy Sherald does.

Commissioned to Paint the late Breonna Taylor, her first posthumous Portrait, Ms. Sherald visited her family and spent time with her mother, Tamika Palmer, who spoke of Breonna’s interest in fashion. Amy commissioned a dress for the Portrait, and also added an engagement ring on her finger “to represent the love between Taylor and her partner, Kenneth Walker… Sherald incorporated the ring to give him solace and to suggest a brighter future3.” Of the finished Painting she said, “I don’t think I thought much about the viewer so much as I thought about her family when I was making this portrait….but when you’re speaking about violence against women and police brutality, she’s become the face for that movement,” she said4.

The intro for the Audio Guide for her 2019 Painting, The Girl Next Door says, “The artist discusses how she transforms the historical function of portraiture…” That’s a lot to have accomplished in 18 years already. Along the way, she renders a wide range of subjects that encompass an equally wide range of Black Americans, including more than a few who are new to museum walls showing the scope of her vision.

American Grit, 2024 Oil on linen.

As soon as she was able to, she sought out the family of the woman, Kristen, whose heart she now has. Amy was 39 when she received Kristin’s heart. Kristin died at 38. Amy calls it “a perfect match.”

Kingdom, 2022 Oil on linen

“What kind of person was she? What kind of things did she like. Who did she love? I romantically believe in muscle memory, heart memory. It means a lot for me to be able to just kind of get to know her family a little bit. When I met her father he made me feel her heart beat. … I still call it Kristen’s heart.”

Trans Forming Liberty, 2024 Oil on canvas

“I live without fear. I work without fear. I wake up and produce these ideas without thinking so much about painting something stupid or people not liking it. I’m living this moment: I wake up every day, and I have to make sure that my work continues to speak to generations. I need to make things that are going to resonate in that way.” 

For Love, and for Country, 2022 Oil on linen.

She continues, “But I also truly believe in who I am as a human. I believe in my power. I believe in timing. I believe that this is my “now,” and that nothing can go wrong now. I understand that as a fact. I’ve been through the worst of the worst, and it was still okay. I wake up, and I keep it moving every day for Kristin and my brother Michael. You don’t waste second chances5.”

A God Blessed Land (Empire of Dirt), 2022 Oil on linen.

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “I Can See Clearly Now,” written & performed by Johnny Nash from the 1972 album of the same name, which he performs here the following year-

For those who kept me here, and for Lisa, who gave this total stranger her extra ticket to the sold-out Basquiat show at the Brant Foundation in Spring, 2019, enabling me to see it and share it with the world. As she was leaving she told me she was looking forward to seeing Amy Sherald: the heart of the matter….

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free for 10 1/2 years, during which over 340 full-length pieces have been published! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate securely by PayPal below to allow me to continue. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art & Photography books, and Music from my collection! Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

  1. https://nmwa.org/art/artists/amy-sherald/ ↩
  2. “Amy Sherald in Conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates” in Amy Sherald: The World We Make, P.184 ↩
  3. https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2021.117 ↩
  4. ibid. ↩
  5. ibid. P.186 ↩

CJ Hendry: Colored Pencil Mastery to Art SuperStar

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Show seen- CJ Hendry, Flower Market 2.0, Rockefeller Center, September 19-21, 2025

Having just written about Hilma af Klint’s Flower Paintings (with guest star Georgia O’Keeffe), there is another Artist who garnered quite a bit of attention with Flower Art in NYC in 2025: the Artist known as CJ Hendry. Learning about her and experiencing her work in 2025 turned out to be an adventure, the likes of which I’ve never experienced in the NYC Art world.

What do I mean, “quite a bit of attention…”, and “The likes of which I’ve never experienced…”? Check out the 5 city-block long line of people (on the far side of the barricade) waiting to get into her show, sped-up 400%-

I sped it up 400%(!) so you wouldn’t have to spend the 10 minutes I spent walking to the end of what was the longest line I’ve ever stood in in NYC, let alone for an Art event. What’s it all about? Why are so many people interested in CJ Hendry?

Ms. Hendry first came to my attention this past Spring while I was researching the current State-of-the-Art in Colored Pencil Drawing, and discovered this-

Detail of Light Peach Rose, the whole 41 x 41 inches shown next, Colored Pencil, on paper or board (not specified), Date unknown. The Artist works on a detail with a Caran D’ache Luminance Color Pencil. *- CJ Hendry Studio Photo.

The full work, Light Peach Rose, 41 x 41 inches, mounted on a wall, as the Artist adds a detail, or holds the pencil there ostensibly so we know it’s not a Photograph. *- CJ Hendry Studio Photo.

Astounded by her work, as numerous others have been, I searched deeper, looking for answers about how she gets such spectacular results.

One of her most remarkable Flower Drawings. Title, size, date, materials besides Colored Pencils, unknown. Ms. Hendry loves to play with the picture plane and the picture “frame,” here, with a large part of the composition seeming to extend out of the frame and appear to be 3-D. In some of her pieces she even Draws an intricate gilded frame. *- CJ Hendry Studio Photo.

Details are few and far between. It’s not that she’s overly secretive, I think she’s just busy. The closest I’ve come are a few yt videos she’s posted where you can actually watch her Draw. One lasts SIX HOURS! Yes, I’ve watched all of it, and parts of it more than once. It’s not a lesson per se, it’s the Artist at work, and there’s no sound (Ms Hendry usually listens to audiobooks or shows during her marathon Drawing sessions), but it’s revealing nonetheless.

My most recent piece on Hilma af Klint focused on her Nature Series Portfolio consisting of 42 Watercolor Paintings containing renderings of 100 varieties of flowers that was on view at MoMA this Spring and Summer. The piece focused on Art depicting individual flowers, which is exactly what CJ Hendry is doing here. As the year went on, I found myself pondering the similarities, and differences, between CJ Hendry, Hilma af Klint and Georgia O’Keeffe on a regular basis. I’ll get to that.

Flower, Colored Pencil on Paper or board, Date unknown. One of her source Drawings for her Plush Flowers, seen further below. *- CJ Hendry Studio Photo.

Having spent 2025 looking at Flower Art almost exclusively, I was immediately struck by another series of Flowers she’s drawn, that includes this one. I’ve seen twelve of these Drawings, though there are likely more given she & her team proceeded to make them into a series of about 27 different Plush Flowers that were given away and sold in the two Flower Markets she’s set up on Roosevelt Island in 2024, and in Rockefeller Center in September, 2025- the show all those folks in the video were waiting to get in to see51. Looking at these reminded me of Georgia O’Keeffe’s famous quote about “realism”-

Busy lady. The Artist moves past a wall of 12 of her Flower Drawings. *- CJ Hendry Studio Photo.

“Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things,” Georgia O’Keeffe.

Plush Flower, 2024-5. Each 20 inches tall. Each meticulously crafted, with a double-sided tag. *- CJ Hendry Studio Photo.

I don’t know if Ms. Hendry knows that quote, or has been influenced by it, yet looking at her Plush Flowers and the Drawings they’re based on, I’m struck by how sensitively she’s “edited” nature’s creations while still retaining species recognition. Frankly, it’s darn remarkable.

The Artist with a full Bouquet of her Plush Flowers. *- CJ Hendry Studio Photo.

As we’ve seen up top, she’s as capable as any human being currently alive/known to me this side of Robert Longo and Andrew Holmes at being able to Draw hyper-realistic (her term for her work) flowers. That she hasn’t here I find very interesting. She opted to create her own take on these Flowers that look like Roses, Sunflowers, et al, riffing on their essence. Were these Drawn/designed to make mass-manufacturing of them more affordable? I tend to doubt it because the attention to detail on each Plush Flower, as the end result result is known as,  is there. When I say “mass-manufacturing,” CJ Hendry deals in hundreds of thousands of them! In her own way, it seems to me that has done something not all that different from what Hilma af Kint did in her Nature Studies Portfolio on view at MoMA as I said in my piece on it: her Plush Flowers and the Drawings they’re base on speak to the essence of each species, as she sees it.

Original Drawing, left, resulting Plush Flower as sold at her Flower Market, right. *-  CJ Hendry Studio Photo.

A grid I put together of 25 of the 27 CJ Hendry 2025 Plush Flowers based on her Drawings available at her 2025 NYC Flower Market. *-Photos by CJ Hendry Studio.

Beyond her Flowers speaking to the essence of the flowers they replicate, they also speak to A LOT of people, as you saw in the video I posted up top, taken on Saturday, September 2o, 2025. That 5 city-block long line for a flower show (CJ Hendry’s Flower Market 2.0 at Rockefeller Plaza), or an Art show, must be a record. Here’s a map of the route I took in the video-

The map of the line, September 20, 2025.
Map Key-
Sunflower (one of CJ Hendry’s Plush Flowers)- Location of CJ Hendry’s Flower Market.
Red Line- My path to the end of the line of those waiting to get in.
Oof- Kenn Sava’s position at the end of the line.
Note- The distance from Rockefeller Plaza to 6th Avenue is about 2 City blocks.

In it we’re walking west on West 49th Street, before turning right onto Sixth Avenue, past Radio City Music Hall, and up to just short of the corner of West 52nd Street! The gent in the blue suit at the end of the line is selling tickets for Top of the Rock (i.e. the roof deck of 30 Rockefeller Plaza), directly behind the location of Flower Market, which offered an exclusive 28th Plush Flower to those who went.

At the other end of the line, the wait for these visitors near the entrance of Flower Market (the white tent)  is just about over.

The wait to get in was TWO HOURS! When I finally reached the end of the line to begin my wait I found myself standing so far from the show’s entrance I was within feet of the corner of West 52nd Street on 6th Avenue. It dawned on me that I was now a block away from MoMA where at that very moment Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers was beginning its final week! Flowers, flowers everywhere…When Flower Market opened on September 19th, I heard that over 100,000 Pluh Flowers were available. After the show ended, those remaining were sold on her site in bouquets of the all 27 Flowers. They sold out within days.

Bouquet up! Inside Flower Market 2.0, Visitors can have one of any one of the 27 designs for free. Each additional Flower is $5.00. I happened to notice that Crate & Barrel sells their decorative flowers for $19.95 to about $50 EACH, and they’re not designed by a known Artist (as far as I know). September 20, 2025.

After possibly being the first to put Georgia O’Keeffe and Hilma af Klint together last time, I now might well be the first to put Hilma af Klint & CJ Hendry together, but for that weekend, anyway, they weren’t all that far apart. CJ Hendry’s Flower Market was up (from September 19-22, 2025) 3 blocks directly south and parallel of MoMA smack dab in the heart of Rockefeller Plaza, as the map earlier shows, behind the famous skating rink, steps away from Fifth Avenue, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Radio City Music, Hall, etc., etc., and smack dab in front of the iconic Art Deco RCA Building at 30 Rock. Yes, the big time. Real Estate in NYC doesn’t come any more expensive than this.

Just HOW popular is CJ Hendry? In an interview last year Ms. Hendry stated that she grossed $20 million in a prior year. Putting that in perspective, that’s $20 million…

-WITHOUT a dealer or gallery representation- ever. (Her Colored Pencil Drawings currently go for $85,000 to $500,000. depending on size. But before you reach for your wallet, there’s another line to get on, this one “for years,” for the chance to buy one, only through her website.)
-WITHOUT a traditional white-wall “show.”
-WITHOUT a book out. In fact, there are surprisingly few articles written on her work.

So, HOW did this. happen?  CJ Hendry (she’s gone by her initials for as far back in her youth as I could go) is a mid-30-something transplanted Aussie Artist born in Durban, South Africa before growing up in Brisbane. She now lives & works in Brooklyn. She spent seven years in college studying Architecture and finance but left without a degree(!). In fact, she quit “days before I was kicked out for failing grades2.” While she was in school she worked as an $18./hour waitress, spending all her money on high-end luxury fashion & accessories. After quitting college, she decided to sell her wardrobe on eBay and with the proceeds take 365 days and devote herself to something she knew she had always been good at: Drawing, to see if she could make any headway with it.  Now, I don’t think I need to tell anyone that making a living Drawing is something that has really only been accomplished (after YEARS of struggle) by comic book Artists & graphic novelists, like R. Crumb and Chris Ware. In Art, Drawing is seen as a means to an end (in another medium), and almost never the end itself. She put in 16-hour days Drawing born of the discipline she learned becoming a professional swimmer who failed twice to make Australia’s Olympic Team. She decided not to put in another four years to try a third time. Still, “I owe everything to that (discipline)3,” she says now. It enabled her to create a portfolio she took around to Brisbane galleries. There was no interest.

“I didn’t take the traditional route because no one wanted to sign me. Fuck, I guess I’m on my own….I just did it on my own.”

She decided to post her work on Instagram. It took a while until she received a DM expressing interest in buying her work. The sender came out to her parent’s house, where she was still living, saw the work in her bedroom and paid CJ the amount she asked (“in the thousands,” she says) for the piece. With the proceeds she bought herself a Chanel Surf Board, which I believe still hangs in her studio, and she took things from there.

“Everything I draw would sell, and I’m so grateful for that. I went to a university for finance. I get business. I love business. I think I’m better at business than I am art. I’m a hopeless artist. I’m an ok artist, but I’m really good at strategy & business. and I love that. I think art is the byproduct of strategy and business. I think there are a lot of artists who are very good artists but don’t maybe have that business side4.”

As a result of her Flower Market and her Plush Flowers,  I realized that Colored Pencil Drawing is far from all she does. She’s mounted events/shows that have garnered notoriety for their unique concepts and installations to the point that they draw crowds, then live on in legend after (clicking on each entry in that link will show you what I mean). As part of these events, she created pieces (original Drawing-inspired objects in a you-name-it wide range of materials) that seem to me, and no doubt others, to bring her very close to the realm of something akin to 21st Century “Pop.” (For the sake of keeping this piece from getting VERY long, and since she has released so many other items, I’ll keep the focus here to her Flowers.) She now Draws with a few assistants, part of the “small team” she’s enlisted to facilitate and realize her many projects, shows, multi-media pieces, etc. So, CJ Hendry has become her own factory, now headquartered in a 22,000 square foot studio in Greenpoint, BKLYN. As I pealed her onion, discovering more and more about her, the name Andy Warhol repeatedly came to my mind.

Andy Warhol, Flowers, Screenprints, 1964-65 seen at Andy Warhol: From A to B And Back Again, Whitney Museum, December 21, 2018

I began to wonder- Is she Andy Warhol 2.0,? Seriously.

CJ Hendry, Blomma, 2025, Painted canvas Flower and Beech wood frame. This design has become her de facto symbol. *- CJ Hendry Studio Photo.

From an Art & business perspective, I think thee is a very strong case to be made that she is at least one of those that could be said about, while remaining resolutely CJ Hendry. Unlike the vivacious, omni-present Mr. Warhol, however, CJ appears to have no “social life.” She was quoted on August 9th on Instagram saying her life is “work and kids…not much else, ” which is a change from the 24/7 she said she worked since she started making Art. She is never seen at parties, or out on the town, or with media stars. The only “CJ Hendry Superstars” are her products, which have always sold out to this point. Yet, in an interview she recommended “not investing” in her5, but rather buy the work of up-and-coming Artists who need the support. Her Art is also noteworthy for the lack of human subjects in it to date. I’ve only seen one CJ Hendry Portrait- a commission from 4 years ago. Like Andy, CJ began her Drawing career rendering luxury products, including shoes, boots, and fashion accessories. From them she’s moved on to “things that are always around us,” like well-worn sneakers, cigarette butts and flowers. On Drawing the latter she said-

Who says a Drawing isn’ t Art? Unknown title, date, Caran d’Ache Luminance colored pencil (in her hand) on paper or board. *-  CJ Hendry Studio Photo

“Ever since I started mucking around with being an artist, flower imagery kind of frustrated me…It always seemed like the obvious and basic direction to go. I held off for many years because I just couldn’t figure them out. So somehow petals make sense, the flower being broken down, not full of life. Each petal looks so different like its own mini sculpture…”

I can’t say I’ve seen an Artist take this approach to them. Who else has Drawn or Painted a flower petal as their finished piece? In Art classes, students are taught to study anatomy in order to render the figure. Ms. Hendry is taking the same approach to flowers. It can only help her when she comes to depicting the whole.

Right now, it looks like flowers may be a anomaly in her work. Looking back, Ms. Hendry turned her focus to a subject, produced a series of Drawings of it, perhaps released some related items, and moved on. Though she recently Drew a character named “Juju,” and released a batch of (now sold-out) related items, her Flowers will continue to be a part of her work. She has announced Flower Markets will be mounted in Abu Dhabi and Hong Kong early this year.

The Artist works on one of her Complementary Colors series of Drawings circa 2018. Notice the pencil point. It looks to me like a right out-of-the-box Prismacolor Premier! In fact, in the videos I’ve seen, she uses very basic accessories. Electric sharpener (an Xacto seen in one), spray fixative, painter’s tape to hold down copy paper shielding white areas while she works flat on a very large wood table. I haven’t seen her erase (in what I’ve seen), use a mahlstick, a pencil extender or an easel. (She puts a sheet of something unknown, possibly, glassine, under her drawing hand as she works over finished areas.) Oh, and there’s an entire shelving unit of boxes holding thousands of colored pencils arranged by color. Drawings in progress, or finished, are kept in suitably sized clear archival sleeves. *- CJ Hendry Studio gif

Among the numerous striking pieces in her career to date is a stunning 2018 series called Complementary Colors. Like all of her work, it speaks for itself. 

Possibly the paint blob she was just seen working on. Colored pencil(!) on ? Title, size, date unknown from her Complimentary Colors series. c.2018. *-  CJ Hendry Studio Photo.

“I’ve peaked! It is downhill from here for me.” CJ Hendry, TedTalk, 2018.

She couldn’t have been more wrong when she said those words in 2018 at about the time she created the paint blob above. Her career has gone straight up, like an arrow into the weightlessness of space since, hitting that $20M she mentioned a year or two ago! Still, the market and the public are fickle. The CJ Hendry buzz may subside one of these days, but with Drawing talent like she has I doubt she’s entirely going away.

While the future is unwritten, we can take stock of the recent past. In addition to the facts that she’s brought more attention to Drawing as a medium & an Art form, which sorely needs it, and colored pencil Drawing (DITTO!), the thing I admire most about Ms. Hendry is that she’s succeeded entirely by her own devices. She’s proven it can be done, but, IT’S NOT THAT EASY!

“If you try to follow in someone’s footsteps exactly it won’t work for you. You’ve got to find your own thing. I haven’t had anyone to follow. There’s no one who’s done it this way. I’m a huge anomaly in the art world2.”

When repeatedly asked about how she did it, she stresses the HARD work she put in to get here- those 16-hour drawing sessions, 24/7. All the sacrifices she made (i.e. a social life, college, etc.) AND the fact that she has a background in finance. Hilma af Klint and Georgia O’Keeffe had to work to succeed in a male-dominated world. Georgia had a champion in Alfred Stieglitz who helped her navigate it early on. Hilma wasn’t so lucky. She never found her champion and decided her work was for the future. Whether that future is now, or not…the jury is out in my view.

I wonder how many visitors chose a Sunflower and thought about Van Gogh. I did.

That brings me to the similarities and differences between Hilma and CJ Hendry. As I wrote in my recent piece on her, Hilma didn’t live to realize the Temple she envisioned to house her Art, partly because she was seeking to have her work installed by existing spiritual organizations. As I said, I believe her work has been left in a quandary as a result.

Flower Market 2.0, Rockefeller Center, NYC, September 20, 2025.

CJ Hendry built her own “temple.” Actually, she’s already built a whole series of them. She uses temporary spaces for her shows/events, including some that have involved complete renovations of buildings, to realize her visions. Ironically, at the moment I took this picture, Flower Market 2.0, was pointed directly & poignently at MoMA & Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers three blocks north (to the left). What stands behind these Flowers is a woman who’s a force of nature. “Carpe diem” could well be CJ Hendry’s motto. While Hima af Klint’s work’s place is, it seems, still undecided, and appears stuck between today’s Art machine & the Artist’s intentions, as I said last time, CJ Hendry stands at the opposite end of that spectrum, as someone who relishes and uses the Art machine’s focus on “materialism” while skating rings around the usual dictates of today’s Art establishment, remarkably achieving success without its help or involvement, on her own terms.

She’s right, no one can follow in someone else’s footsteps and expect the same results. Still, there is much to be learned from her example. Perhaps, most importantly, that it CAN be done.

I don’t think CJ Hendry will be the last Artist to “make it” on their own terms.

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “God Bless the Child,” by Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog, Jr, 1939, seen here in this incredibly rare live recording by the immortal Lady Day with the equally immortal Count Basie, who I had the honor of meeting-

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  1. With Flower Markets being announced for 2026 in Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi. ↩
  2. Short Story Long podcast #162, CJ Hendry. ↩
  3. ibid. ↩
  4. Both quotes ibid. ↩
  5. ibid ↩
  6. Short Story Long podcast #162, CJ Hendry. ↩

Hilma af Klint in the 21st Century: The Spirit vs. The Machine

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- Additional Photographs by Lana Hattan, and others as credited)

Shows seen: Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, Guggenheim Museum, 2018-19.
Georgia O’Keeffe: To See Takes Time, MoMA, 2023, and
Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers, MoMA, 2025

Hilma af Klint, Tree of Knowledge, No. 1,  from The W Series, 1913, Watercolor, gouache, graphite, metallic paint, and ink on paper, Guggenheim Museum, December 31, 2018..

Succinctly put, Hilma af Klint is one of the most remarkable and unique Artists I’ve encountered.

Of the thousands of Art shows I’ve seen in my life, I consider about 10 to be truly monumental. Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future is one of them. I’m so grateful I got to experience it with Lana Hattan1, and her Photos are included in this piece. Guggenheim Museum, New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2018. Enduring Thanks to the woman who took this.

Having seen two shows of her work, and most of the books published on it, Hilma’s work continually surprises me. Much of her oeuvre features that rarest of all qualities in Art: it’s unprecedented. I saw Paintings for the Future exactly seven years ago as I write this yet I haven’t written about it to this point for two reasons- 1) I’m still thinking about it and researching Hilma (as my featured entry on Hilma books in my “NoteWorthy Art Books of the 21st Century” piece earlier this year attests). 2) I’ve come to see that boxing Hilma as an “abstract Artist,” as the Art machine has labelled her, does her an immense disservice. I find it at odds with the very nature of her work.

Group IX/SUW, The Swan, No. 1 from The SUW/UW Series, 1915, Oil on canvas. Reaching for the light. Of all the Painting shows I’ve seen at the Guggenheim Museum, the installation of Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future was transcendent. More on this later. *- Photo by Lana Hattan, Guggenheim Museum, December 31, 2018. I’m pleased to be able to present this show through her eyes, too.

Beyond all of that, recent developments may make her work “Basquiat hard” (my term for an Artist’s work that is mostly out of pubic view) to see going forward.
That’s a lot to cover. I’ll try to in what follows.

It begins with the flower…

“If your heart is in them flowers, bring ’em on,” Tanya Tucker-*

Georgia O’Keeffe, The White Calico Flower, 1931, Oil on canvas, as seen at the Whitney Museum, June 30, 2023

Flower Art was a niche thing, largely reserved for Illustration, until Artists like Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) made viewers sit up and take notice of them. Of course, Vincent van Gogh, and the 17-century Dutch Masters a century before him, among countless others, had Painted wonderful Still-Life bouquets for many years prior, but individual flowers had not received much attention. Earlier last century, that began to change.

Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1918. Gelatin silver print. It’s hard to believe Georgia could Draw & Paint flowers like this, and it looks like Mr. Stieglitz found it remarkable, too. Note the year this was taken. *- Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Photo.

“Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven’t time, and to see takes time- like to have a friend takes time,” Georgia O’Keeffe, paraphrased by MoMA for the title of their 2023 show, Georgia O’Keeffe: To See Takes Time.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Canna Lily, 1918-20 Watercolor on paper, seen at Georgia O’Keeffe: To See Takes Time., MoMA, July 4 2023. Exactly 2 years later these same gallery walls would display Flower Watercolors by Hilma af Klint Painted at about the same time. (Lights lowered to protect the Art.) MoMA, June 9, 2023.

She continued: “So I said to myself- I’ll paint what I see- what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking the time to look at it- I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.” She would eventually give us 200 Paintings of them, a number of which are now iconic. So, it was fitting that MoMA’s Georgia O’Keeffe: To See Takes Time  contained some of her Flowers, including three early Calla Lilies watercolors from 1918-20, right as she was transitioning from Painting in watercolors to oils2.

Hilma af Klint, Motacilla Alba: Wagtail with Guidelines, left, Violet Blossoms with Guidelines, both from Series I, 1919, Watercolor, graphite, and metallic paint on paper, right. Tucked away in Paintings for the Future this Flower Watercolor, right, looks like a page from Hilma af Klint’s Nature Studies Portfolio that would become the focus of the next major NYC Museum show of her work seven years later. An interesting realistic(!) harbinger, it’s not part of that Portfolio. Seen at the Guggenheim Museum, December 31, 2018, this sheet was also included in MoMA’s What Stands Behind the Flowers in 2025. MoMA’s wallcard for it speculates that Hilma may have removed it from Nature Studies.

Meanwhile at the same time Georgia was creating her Calla Lilies, across the ocean in Sweden, an almost completely unknown Artist named Hilma af Klint (i.e. HaK, born 25 years before Georgia in 1862) began rendering over 100 Flowers in Watercolors in a Portfolio she titled Nature Studies, 1919. As far as I know, they didn’t know each other (though I wonder if Art astute Hilma came to know of Georgia as the American rose to fame). As far as I can tell, the set remained hidden from public display until May 11, 2025, when MoMA opened Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers, coincidentally in the same galleries that had held Georgia O’Keeffe: To See Takes Time two year before. 

Five of Hilma af Klint’s The Ten Largest, a series devoted to the human lifespan, part of her now-famous Paintings for the Temple series. Note the shapes that seem organic or “flower-like.” Guggenheim Museum, December 31, 2018. *- Photo by Lana Hattan, Guggenheim Museum, December 31, 2018.

When her Art was last seen in an NYC museum in 2018-19, Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future drew a Guggenheim Museum all-time record 600,000 other viewers to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Museum Rotunda. I always walk down the ramp after taking the unique semi-circular elevator to the top of the Guggenheim as Frank Lloyd Wright wanted visitors to do which means I saw Paintings for the Future in reverse chronological order. Preceding it, R.H. Quaytman: +x, Chapter 34, occupied the 6th, or top Ramp. While this might seem incongruous to some, a deep dive into Hilma af Klint’s sparse NYC history reveals that R.H. Quaytman has a long history of championing Hilma af Klint that includes curating the first HaK show in an NYC museum, The Secret Pictures by Hilma af Klint at MoMA PS1 in early 19893. +x, Chapter 34 worked seamlessly with Paintings for the Future in my view.

Herein lies a problem (among others) with branding HaK an “abstract Artist.”  To the left, above the sign, on Ramp 1 is Summer Landscape, 1888, Oil on canvas, juxtaposed by parts of three of The Ten Largest, all 10 from 1907, far right, from her landmark Paintings for the Temple series, partially shown in the prior picture, in a completely different style. December 31, 2018.

As we got to Ramp 1 (the lowest ramp), there were two bays containing work that looked pretty representational to me that featured Summer Landscape, 1888, above, left, and 2 Flower Watercolors from the 1890s, center, between the  visitors above, all shown closer below-

Summer Landscape, 1888, Oil on canvas. Hilma was about 26 when she Painted this in the year she graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.*- Photo by Lana Hattan, Guggenheim Museum, December 31, 2018.

Poppy, 1890s, Watercolor, ink, and graphite on paper, left, Portrait study of the head of a woman, center, and Portrait study of a sitting woman to its right,  both Charcoal, crayon and graphite on paper, both c.1918. Distortion of the frames due to the curved wall. *-Photo by Lana Hattan, Guggenheim Museum, December 31, 2018.

Though early in her career, before the more well-known Paintings they call “abstract,” these revealed an accomplished technique in both oils and watercolors, honed over 6 years at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm (1882-88), where Hilma was one of its first female students. At that moment, I realized there was much more to Hilma af Klint than the Art machine’s limiting marketing hype would have us believe.

“Blue Book” Vol. 10. Hilma painstakingly recreated every one of her Paintings for the Temple (Painted, again, by hand) in a series of blue books on the left-hand page accompanied by a black & white Photo of the piece on the right-hand page, probably because color photography wasn’t yet practical. Guggenheim Museum, December 31, 2018.

Hilma, a devoted, life-long spiritualist,t who attended seances (and believed her “most important work” was the 192-canvas series The Paintings for the Temple, 1906-15, partially shown earlier, which were guided by other beings), came to feel that her time wasn’t THE time for her Art to be seen. Since the entire Temple series is so numerous, and includes 10 very large Paintings, Hilma fastidiously recreated the entire series in 10 remarkable smaller “Blue books,” as they are known, a “portable museum,” which she carried with her to show Rudolf Steiner (in 1920), and others, in hopes of having the originals shown in a spiritual context. That’s how important it was to her.

This makes me wonder- How many “abstract” Artists would be able to exactly recreate 192 of their Paintings? An impressive technical achievement, that she could do it tells me that her compositions were no accident, something I think is important to bear in mind.

Is THIS the time Hilma envisioned for her work? The introductory wall card for Paintings for the Future on the Guggenheim’s curved wall outlines how the curators saw Hilma’s Art in 2018. I disagree with parts of this. For example, they mention HaK being “a respected landscape and portrait painter,” acknowledging she Painted in other styles, yet they ignore the fact that she returned to Painting representationally in 1919 with Nature Studies, as I show further on. They state her work was “untethered from recognizable references to the physical world.” What about the flowers and other natural elements that appear frequently, as shown in The Ten Largest picture earlier, and in Group VII (further on) and other pieces later on? *- Photo by Lana Hattan, Guggenheim Museum, December 31, 2018. Click for full size.

Failing to achieve this, in 1932, she decreed that none of her Paintings or Drawings should be shown until twenty years after her death in hopes of finding a more accepting time. Her work wound up being out of sight for 45 years. After she was tragically struck by a street car in 1944 and died from her injuries, her will left her entire creative estate to her nephew, Erik. Her work was stored in an attic for two decades before Erik had the Paintings unrolled and Photographed. Those 1,300 Paintings and 26,000 pages of text forms the basis of what is now the Hilma af Klint Foundation, which was created in 19724. The Foundation made a major effort to organize the work and prepare it for public display. Eleven of her Paintings were finally shown in The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985 in Los Angeles in 1986, but it wasn’t until 2013 that she finally received a full retrospective (in Europe), in a show titled Hilma af Klint: Pioneer of Abstraction (the catalog for which is also on my list).

Georgiana Houghon, The Love of God, August 3, 1864, Watercolor and gouache on paper, 23.7 x 32.6 cm, An Automatic Painting, Hilma af Klint was about 2 when Georgiana Painted it. *-Victorian Spiritualists’ Union, Melbourne Photo.

That show rode on the hype about Hillma being “the first abstract Artist,” (says the Tate, no less) before Kandinsky, Mondrian, et al., and a woman. The truth is Hilma was not even the first woman in her spiritualist circle to create what they call abstract work- Georgiana Houghton (1814-1884), 48 years Hilma’s senior, who proceeded her in creating Automatic Paintings & Drawings, may be a better candidate for that title. But, boxing HaK as such helped the powers that be draw huge crowds to the 2013 show of a complete unknown. Paintings for the Future (one of the two most important NYC Painting shows I saw in the prior decade, along with this one) took things to an entirely different level. Six years later comes MoMA’s Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers, her first NYC museum show since the Guggenheim blockbuster. Hilma’s work doesn’t need any hype to “sell” it now. The world knows who she is. All the “abstraction” talk has kept people from looking at her work, in my view. It’s time to look at the Art for what it is.

Installation view of the 2nd gallery of Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers at MoMA, which contained the first part of Nature Studies on the walls and a selection of her writings, and books by others on flower studies, in the center vitrine. Opening week, May 18, 2025.

What Stands Behind reveals that AFTER she completed the Paintings for the Temple in 1915, Hilma went back to working “representationally!” I guess no one bothered to tell her she was supposed to be an “abstract” Artist in the future. The more likely case is that HaK was a very talented and creative woman, an Artist more than capable of creating in whatever style she needed to work in for what she was trying to accomplish. It seems to me that THAT is a MORE impressive thing than sticking her in any one limiting box!

“One has to think of the realm of the nature spirits as the realm of thought; these entities hover around us, some like driving winds, others like soft summer breezes,” Hilma af Klint, MoMA wall card.

Convolvulus arvensis (Field Bindweed), Monotropa hypopitys (Pinesap). Sheet 20 from the portfolio Nature Studies July 11–24, 1919, Watercolor, pencil, ink, and metallic paint on paper. One of the 46 sheets in watercolor, pencil, ink, gouache and metallic paint on paper included in Nature Studies. Being 19 11/16 by 10 5/8 inches, these sheets would seem too large for Hilma to work on in situ. But that’s purely my conjecture. Unlike Georgia O’Keeffe, HaK didn’t confine herself to one specimen per sheet. Over 100 are included on the Nature Studies! Underneath, the curators translate HaK’s notations of the species name and its character as perceived by the Artist: “Determination” for the Field Blindweed, top, and “One-sidedness” for the Pinesap, bottom. MoMA, September 26, 2025.

She also continued to work on creating a “language” (see Group 2, further below) that included letters, words and diagrams. These are seen in almost all of the series she created in her life (including Nature Studies).

Woodland Strawberry, Hilma’s notation- “Liberator. Longing to produce balance within the blood syntem by expelling either white or red biood cells.” European wood sorrel- “Fragility-submissiveness shyness-humility fear -respect self-loathing-obedience.” Catsfoot– “Peace and harmony.” and Dandelion- “Beginning.”

Bilberry, Apple, Common Pear, Lingonberry

Looking at Hilma’s Art is different than looking at the Art of any other Artist I know of. Quite a few of her Paintings for the Temple (as seen in the picture earlier) and other “abstract” works included at MoMA (below) have elements that look organic, including flower shapes. In some of her Temple series, lines of dots connect figures, reminiscent of the af Klint family’s heritage as noted cartographers & mapmakers. Then, any number of her pieces, including almost all her Nature Studies, include diagrams that contain basic geometric shapes- circles, squares, cones, etc. The viewer needs to decide what to make of them, or look to the Hilma’s Notebooks for insights. Finally, there’s the “language” the Artist developed, abetted by her use of letter “codes,” as Julia Voss outlines in her Biography. As a result, it seems to me there is still a long way to go in coming to fully understand Hilma af Klint’s work. Lumping it all into ANY one-word catchphrase box only takes us further away from that point of truly understanding it-if that’s possible.

Group VII, No 1-5, from the US Series, 1908, Watercolor and pencil on paper. 11 years. before the Nature Studies portfolio, what seems to be flower-like shapes abound. Seen at the beginning of  MoMA’s show.

The wall card for Group VII. Installed at the show’s entrance, is a relatively rare instance of the Art world looking beyond Hilma the “abstract Artist” thus far, or hedging their bets on their use of that box. Here, the organic shapes are accompanied by letters that are parts of the “code” Hilma used. See next.

Another piece of the puzzle. Hilma’s original Notebook containing her Key to the mysterious words and omnipresent letter “codes” she used throughout her oeuvre. It’s an essential part of “decyphering” her work. Hilma’s code is detailed in English in the book Hilma af Klint: Notes and Methods. *- Photo by Lana Hattan, Guggenheim Museum, December 31, 2018.

ALL this talk about Hilma’s style misses the point! Hilma was not out to win any “style wars.” All of her work was about something entirely different, and that difference was substance over style.

Apple, no date, Watercolor on paper. Virtually every Art or Drawing class begins with rendering, coloring & shading basic shapes, like the sphere (often an apple, orange or lemon). Here HaK takes it to an entirely different level, and we get to marvel at her powers of observation, especially in the incredibly subtle variance of the local color. It’s also fascinating to me how minimal the shadows are, something you never see taught in how-to books which glory in the different kinds of shadows. In most of her Nature Studies, except the previous one, Hilma leaves out the ground, as she does here, too. In this case, doing so gives her the chance to show more of the bottom detail, again something I can’t say I’ve seen done often.

On the opposite end of that spectrum from the 21st century hype around it, there is something else at the beating heart of her work, something her “abstract” Paintings for the Temple and her representational Nature Studies have in common, and something that is at the core of the recent debate regarding continuing to publicly display her work. Hilma af Klint’s work is centered on the spirit. She created her work for fellow spiritual seekers. The Paintings for the Temple are devoted to the human spirit (with the aid of spirits who have moved on to another level). After completing them in 1915, never one to think small, the Artist turned her attention to an even bigger subject- the spirit of the natural world, commencing with the atom, in works that filled three quarters of the first gallery at MoMA, before moving on to the spirit in nature, beginning with flowers (in Nature Studies), which filled most of the succeeding two large galleries. These were supplemented by her late Flower Watercolors, which reminded me of some of Georgia OKeeffe’s Watercolors that were shown in these galleries at MoMA in 2023. The bottom line is that Spiritual Art is still outré to the Art machine, whatever type it is. They can’t sell it, and Art without monetization does not keep the Art machine going.

Common Sunflower. To Hilma- “Love is the greatest of all.”

Meanwhile, throughout What Lies Behind, part of the sheer joy in looking at her work, her marvelous technique shines in piece after piece. It’s surprising to me that Hilma has gotten so little credit for it. She came upon it the hard way, through continual hard work and 6 years at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. This was followed by work as an Illustrator, including illustrating a book on horse surgery by the director of the Veterinary Institute, Stockholm, who kept Hilma’s Drawings for the rest of his life.

From Group 2 February 12-19, 1919 Watercolor, pencil, and metallic paint on paper. This was one of numerous examples of her technique I could site. Here, we see the Artist working on ideas for herself in a series of sheets titled Group 1, Group 2, Group 3. No matter for public display or her own purposes, Hilma was always meticulous in her execution. Of the Groups, MoMA says- “Together, the drawings form narratives that allude to pollination, reproduction, and evolution. By April 19, 1919, after more than three months of progress, af Klint had established a vast and diverse diagrammatic language. The very next day, she began her Nature Studies portfolio.”

This enlarged detail of the lower center of the previous image perhaps measures 3 or 4 inches wide by an inch and change high (the bounding rectangle). Easy to miss because it’s in pencil and the actual Drawing part seems to have faded,  it’s noteworthy for two reasons. First, its meticulousness, and second for the title- Die Blumenkrone means “The Flower Crown.” Even in the dead of wnter (i.e February 18th as the date reads), Hilma had flowers on her mind.

What Stands Behind also makes the case in spades or her accomplishment as a Watercolorist- both in her Flowers and in the later Flower work (not part of the Nature Studies series) shown in the final gallery, in a different style again, as seen below.

Ear of Grain, 1922, Watercolor on paper, from the series, On the Viewing of Flowers, with a apparetnly relevant section of the wall card, left. MoMA, September 26, 2025.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Morning Sky, left, and Morning Sky, and Morning Sky with Houses, right, 1916, Watercolors on paper. MoMA, September 9, 2023.

I might be the only one to draw parallels between Georgia O’Keeffe & Hilma af Klint, but when I saw the wall of 1922 Watercolors by Hilma in the last gallery, including Ear of Grain, above, I couldn’t help but recall Georgia’s Watercolors that had been hung in these galleries two years previously. It’s fascinating to think about their commonalities, as extraordinary, ground-breaking Artists, and as extraordinary women, at much the same time, on almost opposite sides of the globe. What Stands Behind The Flowers begins some of the heavy lifting on the road to assessing Hilma af Klint’s full accomplishment. In spite of that, I’m not sure THIS is the ideal time Hilma envisioned for her Art to be shown.

MoMA Gift Shop display for the show. More items behind me and to the left. While I’ll reserve comment on the other items, MoMA’s Exhibition Catalogue for the show is highly recommended. May 18, 2025.

In too many (most?) cases today a work of Art is mentioned followed by its price as if that’s the most important thing about it! Then, the rush is on to plaster it on everything from umbrellas to baby onesies. Hilma’s spiritualist Art stands directly at odds with that. She opposed materialism in Art. To this point, it’s largely escaped it (though MoMA, who has come to own Nature Studies, produced a $500.00 Limited Edition of it, as far as I can tell, the first Hilma af Klint Limited Edition, in addition to putting the series on refrigerator magnets, postcards and a poster)5.

Rebel. With a cause.

Trapped in the future. But, is this THE future she envisioned for her Art? One of the few Photographs of Hilma af Klint. This one was affixed to a wall at the Guggenheims’s landmark Paintings for the Future in 2018.

Perhaps this experience sounded a warning bell. Earlier this year a struggle broke out inside the Hilma af Klint Foundation about whether or not her work should continue to be exhibited. The Foundation’s chairman of the board, af Klint’s great-grandnephew, who, like his great-grandfather, is also named Erik af Klint, is against it feeling that Hilma wanted her work to be seen in a spiritual context by fellow seekers, i.e. to “keep the work available to those who seek spiritual knowledge or who can contribute to fulfilling the mission that Hilma af Klint’s spiritual principles intended.”

On Hilma’s spiritualism. Guggenheim Museum, December 31, 2018..

Therefore, I think there is a strong case to be made for ending public displays of her work at this point. Perhaps a future time will be more ready to accept, and see her work as she intended it to be seen, and provide the Artist’s full accomplishment with the respect it deserves..

“Beam me up, Frank!” The control panel on Frank Lloyd Wright’s semi-circular Elevator at the Guggenheim. December 31, 2018.

Experiencing Paintings for the Future at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim brought home another problematic aspect of experiencing Hilma af Klint’s work today.

Temple Design, 1931, Notebook in the Hilma af Klint Foundation Collection (*) as seen in Julia Voss, Hilma af Klint.

It turns out that Hilma had not only envisioned that “ideal space” for the display of her work, i.e. a “Temple” as she called it (as in her Paintings for the Temple series), she put some of her ideas for it down on paper.

Lana Hattan immediately upon exiting the elevator on the 6th Floor, in both of our favorite buildings, in one of my favorite pictures of her. I thank her for her generosity in allowing me to publish some of the Photos she took that day. December 31, 2018.

Her sketches for it have quite a bit in common with Wright’s masterpiece on 5th Avenue. Both feature circular floors or ramps that rise to a top that opens up to the sky. Also coincidentally, Hilla Rebay, director of the Museum Non-Objective Painting which  preceded the Guggenheim Museum, said she envisioned “people communing with the work in Solomon R. Guggenheim’s collection in a a ‘temple of spirit.6,'” in commissioning Wright to design it.

Group IX/UW, The Dove, No. 3, left, Group IX/UW, The Dove, No. 1, right, both from The SUW/UW Series, 1915, Oil on canvas.The work on the right is the original of the work she reproduced by hand in the Blue Book picture shown earlier. Guggenheim Museum, December 31, 2018..

I didn’t know about her Temple, or her Drawings for it, when I saw the Guggenheim show, yet I came away feeling the Architecture added exponentially to the experience of it. At this point, it leaves me feeling her dream should be realized, though that’s not part of the current discussion (as far as I know). Failing to realize the Temple she had envisioned to hold at least part of her work, it remains in a sort of limbo without it.

Of course, today’s Art machine is adamantly opposed to Hilma shows ending, seeing a potentially huge marketing opportunity vanish. Her art being for spiritual seekers, is diametrically different than how the Art world sees it now. Spiritual seeking vs dollar signs- I’ll be interested in seeing which way this one turns out, but I’ll be hoping Mr. af Klint succeeds. (Digression for full disclosure- In case anything I write here makes you wonder, I’m not a religious person. I’ll leave it at that and end the digression.) I’ve always believed the Artist’s intentions for her (or his) work should be respected above all else. As for all those who will bemoan not being able to see her work, consider that for most of the past 30 years Jean-Michel Basquiat has been THE most popular Contemporary Artist in the world, and almost none of his work is in the hands of museums or public collections resulting in a paucity of shows, as I discussed here7. Somehow his popularity has continued to increase without direct access to his work.

Hilma af Klint books for sale in the window at the Rudolf Steiner Bookstore in Manhattan. A long-time admirer of Mr. Steiner, I think she’d be ok with this. December 11, 2025.

Hilma’s work can be seen by everyone in the excellent seven-volume Catalogue Raisonne her Foundation has published (which I collectively named a NoteWorthy Art Book of the 21st Century), and a number of other books. For those who want to know more about Hilma, Julia Voss’s excellent Hilma af Klint Biography is the current go-to source and a must-read. It reveals an extremely private woman who was solely focused on her spiritual development and her Art to the extent that she wrote virtually NOTHING about herself and her private life in those 26,000 pages she left! But, she did make crystal clear what she was about and what she wanted for her Art.

If Hilma were alive today would she be enamored with the Art world and its machine, an Art world that seems to have no clue how to handle “spiritual Art?” I have my doubts. That future she envisioned in the 1930s still feels like a dream. So, it just might be a good thing if Hilma af Klint shows stop. Some further point in the future may be a better time for her work to be seen & fully appreciated- one without  an Art world in such a hurry to judge it, box it, and associate it solely by the dollar signs it hangs on it.

Wake me up when we get there.

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “Bring My Flowers Now,” by Tanya Tucker, the de facto title track from her 2019 album, While I’m Livin’, which she performs here-

“I know we’re gonna ride again someday…”

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  1. The last show we’ve been able to see together. ↩
  2. She would begin Painting flowers in earnest in the mid-1920s. ↩
  3. Ms. Quaytman’s book Spine and her new book, Book, 2025, are on my list of NoteWorthy Art Books of this century. ↩
  4. Julia Voss, Hilma af Klint: A Biography, PP..1,2 & 4. After mentioning I was in the middle of reading it at the time I published my NoteWorthy Art Books of the Century piece, I’ve added A Biography to the list. A marvelous accomplishment with a terrific translation from the original German, it’s essential reading for anyone interested in HaK. ↩
  5. I’m still a bit puzzled by Nature Studies’ Provenance. MoMA’s site says they bought it, but from whom and how that owner came to own it is unspecified. How it didn’t wind up in, or being acquired by, her Foundation puzzles me. I tried to find out, but received no answers. ↩
  6. Here. ↩
  7. By the way, I have managed to cover almost every single NYC Basquiat show these past 10 years, so you can see a good deal of his work here. ↩

Celebrating Ten Years of NighthawkNYC.com!

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava.

I started NighthawkNYC.com on July 15, 2015. During almost all of these past 10 years, the thought of reaching the Milestone of Ten Years was something that seemed as far away as Mars. Long-term isolation, sudden fainting spells that hospitalized me, heart problems, hearing damage, foot problems, the specter of going broke, and oh yeah, that little thing called the pandemic, the 2020s have been hard for me, as they have been for many of you, I’m sure.

So, as I sit here at 6:30 am on July 15, 2025, I’m partially here to see & celebrate this day I didn’t think I’d actually get this site to arrive. As the improbable started to become a real possibility it dawned on me that I HAD to write something to honor getting to this point, and ALL the work that has gone into getting it here, even though I’m supposed to be taking a break (which didn’t stop me from writing the two biggest pieces I’ve ever written!). My one-time neighbor, Joni Mitchell, from decades before my time here, says it best about being here this morning in her circa-1969 song “Chelsea Morning.” (We’ll keep it between us that I haven’t been to bed yet!)

“Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning
And the first thing that I heard
Was a song outside my window
And the traffic wrote the words”-*

Since Joni hasn’t shared how to get the traffic to write my words, I decided to use this occasion to reflect on where I’ve been, where I am, and to try and look a bit ahead.

Part 1-
A)- Where I’ve Been
Some Highlights, in my opinion anyway, from the past 10 Years…

“Oh, won’t you stay
We’ll put on the day
And we’ll wear it ’till the night comes.”-*

1)- “My Search For Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks Diner,” published July 29, 2019.  Decades in the making, it’s hands-down my most read, most discussed piece.

Update- On July 21, 2024, I finally found it! Meatpacking District, NYC. Kenn Sava, left, reenacting his Painted alter-ego, Logan, right. Photo by Nilo for NighthawkNYC.com. Continual Thanks to all involved & Kevin Callahan. Click any image for full size.

2)- “Vincent van Gogh: Home at Last,” published October 8, 2018. Preparing this piece on the reinstalled Van Gogh Masterpieces in the Permanent Collection of The Met suddenly took on an unexpected life of its own.

HOW great is it to be able to walk into a room and see THIS? For me, it’s one of the great joys of life in NYC. One part of the newly reinstalled Gallery 825 showing 9 of the 10 Van Goghs in this room. #10 is on the other side of the Self-Portrait with Straw Hat in the vitrine. This shot was available for literally one second over 3 visits and 3 hours I spent here. In the piece, you’ll see why.

3)- “Van Gogh’s Cypresses: Art From Hell,” published November 10, 2023. With all due respect to The Met’s great curators, I saw their blockbuster Van Gogh’s Cypresses completely differently than they did, apparently.

Welcome to The Met! In all my years of going to The Museum, as I call it currently 1,900+ visits since 2002, I’ve never seen TWO banners (left & right) up devoted to the same show. And, as I was soon to find out, it’s not like there weren’t other terrific shows going on! Seen on June 2, 2023.

4)- “Kerry James Marshall: The Revolution Was NOT Televised,” published March 1, 2017. THE most everything Painting show I saw in NYC in the 2010s. Along with Hima af Klint: Paintings for the Future, the two most important Painting shows mounted here in the prior decade.

The finest moment, among many fine moments, in the all-too-short life of The Met Breuer. Installation view of Kerry James Marshall: Mastry. “De Style,” 1993, KJM’s barbershop, right, drips of life, fun, culture, individuality and style. On the left, his “The Lost Boys,” from the same year, a title borrowed from Peter Pan, is an homage to two children lost to gun violence, and all the boys who were “lost” to a variety of causes.

5)- “A Conversation with Photographer Harry Gruyaert,” Published September 22, 2018. Consistently among my most popular pieces, the renowned Belgian Photographer, and long-time Magnum Photos Member, discovered me through my “Saul Leiter: In My Room” piece and let his gallerist know he would be interested in speaking with me. A fan of his work, we spoke extensively via transatlantic phone. I discovered later how few interviews he has given.

Subsequently, I met Harry Gruyaert, far right, in 2020 at the opening of his first American show since 1990!

6)- “Rod Penner’s America: Small Town Nation,” published August 22, 2023. This piece, based on his most recent NYC show which continued to solidify Mr. Penner as one of the foremost Painters of small-town America working today, continued my coverage of the Texas-based Artist’s NYC shows, with my prior pieces linked at the bottom of it. At one point, I had written more about Rod Penner than anyone else had. Maybe I still have. Rod was also kind enough to do a Q&A with me in 2017.

HOW does he do it? Rod Penner discussing one the very, very fine points of his Yellow Light/Brenham, TX, 2004-5, 15 x 25 inches, at his opening, March 18, 2023.

7)- “Henry Taylor: The Art of Empathy,” published March 8, 2024. Born of my unforgettable encounter with Mr. Taylor at the opening of his 2019 solo show.

Installation view, an hour and a half before Henry Taylor: B Side closed for the last time, Whitney Museum, January 28, 2024.

7)- “Gregory Halpern’s America,” published November 8, 2019. Perhaps my biggest discovery during my 8 3/4-year “deep dive” into Modern & Contemporary Photography, my look at all of Mr. Halpern’s books through Omaha Sketchbook (2019), includes a look at its NYC book release in 2019, later the same night of my encounter with Henry Taylor!

The very first work I saw by Gregory Halpern, “Untitled,” from his Buffalo series, seen at Aperture’s Booth at AIPAD: The Photography Show, April, 2017, I liked so much it’s been hanging on my wall since.

8)- “Raymond Pettibon: Artist Americanus,” published July 20, 2017. I was very fortunate to meet Mr. Pettibon and have him give me a tour of his Zwirner show, which I was thrilled about but also felt bad about because he was suffering from a quite damaged foot that caused him to sit the entire rest of the time he was at his opening. The show was also memorable as during its run I met Artist Caslon Bevington, whose work I’ve subsequently written about twice.

Playin’ hurt. The great Raymond Pettibon enters his show at the opening, April 29, 2017, with a cane. That small figure running in the distance is his son, Bo. Zwirner lent Raymond this space which he used to created the work you see on display. Quite a few paint splotches were to be found on the floor, leading me to think it must have been something to watch him creating these pieces.

9)- “Table for One: Patti Smith’s 18 Stations,” published April 17, 2016. I made about a dozen trips to Patti’s extraordinary Photography show and was shocked to walk in on the show’s last day to find the legend, herself, seated at the famous table she sits at on the cover of M Train signing books alone. She looked up, and realizing I was about to take her picture, cooperated. I then spoke with her, and wound up meeting her daughter as well. As the show closed, I found myself in the gallery with her as she walked through it one last time, trying to imagne what was going through her mind at each stop. I eternally regret not buying one of her Photographs. One of the Top 5 most-read and most-discussed pieces I’ve written.

What becomes a Legend most? The one and only Patti Smith sits at her famous table.

B)- “Community Service”
1)- “Art” With a Capital “A,” published February 26, 2020. I should have written it sooner.

Thanks, Twyla! I couldn’t have said it better. And so, this scene has appeared in my Banner, sans moving truck, a number of times over the years. A look at ALL 41 of my banners this past decade is here. The Joyce Theater, December, 2019, as seen continually staring me in the face from my favorite seat in my beloved Starbucks on West 19th Street, the best SB in NYC. Another loss during the pandemic.

2)- “Death to Boxes!,” published on April 7, 2020. Another I should have written sooner. The problem has only gotten worse.

3)- “On Buying Art,” published on July 11, 2017. One I did write early on.

Knowing what not to buy is rarely THIS obvious.

C)- Milestones

“Oh, won’t you stay
We’ll put on the day
There’s a sun show every second”-*

1)- “Welcome to the Night,” published July 15, 2015. My very first piece!

The last time I stood in front of Nighthawks, with my Painted alter-ego, dead center. August 28, 2013, at Hopper Drawing at the old Whitney Museum. Fun fact– I “borrowed” its frame for the frame you see in my banner! Shhhh…Don’t tell anyone.

2)- “Cancer Saved My Life,” published February 7, 2017, on the 10th Anniversary of my cancer treatment. My passion to share what I’ve seen & learned in the Art world comes from surviving with a 20% chance of making it through Year 1 post-treatment without needing more treatment. I’m happy to say 8 Anniversaries have followed- 18 in all! Miraculous.

Every cancer patient’s worst nightmare. During my search for cancer treatment, after much research and agonizing, I settled on a treatment. My life was saved by a Doctor who patiently explained why it was the wrong choice for me moments before I was to begin it. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a sign this big to guide me.

3)- “Kenn Sava Named a Finalist…,” published November 25, 2023. I was, and am, honored to be named a Finalist for the 2023 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Award out of the 500 writers they said they considered.

D)- Journeys
1)- Goya: In Boston & NYC, published January 20, 2016. In January, 2015, I made a day trip to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston to see their exceptional Goya: Order and Disorder show. A few months later, I saw a show of his complete Los Caprichos at the National Arts Club, here.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in January, 2015, the last time I went out of town to see an Art show. Of course, I was back in my own bed that night.

2)- “13 Year At The Metropolitan Museum,” a 2-part series, the first part published on July 26, 2015. Though I’m in Manhattan, The Met is not exactly nearby. Nonetheless, I’ve managed to get there over 1,900 times since August 1, 2002. Some thoughts on it from 2015.

Hark! A Met Angel Beckons me to the Light. To not hear her call is my loss.

3)- “The Met Breuer: Hail, and Farewell,” published on August 1, 2020. I was there on March 8, 2016,  the first Member’s Preview Day, and I was there the moment it closed for the final time on March 12, 2020. In between, I saw more great shows there than anywhere else, largely due to The Met’s terrific Contemporary Chairperson, Sheena Wagstaff, who I’ve also written about at length more than once.

March 12, 2020. I’m about to enter The Met Breuer for what I didn’t know would turn out to be the last time, on what would turn out to be its last day ever.

4)- “Exclusive! A Visit to Raymond Pettibon’s Moscow Show!,” published November 20, 2017. Lana Hattan was able to get an associate to go The Garage and shoot Raymond Pettibon’s 400-piece Moscow Retrospective, Raymond Pettiboyn: The Cloyd o’ Misreadyng,” for me! Though this was before the cessation of relations between the U.S. and Russia, I was unable to make it. Raymond Pettibon made it, though, and created another of his classic Hand-Painted Murals for the show. Given there have been very few large Raymond Pettibon shows since, I’m very thankful to the Hattan Group, who did a terrific job as you can see, for  doing this for me, and enabling me to write about the show for NighthawkNYC readers! It’s the only show I’ve written about without actually seeing in person! It’s something you can’t see anywhere else.

Live, from Moscow’s Garage! The show’s entrance features one of Raymond Pettibon’s famous hand-painted murals, around the corner from this sign. I hope the Russians are up on their “Pettibon English!” Photo by The Hattan Group for NighthawkNYC.com.

4)- “Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Artist,” published on March 21, 2023. I’m self-taught at everything besides reading/writing and basic math thanks to a terrible school system and not being permitted to go college. As a result, I had never read The Little Prince, as hard as that is to believe, until Lana, whose favorite book it is, insisted I do. Of course, I immediately got hooked, like hundreds of millions of others have. We were lucky enough to attend the wonderful show of his work at the Morgan Library, and I returned there in 2023 for their show on the Art of Saint-Exupéry. The piece took on a life of its own after the French Ambassador to the U.S saw it and invited me to Washington, D.C. for a dinner he was hosting in honor of the 80th Anniversary of the publication of the book.

I join Saint-Ex’s most beloved creation in waiting for the return of his Asteroid. Hurry up, already! May 10, 2025. My thanks to the kind lady who took this.

E)- Epics
1)- “The New Whitney Museum: The Roofdeck of American Art,”  published August 1, 2016. I worked on my look at the “new” Whitney Museum for over a year after having been a voice against the expansion of the old building. Now that it’s 10 years old, nothing has changed anything I said about it.

Nothing has changed except the Department of Sanitation complex in front of the museum, seen here in 2015, has been replaced with a park.

2)- “This Summer In ‘The Era of Rauschenberg,'” published September 19, 2017. I spent my summer going to MoMA’s Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends (24 times) and the 4 Rauschenberg satellite shows going on around town. The Rauschenberg Foundation was impressed to the point that they invited me down for a private tour of their entire facility, his former studio, which was beyond an amazing experience for this long-time fan.

One nice note- The Rauschenberg Foundation informed Sue Weill, Aritst (and collaborator with him on Untitled (Double Rauschenberg), c.1950, Monoprint; Exposed blueprint paper, center)  & former Rauschenberg girlfriend, about my inclusion of her in this piece and others, and told me she was pleased to hear it. Partial installation view of the first gallery of Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends. 

3)- “Richard Estes: Painter. With No Prefixes,” published May 22, 2022. I was surprised to see nothing else printed on the occasion of Richard Estes’s 90th Birthday, which I take as another reminder that the Art associated with  “photorealism” is still not of interest to almost all of the world’s museums. I agree with them on most of it. Yet, (see my piece on boxes, above), some Artists have been stuck in this box, or other boxes, without their consent. I don’t quite see Richard Estes work the way many others seem to. My 3-part series, built on decades of looking at his work, addresses just this.

Kenn Sava, Homage to Richard Estes, NYC, May 27, 2020. Richard Estes was one of the first Artists to influence how I see the world. i.e. he helped open my eyes to the world around me everywhere!

4)- “Jean-Michel Basquiat at the Brant Foundation,” published October 6, 2019. Basquiat has been THE most popular Contemporary Artist for the entire existence of NighthawkNYC, yet, I didn’t know much about his work going in. When my friend, Kitty, told me about the Brant Foundation show, I decided to go, try and get up to speed on his work, and see what it said to me. As I sit here now, I’ve written more about Basquiat than any other Artist! And, I’ve seen more Basquiat shows since 2012 than I have by any other Artist. Both of those facts shock me. They just happened, primarily out of my desire to give his work as in-depth a look as I could. Along the way, I saw virtually every book ever published on his Art, and met and spoke with both of his sisters. The Brant piece is the first piece I wrote on his work. All the others may be seen doing an Archive search for Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Lisa at the Brant Foundation Basquiat show studying Self-Portrait with Suzanne, 1982. There I was, standing outside in the rain for a solid hour, without my umbrella which had gotten left in the cab, without a ticket on the show’s last day, having failed to get a press pass. A staff member who had tried to help me circled back around and told me a visitor, Lisa, had an extra ticket, which she was kind enough to give to this total stranger. Thank you, Lisa. You set in motion what would become an epic journey of Artistic discovery. And oh, by the way, I subsequently paid $45 to get into Basquiat: King Pleasure, the show mounted by his sisters, even though I was going to write about it for free. Did The New York Times pay to get in, too?

5)- “700.000 Michelangelo Fans Can’t Be Wrong“, published March 4, 2018. A labor of love born out of a dozen visits to The Met’s once-in-a-lifetime blockbuster that 700,000 saw. More an effort of trying to remember as much as possible of what I saw because I knew I’d never see it again.

Take that, Elvis, who’s 1959 album title, and cover, I just borrowed. Michelangelo was the “King” of a different kind of rock. Old school rock.

6)- “A Year Without Art,” published May 7, 2021. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I’d go an entire year without being able to see Art! Well? In 2020-1, it happened.

The Met’s famous main entrance, gated, during the 5 months it was closed, on May 21, 2020, unprecedented in my lifetime. Probably not the way they drew up celebrating their 150th Anniversary.

7)- The Photography Show, 2018, published April 23, 2018. I look back in disbelief at how much work I did around AIPAD, The Photography Show in 2018 and 2019. 4 part series on each…countless meetings with Photographers…endless looking all followed by months of work on the pieces. I didn’t make a dime doing it. I hope they appreciated it!

“On The Fence, # “The Wall Has Eyes” Edition. The Birdies, my fine feathered friends from their West 24th Street perch, that ran in my popular occasional featurette, “On The Fence,” for over a year. This one was included in my 2018 Photography Show series. I never replied to the reader who suggested I give up Art writing for “photo funnies”  as he called them- until now. I’m still thinking about it…All installments of “On The Fence” are here.

8)- “Ai Weiwei & The Value of One Refugee“, published January 7, 2017. The centerpiece of a group of 4 2016 Ai Weiwei shows, Ai Weiwei: Laundromat was a show unlike any other I saw this past decade, Ai & his team collected clothes, shoes and other artifacts left behind by refugees in the various camps he visited during the European Refugee Crisis and arranged them to compelling effect achieved in concert with countless Photos on the walls he took documenting what he saw and reproductions from media and social media accounts under foot. I wrote about all 4 of the shows, but Laundromat has lingered long in my memory. It was hard to visit the show and not think of Ai’s own experiences, which made him an almost ideal witness.

Birdseye view of almost the whole show.

9)- “Edward Hopper’s Impressions of New York,” the first of 3 pieces on the show published May 5, 2023. Wait. Who else has written multiple pieces that look at different aspects of one show? Maybe someone else has. I haven’t seen it. That’s exactly what I did for the blockbuster Edward Hopper’s New York at the Whitney, AND for MoMA’s Ed Ruscha/Now Then.

Edward Hopper’s New York, October 27, 2022.

10)- “NoteWorthy Art Books of the 21st Century,” published June 10, 2025. This, and NW PhotoBooks, the two biggest pieces I’ve ever written, represent my sharing what I’ve seen and learned over the past 50 years I’ve spent looking at Art books, and almost a decade of intensively looking at PhotoBooks. Having begun them last September, right before I announced I was taking a break, they kept gnawing at me in a “You HAVE to finish these!” way. The Epics of Epics on this site, an immense amount of looking and consideration went into both pieces. Usually, I worked on up to 4 pieces at a time. I can’t imagine working on anything else in the 10 months it took to write these.
That makes me wonder- Has anyone else (any other single person) written a list of recommended 21st Century Art Books AND a list of 21st Century PhotoBooks?
The Introduction to both pieces is here.

The “Golden Oof,” named for my Avatar.

11)- “NoteWorthy PhotoBooks of the 21st Century,” published June 25, 2025. Marks the end of my “deep dive” into Modern & Contemporary Photography that I began in December, 2016- There I just said it.
[A moment of silence.]
What did I learn from all of that? I stand by what I said here in 2019.
This “Painting guy” is going back to focusing on Painting. You heard it first.

NoteWorthy Sunset Photo by Lana Hattan.

Part 2- Where I’m Going

“Oh, won’t you stay
We’ll put on the day
And we’ll talk in present tenses”-*

1)- NighthawkNYC/Kenn Sava’s Art writing
I’m sorry to say that nothing has changed since I announced I was taking a break in September, 2024. There remains no means of support for independent Art writing. Surviving remains my #1 to #10 priority. I continue to work on the site remaining up. If something changes? I’ll let you know. 

Flaco Lives! Kenn Sava at The Year of Flaco exhibition (in a Flaco T I had made last year), in front of a section of Photos of him early on in his freedom. The picture far right was taken right after he escaped from the Central Park Zoo. After never having been outside in his entire life, he suddenly found himself on Fifth Avenue & 60th Street! Maybe that’s why I’ve never seen a picture of him with his eyes so wide open. New York Historical, July 3, 2025. My piece on Flaco, written about a month and a half before his tragic demise, is here. My Thanks to Marybeth Ihle of the New York Historical.

2)- Kenn Sava, Producer
I’m hoping to re-release The Fuschia by Thomas Chapin, Peggy Stern, Drew Gress and Bobby Previte this year, and also finally release my solo album Strawberry Fields Forever.
Though I produced both projects, releasing and re-releasing them is not about me. Both were recorded in the mid-1990s, and, sadly, since then a number of the great Musicians who participated in them have passed away. I feel a sacred duty to them to get their work out there/back out there. Stay tuned. 

Coda- Before I “Go” Anywhere…
I started this site for one reason- To share what I’ve been lucky enough to see & experience in NYC and in Art & books with my fellow Art lovers around the world. I had a lot of passion, but no business plan.

While doing NighthawkNYC has been quite the financial hardship, I’m proud of the fact that readership has gone up each and every single year. Thank You to everyone who’s read one, or all, of my 350+ pieces here this past decade.

I especially want to Thank those of you who have made donations or bought pieces of my collections to help keep me going! For the rest of you, if you find, or have found, what I’ve done here since 2015 worthwhile, YOUR support is needed to keep this site up, and possibly, enable me to write more.

When the curtain closes
And the rainbow runs away
I will bring you incense
OWLS BY NIGHT (Caps mine ; ) )
By candlelight
By jewel-light
If only you will stay
Pretty baby, won’t you
Wake up, it’s a Chelsea morning”-*

With Lana Hattan at Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future, the most recent show we’ve been able to see together at both of our favorite NYC building- The Guggenheim Museum. New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2018. My Undying Thanks to the woman who approached us and insisted she take our picture.

Finally, Thank You to Lana Hattan for pushing me to start writing about Art, and for your continual support through some thick and a lot of thin, every step of the way.
As I’ve said before, if you’ve found ANYTHING I’ve done here worthwhile, she’s the one who deserves your thanks.

As for me? I MADE IT TO 10 YEARS!
Kenn Sava.
July 15, 2025

P.S.- Feel free to drop me a line and let me know if I left out a piece you found particularly NoteWorthy.

For more- Check out my look back at “A Decade of NighthawkNYC.com Banners,” which have uncannily come full circle, here!

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “Chelsea Morning,” by Joni Mitchell, referencing her apartment 5 blocks from where I am writing this, and where I’ve written all of the 350+ pieces on NighthawkNYC. Joni moved here in 1967, before my time here, and proceeded to write a number of her early songs here. Just another of the Legends who’ve lived in my neighborhood, like Patti Smith. She performs it here in 1969-

 

A Decade of NighthawkNYC.com Banners

By Kenn Sava, with a tip of my Fedora to Edward Hopper.

Having Celebrated Ten Years of NighthawkNYC.com, here, I decided to take a selected look back at what you saw when you looked above what I’ve written here since July 15, 2015: the Banners I’ve run from Day 1.

Speaking of Day 1, July 15, 2015…Remember this?

Banner #1. July 15, 2015. Location- Somewhere Downtown, late. My adaptation of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, 1942, into a “Self-Portrait,” as I said, here. My piece on decades of looking for the site of the REAL Nighthawks, which remains my most popular piece ever, is here.

Banner #2 – NighthawkNYC Version 2.0 in honor of the First Anniversary, July 15, 2016, I decided to create my own version.

Banner #40b – My working file since July, 2016. The blue lines are the ghosts of all the layers that have been added to this image the past eight years! As seen below…

Banner #3. Night flowers. In summer, 2023, this Deli became a cannabis shop…

Banner #4 – Outside Ai Weiwei’s powerful show Laundromat on the Refugee Crisis

Banner #5 – Chelsea, February, 2017. Seeing this reminded me of my boxed-in upbringing, as I wrote in my 10th Anniversary of Cancer treatment piece. This space is now the location of the Hauser & Wirth mega-gallery.

Banner #6 – The High Line, March, 2017. January, February and early March are the only times I’ll hit the High Line, which is too crowded the rest of the year. I’ve still never been to Hudson Yards (15 blocks behind me here). By choice.

Banner #7 – The Strand Bookstore, minutes after closing, December, 2017, back when it closed at 10:30pm every night. Not at 8pm as it does now!

Banner #8 – Madison Square, January, 2018

Banner #8 – Unpublished experiment featuring my dear friends, the Birdies from my “On The Fence” series, seen on their infamous perch on West 24th Street.

Banner #11 – The Entrance to Michelangelo at The Met, February, 2018. Behind the screen is the faux scaffolding for the Sistine Ceiling section.

Banner #18 – Hell’s Kitchen, March, 2018

Banner #21 – 7th Avenue, April, 2018. A sort of “nighthawks” at the all-night coffee house…

Banner #23 – 18th Street, May, 2018

Banner #11 – The steam pipe explosion on 5th Avenue. Looking uptown from 5th Avenue and 18th Street to the Empire State Building as repairs to the surrounding buildings damaged by  the explosion continues, July 26, 2018.

Banner #22 – Meatpacking District, September, 2018,

Banner #25 – Live on the D Train, November, 2018

Banner #32 – March, 2019, West 19th Street. My banner as it was before everything hit the fan. I ran this one longer than any other so far.

Banner #32a – March 22, 2020. The covid shutdown is a week old. I’m home, like everyone else.

Banner #32b – July 20, 2020. NighthawkNYC.com is 5 years old! Restaurants & cafes are allowed to open for take out and delivery orders, only.

Banner #34 – Unpublished experiment in response to everything being boarded up here. It showed a lack of trust in the community, their customers, which angered me when I was living with all of it, so I made it as a joke but didn’t run it.

May 3, 2021 – The vaccine has kicked in and I’ve returned after a year away from the banner. At least to Eddie’s Cafe. I had yet to go inside any other restaurant.

Banner 32c – NighthawkNYC.com is 6! July, 2021. Twyla’s quote still fits.

Banner #26 – With Richard Estes Double Self-Portrait, May, 2022.

Banner #27 – Parking Eddie’s Cafe in the middle of 6th Avenue in the Flatiron facing south, June, 2022, One World Trade Center next to my left ear. Working on that logo!

If you had told me at a number of points this past year, I’d be hanging a “7 Years” Banner, I’d have seriously doubted it!

August, 2022. On East 42nd Street.

October, 2022. From Chelsea Piers looking south.

February, 2023. Sunset from Hudson River Park.

June 9, 2023. Edward Hopper’s New York Corner, 1913, one of my favorites in Edward Hopper’s New York, my obsession at the time, at the Whitney Museum.

July 15, 2023. NighthawkNYC.com turns 8 years old!

August 28, 2023- Pondering Rod Penner’s 212/House with Snow, 1998. The 31st Banner I’ve run.

September 22nd, 2023. The view from the MoMA/PS1 Courtyard, LIC, NY, in 20022.

December 17, 2023. Looking north on 5th Avenue. Views of the Empire State Building from the south are disappearing due to new construction. Here, the building is partially hidden by a new tower going up just to the right of it in this view. Oh, and I was named a Finalist for the 2023 Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Award.

January 27, 2024. Slowly getting back on my feet after a bad illness, this harkens back to my late summer trips to the Guggenheim to see Sarah Sze: Timelapse.

March 8, 2024. Banner 51- Trees in Clement Moore Park, February, 2024. Finally back on my feet after a rough six-week illness, this picture captured how I was feeling.

April 9, 2024. Kobra’s Mural on 10th Avenue, his idea of a “Mount Rushmore” for the Chelsea Art District which it directly faces. I’m not sure who would be on my Art Mt. Rushmore. Who’s on yours?

July 15, 2024. Banner 60- NighthawkNYC.com is 9!

September 4, 2024, the day I was diagnosed with ovid for the first time, a look at better times. Here I am living a dream, taking the place of my alter-ego in this fabulous recreation of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks Diner, which I wrote about here. I named this site after that guy in the Painting that no one ever talks about (a “nighthawk.” The Painting is titled Nighthawks). My thanks to the iconic Lucas for the coffee and convo and Nilo for the priceless pic. By the way! The frame is the ACTUAL frame that housed Nighthawks when I saw it last at Hopper Drawing at the old Whitney in 2013!

September 27, 2024- Unable to find a way to survive financially from writing, I announced on Instagram that I was taking a break from Art writing. I left 3 pieces unfinished including my NoteWorthy Art & PhotoBooks of the 21st Century (thus far) pieces.

April 16, 2025- The “Golden Oof,” named for my Avatar, the statuette I’ve had made for my NoteWorthy Art & PhotoBook Lists perched on my picture of the Brooklyn Bridge shot from the Brooklyn side before the pandemic. This Oof is for my NoteWorthy Art & PhotoBooks of the 21st Century (thus far) pieces. After six months of hard work, this banner honors my Art Book piece FINALLY being published today.

June 15, 2025- Banner 64a marks the completion of two pieces that took 9 months of hard work built on 25 years of equally hard looking. The twin “Golden Oofs” fly over a fiery sunset Photo by my Muse, Lana Hattan, 2025.

July 15, 2025. Banner 65 marks 10 Years of NighthawkNYC.com! By the way, the frame is the actual frame of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks!

That makes it 41 banners I’ve run- about 4 a year. It turns out to have been a bit of a circuitous journey, with my getting to live out my dream seen in Banner #1 ten years ago.

Thanks to all those who’ve seen one of them, most of them, even all of them along the way!

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “I Contain Multitudes,” by Bob Dylan from Rough and Rowdy Ways, 2020.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free for over 9 years, during which 300 full length pieces have been published! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate to allow me to continue below. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art & Photography books, and Music from my collection! Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here. 

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

Introduction to NoteWorthy Art & PhotoBooks of the 21st Century

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava.

Across space & time, everything I write in the following 2 pieces began here…Bob Haak’s Rembrandt: His Life, His Work, His Time, published by Abrams in 1969, 348 pages with 612 illustrations including 109 HAND-TIPPED color plates. Click any Photo for full size.

Art books have been a passion of mine since I was a little kid. Early on, my mother belonged to a book club and when there wasn’t anything she wanted, she let me pick a book. I always chose an Art book, some of which I still have and still refer to. A few years later, during a visit to the first real bookstore I was ever in, I saw a large 14 x 11 inch book titled Rembrandt: His Life, His Work, His Time by Bob Haak, above. I was floored. Here was Rembrandt’s entire life and, what seemed to be, with over 600 illustrations including 109 hand-tipped plates (i.e. each plate was attached to the page by hand!), his entire oeuvre. It wasn’t, but it was a great overview. Most of all, it fired my imagination as to what a truly great Art book could achieve. That, and the singular possibility of experiencing most of an Artist’s entire body of work in one book excite me every bit as much right now as they did when I was a kid.

Art books were the first way I could see and discover Art before I could drive, they remain every bit as essential to me now that museums and galleries are within walking distance. In compiling the lists of Art books and PhotoBooks that follow countless hours these past 25 years have gone in to looking at books in innumerable bookstores (including a good number that are, sadly, no longer in business), museums, galleries, libraries and virtually any place else that has them, equalled by how much thought, consideration, and living with these books has gone into this selection. All of that is built on an equal number of years before January 1, 2000 that I spent looking at Art books. All told, a  long time.

As a result, no pieces I’ve written over the past 9 3/4 years on NighthawkNYC have come close to being the amount of work that has cumulatively resulted in the two pieces that follow. They represent a lifetime of looking at Art Books, and 8 years of looking intensely at PhotoBooks, condensed into 6 months of work selecting them and writing the pieces. My hope is that you will find it useful.

The Museum of Modern Art’s endless wall of Art books, as I call it, is at least 30 feet high and twice as wide. I asked to see the Yoko Ono book under the sleeping cat sculpture. They laughed.

Narrowing the focus to books published for the first time in the 21st century didn’t make the job much easier; a number of books I instinctively put on the list wound up having publication dates just before 2000, disqualifying them. Other books I have a strong personal preference for, I didn’t feel were books I’d make a general recommendation for, which is what I try to do with my NoteWorthy Book lists. Many other books are terrific in terms of the Art or Photography they contain, but lacking in other areas as books in my view.

That these lists are surprisingly long is a testament to what I’ve seen in almost half a century of looking at Art books: they’ve gotten better, especially since 2000. While there were, of course, great and important Art writers before 2000, virtually every other aspect of bookmaking has evolved, largely for the better. Acid-free paper highlight an incredibly wider range of today’s papers, better Art Photography with the increased use of color, better materials, better production processes, better distribution, and the wide-spread availability of all of these things has led to a world-wide proliferation of books on Art, and especially Photography, as countless smaller PhotoBook publishers vie with the big companies for exposure & attention.

So, WHAT’S a “NoteWorthy Art or PhotoBook of the 21st Century?”

I’ve said all along that I don’t believe “best” exists in the Arts. I use the term “NoteWorthy” in speaking about books, in this case, that I most highly recommend. I’ve endeavored to narrow these down to books that have it all- great work in a great book. At the same time, I’ve tried to keep in mind that most people don’t want large Art or PhotoBook libraries. They want to know what the most important books are. That is what I have tried to give you: The NoteWorthy Art and PhotoBooks (i.e. those I recommend most highly) released thus far in the 21st century, in my opinion.

Unfortunately, both are partially incomplete; some lack images, there are no ISBN numbers…Given my new realities, I just don’t have the time I did before. I’ve felt it was more important to spend time living with these selections to see if I really feel these should be included. Still, I have no doubt that sooner or later (probably sooner) I’ll realize I left out a book that REALLY should have been on this list. Also, for both lists, I’ve sadly decided to leave out Artist’s books that are/were published in editions so small that few can see them.

Let’s look at some books! There’s nothing like going to a great Bookstore. Where else are you actually going to get to see Artbooks and PhotoBooks-in person?

I dedicate both my Noteworthy Art & PhotoBook of the 21st Century (thus far) pieces to my fellow Art book & PhotoBook lovers everywhere, and especially to all of those who have written to me about books I’ve written about, books I should know about, or written to tell me about books I’ve written about that have impacted their lives. You’ve inspired me to get these done.

Kenn Sava.    

Without further ado-

NoteWorthy Art Books of the 21st Century by Kenn Sava may be seen here.

NoteWorthy PhotoBooks of the 21st Century by Kenn Sava is here..

NoteWorthy Art & Photobooks of the 21st Century are BookMarks Specials.

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “Noteworthy” by Homeboy Sandman from his album Dusty, 2019.