The Skyscraper and the City brings together thirty years of the artist’s watercolor images of cities. LePan’s work goes against the tradition of presenting skyscrapers with a hard and precise verticality; the lines of these towers blur and bleed into each other, into the sky and the natural world, and often into the human life of the city. In their sense of movement, these watercolor images (of bridges and baseball stadiums as well as of skyscrapers) at times recall the work of John Marin, while in their viewpoint they may bring to mind the bird’s-eye-view city paintings of Oskar Kokoschka or John Hartman. LePan’s paintings have been exhibited only once—in a solo show in Brooklyn in 2008. Commenting on that exhibition, Hartman (whose sweeping canvasses have been acclaimed world-wide) described these watercolor works as “very good, and together they form a coherent and focused body of work.”
The Skyscraper and the City includes images from as far afield as Cape Town, London, and Sydney, but the primary focus is on the North American city. Calgary, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, and Vancouver are each the subject of numerous paintings; in all, over fifty cities are represented.
Substantial captions accompanying many of the images discuss the circumstances in which the work was painted, various aesthetic issues, and the architectural history of the buildings depicted. An appendix includes examples of the artist’s preliminary sketches and photographs. In a brief introduction, LePan discusses the history of skyscraper art, the nature of watercolor as a medium, and his own background as a watercolor painter.
Comments
“The city has been the subject of rich artistic interpretation since the Renaissance, but alas fell from favor in the second half of the twentieth century. Save for super realists such as Richard Estes, little urban landscape painting has been advanced in recent decades. The images by Don LePan in this book suggest what we have been missing. These paintings capture the energy and arresting forms that characterize the modern metropolis. Anyone who studies urban physical form or is simply intrigued by it will find this volume engrossing.” — Richard Longstreth, Professor emeritus, George Washington University and former President, Society of Architectural Historians
“LePan presents a collection of charming watercolor cityscapes accompanied by commentary, in this retrospective of his three-decade career. … [The book] features dynamic urban scenes in which light operates without conventional logic: “Broad swaths of light sweep and swoop down and across and up and away,” lending skyscrapers, bridges, and monuments a “friendly but fierce and almost otherworldly energy.” The artist’s loose, gestural approach offers a refreshing departure from the rigid linear representations that typically characterize urban landscapes. LePan’s “mind’s-eye painting” … approach yields consistently vibrant results; outstanding examples include his breakthrough Chicago (1994), in which the Sears Tower and Merchandise Mart pulse with raw metropolitan energy, and New Orleans (2007), which captures both post-Katrina devastation and the city’s irrepressible vitality through bold color contrasts and flowing forms.” — Kirkus Reviews
“The Skyscraper and the City offers an exuberant tour of skylines across the U.S. and beyond, in watercolor images awash in Don LePan’s own memories of the many cities he’s visited. This is a personal record of his travels, collected with evident delight in the range of responses these places and buildings have inspired, and the excitement of discovery. His joy in being able to capture such moments of awe and beauty is infectious.” — Angela Miller, Professor of Art History, Washington University in St. Louis
