Located in midtown Manhattan, AXA Equitable Center occupies the entire block between Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue and 51st and 52nd Streets and is comprised of two office buildings: AXA Equitable Tower, designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes and Associates; and the UBS Building, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. AXA Equitable offices are located across the street at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, between 51st and 52nd Streets. The public spaces of AXA Equitable Center are devoted to exhibition galleries and public art, as well as other amenities.
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James Rosenquist
Nasturtium Salad, 1984
Oil on canvas, 8 x 8’ |
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Hanging above the entry to the gallery is James Rosenquist’s Nasturtium Salad. Beginning in the early 1980s, Rosenquist experimented with a crosshatch technique of intersecting images. The crosshatching reveals an interior that breaks through the surface of the painting, contrasting seemingly paradoxical ideas and environments. He often depicts images of natural or astronomical scenes, sliced with human forms to illustrate the threats posed by our increasingly technological environment.
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Scott Burton
Atrium Furnishment, 1984-1985
Verde Larisa marble |
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Atrium Furnishment is one of three works by Scott Burton commissioned for AXA Equitable Center. Burton was a leader in the contemporary field of public art, espousing a practical concern for the urban dweller: that sculpture be not only thought provoking, but functional. Atrium Furnishment is an ensemble comprising the 40-foot settee of verde larisa marble, studded with pink onyx lights, and a table-fountain containing aquatic plants. These elements are complemented by the stand of trees, the pavers and bronze arc set into the floor, which, taken together, form a welcome enclosure.
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Roy Lichtenstein
Mural with Blue Brushstroke,
1984-85
Acrylic on canvas, 68 x 32’ |
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Mural with Blue Brushstroke, commissioned by AXA Equitable, was executed on site by the artist Roy Lichtenstein in the fall of 1985. The mural is a compendium of the Pop artist’s
signature images and those of other twentieth-century masters. Among the various motifs are several visual puns, such as the large brushstroke that gives the painting its title, which is at once a reference to the gestural style of the Abstract Expressionists and an image of falling water.
British sculptor Barry Flanagan's Young Elephant and Hare on Bell flank the north and south entrances to the Galleria. Flanagan articulates his private mythology of animal images through a characteristic wiry line, always with a sense of wry humor, as seen in the delightful pose of the hare atop the elephant. Hares figure prominently in Flanagan's work, often positioned on a large and heavy form, thereby creating a sense of tension between the animal's qualities of swift, agile movement and the weight to which it is grounded.
Midblock is the site for a group of six murals by Sol LeWitt entitled Wall Drawing: Bands of Lines in Four Colors and Four Directions, Separated by Gray Bands , commissioned by AXA Equitable. A leader in both the Conceptual and Minimal art movements, LeWitt's titles function as literal description of the works which are based on a distilled system of line and color, the basic components of painting. The AXA Equitable wall drawings are a serial variation of the four elemental straight lines – horizontal, vertical, and the two diagonals – which are delineated by the primary colors red, blue, and yellow, and the tonal range, white, gray and black.
Agnes Denes' Hypersphere: The Earth in the Shape of the Universe , was commissioned by the First National Bank of Chicago in 1986 for the company's New York headquarters, located in the AXA Equitable Tower. The artist's work encompasses the ceiling design, the use of bronze-tinted mirrors, plantings, and the granite and bronze reception desk. The title of the work specifically refers to the 144-panel etched glass ceiling and its luminous image of the earth depicted as a doughnut-shaped form similar to Einstein's model for the universe.
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Sandro Chia
Palio (detail), 1985-86
Acrylic on canvas, four panels, 13 ½ x 31’ |
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Sandro Chia's four-panel mural Palio , is located in the bar of the Italian restaurant Piano Due, off of the Galleria. The theme of the mural is the Palio horse race, a centuries-old tradition of the city of Siena. Chia's mural celebrates the event's pageantry, resplendent in period costumes, symbolic emblems, and colorful banners and flags. A native of Florence who lives and works in both Italy and New York, Chia freely incorporates styles and images from the history of art in his work which is self-evident in the Palio mural.
Scott Burton's designs for Pair of Urban Plazas were conceived with the purpose of providing a rare and welcome meeting place in the otherwise hectic environment of the city. The materials used in each plaza, which encompass the elements of the benches, planters, litter receptacles, and drinking fountains, were intended to complement the architectural materials and design of the UBS Building. While Urban Plaza South functions as a kind of sidewalk café, Urban Plaza North features public seating in benches of varying lengths.
Thomas Hart Benton's epic mural America Today was originally executed for New York's New School for Social Research in 1930. The project's success sparked renewed interest in mural painting which helped to precipitate the well-known mural program of the federal government's Works Project Administration (WPA) in the mid-1930s. In 1984, America Today was purchased by AXA Equitable and was completely restored – along with its original Art Deco-style moldings – before its installation at AXA Equitable Tower in 1985. The murals can now be viewed in the lobby of 1290 Avenue of the Americas.
Based largely on the artist's sketches made on trips taken throughout the country in the 1920s, America Today is a panoramic interpretation of the nation during the Jazz Age, a period noted for its dramatic economic and industrial growth. The two end panels, entitled, respectively, “City Activities with Dance Hall” and “City Activities with Subway” illustrate the raucous and licentious aspects of urban pastimes of the period. The second, third and fourth panels from the left, “City Building,” “Coal,” and “Steel,” commemorate big industry and the American worker. The center panel, “Instruments of Power,” is an optimistic vision of technological progress in transportation and energy production. “Changing West,” Midwest,” and “Deep South,” the sixth, seventh and eighth panels, portray three of the country's geographical regions and the industries for which they were known.
The smallest panel from the cycle, “Outreaching Hands,” was originally located above the doorway of the room in which the mural was installed at the New School. This is the only panel that, in its portrayal of a poor-house and breadline, suggests the effects of the Depression. It was the final panel to be painted, probably in 1931 or 1932, by which time the effects of the Depression were fully felt.
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Sol Lewitt
Thomas Hart Benton