Taxi: Brakes Between History and Painting Taxi, Dalì, Basquiat, Warhol, and Al Held
The subject in question concerns taxis, specifically those in the city of New York. It is possible to approach the subject by revealing the history of these particular automobiles, followed by the illustration of some contemporary artworks on the theme, exclusively drawn from the rich Artmajeur database. The purpose can take shape by dividing the narrative into two parts: the first being exclusively historical, while the second is exclusively artistic. However, at this point, one may wonder: are there famous masterpieces dedicated to immortalizing yellow taxis? Since the answer is affirmative, despite the subject being somewhat unpopular in the history of art, we can imagine blending the aforementioned themes, creating a mixture of historical and artistic storytelling, aiming to shape a narrative in which the events that marked the life of the yellow taxi abruptly interrupt to let the works of great masters such as Dalì, Basquiat, Warhol, and Held speak for themselves. Only after this blending can we consciously discuss contemporary art, aware of what has been, both in painting and in concrete, as well as datable facts. I proceed as planned, and I warn you, the narrative will experience abrupt interruptions, exclusively of a pictorial nature, that will impose themselves within the structure of the historical text, like the brakes that often accompany the frenetic driving of the transportation means in question. Starting from Wikipedia: "Taxi vehicles, each of which must have a medallion to operate, travel an average of 180 miles per shift. As of March 14, 2014, there were 51,398 people authorized to drive taxis with a medallion. There were 13,605 taxi medallion licenses. By July 2016, that number had slightly decreased to 13,587 medallions, which is 18 fewer than the total in 2014. Taxi ridership has decreased since 2011 due to competition from ridesharing companies like Uber." What is reported brings us to the heart of the matter, highlighting the popularity and weaknesses that the automobile in question encounters in the contemporary world in which it travels, street after street, since 1897, the year when the first taxi company in New York, Samuel's Electric Carriage and Wagon Company (E.C.W.C.), began operating with 12 carriages. Here it is! The first brake comes when I ask you to think about what the first passengers of the vehicle in question might have been like, and I am reminded, with irony, of Salvador Dalì's "Rainy Taxi" (1938): a three-dimensional work of art, composed of a real car that carries two mannequins, a male driver with a shark's head who takes a seat in the front seat and a woman placed in the rear seat. The whole scene becomes even more surreal and dilapidated due to the rain that enters the car, caused by a piping system that creates a leak inside the taxi. The vision is completed by rather unsettling details, as the woman, wearing an evening gown and with disheveled hair, hosts living and crawling snails on her body, surrounded by lettuce and chicory. The taxi ride resumes after the stop, and then, as predetermined, we return to history once again. Summarizing a story that would otherwise be too long and full of dates, we can say that since their birth, the vehicles in question, despite various ups and downs, encountered great success and progressive diffusion. Therefore, I borrow a skillful use of time-lapse, a cinematic technique of speeding up videos, to arrive in the 1980s, a period in which the demographic composition of taxi drivers changed with the arrival of new waves of immigrants to New York City, so much so that 82% of the workers in question were foreign-born, with 23% coming from the Caribbean and 30% from South Asia. I dwelled on these figures because, contrary to what has been stated, Basquiat and Warhol's "Taxi, 45th/Broadway" from 1984-85 is a painting that speaks of racism, as it depicts a black man, explicitly labeled as "NEGRO," trying in vain to hail a taxi while a white taxi driver ignores him, uttering insults. The work, which goes against all the aforementioned statistics, tells of the reality actually experienced by Basquiat, leading us to make another stop of our taxi, the last one in question, which will lead to the exhaustion of the historical theme. The narrative continues with strikes, laws, good intentions to increase safety, changes in models or logos, various technological updates, and, especially from the 2000s onwards, a discreet decrease in the presence of these means of transportation, in favor of the aforementioned Uber. Despite this last fact, we can still imagine a significant presence of these vehicles in New York traffic, especially within those noisy traffic jams, perhaps remembered by the "disordered" and "claustrophobic" interweaving of geometric figures in "Taxi Cab III" (1959), a painting created by Al Held using a dynamic gestural style, rendered with pure colors and newly developed Liquitex acrylic paints at the time. In fact, even the description of the work by the MET, where the painting is preserved, associates this abstraction with a collision and overlap of vehicles, ready to allude to a jazz melody as well, which lends itself to accompany the frenetic whole, imposing itself as the cacophonous soundtrack of the painter's hometown. It's time to call another taxi to board a new perspective on the subject offered to us by the artists of Artmajeur, such as Edith Verdickt, Sergio Capuzzimati, and Raymond Agostini.
NEW YORK #75 (2019)Painting by Sócrates Rízquez.
YELLOW TAXI Painting by Edith Verdickt.
Edith Verdickt: Yellow Taxi
You cross the road, finding yourself in the middle, under the lane divider. You are almost at your destination when you stop to complete your journey, watching to see if any vehicles are coming in the new direction. As I describe this, you have just turned around because behind you, in the area you just passed, a taxi is approaching. At the same time, another of the same kind zooms by in front of you, preventing you from proceeding. Edith Verdickt's painting seems like a snapshot of the moment just described, which, to express motion at its peak, is realized through long brushstrokes, aimed at finding their point of maximum expression in the fastest car that appears on the right side of the canvas. The buildings in the distance, although immobile, are indicated with quick and fleeting brushstrokes, ready to synthesize the teachings of Impressionism to the fullest, which make the vision concrete only when observed from a certain distance. Regarding the French painter, it is interesting to note that Edith Verdickt actually lives on the island of Oléron, a place where, in addition to capturing mainly seascapes, she also interprets urban landscapes, probably born from the observation of photographs, postcards, or the mental reconstruction of concrete memories.
LIFE IN TECHNICOLOR (2022)Photography by Sergio Capuzzimati.
Sergio Capuzzimati: Life in Technicolor
This artwork also offers us the opportunity to observe a taxi from a perspective that we certainly perceive with our own eyes, if only for brief moments every day, but mainly without even realizing it and therefore neglecting it. Then the artist intervenes, recognizing it as an intuition, a fragment of reality, and hence a kind of testimony, freezing it in time to make it official. Accordingly, Sergio Capuzzimati has captured the moment when, as we exit the taxi, we look ahead, also catching a glimpse of the roof of the vehicle, or when we quickly turn our heads to cross the street, glimpsing the rear of the aforementioned cars. In these moments, however, our minds are preoccupied with something else, and only later can we realize what we are looking at, giving a concrete image to the flow of our thoughts. That's when art comes to our rescue, allowing us, sometimes even retrospectively, to associate a vision with reasoning or a memory, which in some cases coincide with the same sensation that the artist experienced at the moment of creating his work. Regarding Capuzzimati, it is worth specifying that the aforementioned taxi was immortalized in Hong Kong, where the photographer has chosen this subject as one of his favorites, often preferring to capture it during the nighttime, where the illuminated signs when they are available seem to interact with the city's other neon lights. Finally, referring to the artist's own words, he reveals, "During a photo session, I noticed a queue of cars with a taxi waiting: taking advantage of this temporary queue, I quickly moved into the middle of the road, taking a photo of the illuminated taxi sign as close as possible and blurring the neon lights in the background: the final result is a cinematic image that gives the viewer the feeling of being part of the scene."
BROOKLYN BRIDGE (2018)Painting by Raymond Agostini.
Raymond Agostini: Brooklyn Bridge
So far, we have seen works that are far from the classic, studied, and "posed" postcard-like subject, characteristics that instead become evident in Raymond Agostini's poetic and well-crafted painting, aimed at capturing a taxi placed, not coincidentally, at the foot of the iconic Brooklyn Bridge, while immersed in the lights of the night, mainly illuminated by the beam of light coming from the streetlamp above it. Its presence is accompanied by small bulbs on the structure that, overlapping the sky, create a precise starry sky. The artist's intent is precisely to highlight, by illuminating them, both the bridge and the taxi, two symbols of the Big Apple par excellence. The other elements that make up the composition, namely the various cars and buildings, are only partially lit, appearing excluded from the spotlight. Regarding the French painter, Agostini declares that he is indeed passionate about architecture, spatial design, and aesthetics, interests he expresses by investigating multiple themes, which often include genres like portraiture and urban landscapes, sometimes abandoned. Finally, the artist often creates compositions that combine his interests, just like those paintings that depict nudes inside forgotten buildings.
Olimpia Gaia Martinelli
