I was living in a small cabin in a rural part of Bucks County when what they call “first reports” came in. I clearly remember half-sitting on a stool behind my easel with a cup of coffee, looking at a painting in progress with NPR on the radio. There is no recollection of which work that was, but it must have been compelling to keep me inside on what was described by one writer as “an achingly blue day.”
The tentative, unbelieving news reader said there were “reports of” a plane hitting one of the World Trade Towers, so I walked into the next room and turned on the television. Like everyone, I have flashes of images and tones as the morning took instant focus. Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer were trying to sort out what was happening. There was an aerial feed of the first tower with a hole punched in the top and smoke pouring out. They only had that one view to show on the screen — the unchanging skyline and billowing, streaming black smoke. Diane and Charles searched for things to say. Nothing indicated the chaos on the street or the horror in the tower. I watched, wondering, could this be real? as the second plane entered my screen from the right and hit the other building. Smarter people than me knew at that moment things had changed forever. I was absorbing what I saw, still trying to separate what I was looking at from television. It was all I could do. I now can see parallels to my parents and their parents listening to the radio as first reports came in from Pearl Harbor. They had to imagine their horrible images.
I wouldn’t recall specifics from any other day in 2001 without some kind of prompting, but not September 11th. I did this painting more than a decade later, from memory. It’s small, maybe six inches square. I was chasing an indelible moment. Not the detail—the core recognition and response. It’s a distilled image constructed using very few brushstrokes. I had to do it multiple times in multiple versions to shed the noise, each time getting closer to the moment things would never be the same. For me, it’s a portrait, a marker, an image and a tone of another blue-sky day—this one ours—that lives in infamy.
See more of Robert Beck’s work and his UWS studio by visiting www.robertbeck.net And let Robert know if you have a connection to an archetypal UWS place or event that would make a good West Side Canvas column. Thanks!
Subscribe to WSR’s free email newsletter here.
“The subtlest change in New York is something people don’t speak much about but that is in everyone’s mind. The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition.”
― E.B. White, Here is New York 1948
Kim, thank you for posting this. E.B. White lived 86 years, but not long enough to see his ominous words brought to life.
Like Haiku this painting is….
I get it right away. An epic moment in time.
Yes it was an “achingly” blue blue day.
On a brighter note, glad you are up and out and painting.
Thanks for the most delicious fish…
From Your Biggest Fan
That plane, about to hit.
If only we could pluck it out of that sky and throw it into space. And the one after.
Change everything that followed. Still be living in a world where it didn’t happen.