West Side Canvas: ‘Lincoln Center Is a Great Thing To Have on the Upper West Side’

The Art of Dance
By Robert Beck

Lincoln Center is finishing up its Spring-Summer ballet season. The American Ballet Theater’s final performance was this past weekend at the Metropolitan Opera House. That will be followed by the BAAND Together Arts Festival, bringing Ballet Hispánico, The ABT, Alvin Ailey, New York City Ballet, and the Dance Theater of Harlem together for five performances as part of Summer In the City.  Lincoln Center is a great thing to have on the Upper West Side.

Discussing that with my wife reminded me of a painting I did before beginning the West Side Canvas series when I was experimenting with the relationship between shape and content. Our family has had a very close association with ballet, and I have long thought about doing a painting of Cynthia Harvey, a friend. It wasn’t until I linked it to the shape project that the image was realized.

The shape of a painting presents an immediate impression. A lateral rectangle is peaceful (think landscape), and a vertical one is austere and proper (portrait). Squares are neutral, in a tight-lipped kind of way. Round shapes contain. Non-conventional shapes bring individuality and personality to the mix that can overwhelm the artist’s intention. When the viewer is drawn to a painting’s shape, it can mean less attention is devoted to content.

This was my third attempt at a demilune (fancy talk for a half-moon shape) and the first one that used the curve to an advantage. Having it echo the dancer’s trajectory was a lightbulb of sorts. There needed to be a purpose linking shape to content. I wasn’t employing a distinctive shape to make the painting unusual; it was to make it more. The painting depicts Cynthia in her ABT performance as Kitri in Don Q. The canvas is three feet high and six feet wide. I followed that painting with a different subject that used a trapezoid shape to proof what I learned. That image was the better for it, too.

There is a tricky perspective thing going on in this image. Not the dot-on-the-horizon kind of perspective but an approach to establishing volume, size, and distances by creating a specific relationship between viewer and elements. In this image, the dancer’s position in the air is determined by the disk of light on the stage. The direction of light on the figure, the location and narrowness of the light’s elliptical form, and the shape of the shadow in that disk all come together to situate the stage and the dancer for the viewer. Alter any of those, and she doesn’t look quite right up there.

This is a free-standing painting, not a mural for an architectural space, like over a door. That means it required a custom-made curved frame, which wasn’t cheap. And then there was the trapezoid.

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See more of Robert Beck’s work and visit his UWS studio by going to www.robertbeck.net. Let him know if you have a connection to an archetypical UWS place or event that would make a good West Side Canvas subject. Thank you!

Note: Before Robert Beck wrote West Side Canvas, his essays and paintings were featured in Weekend Column. Read Robert Beck’s earlier columns here and here.

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