What a blessing for New York City. After a one-year hiatus due to a disastorous appearance by Sandy, the New York City Marathon went off without a hitch.
Marathon participants ran #BostonStrong … no doubt keeping the Boston Marathon in the back of their collective minds. It’s amazing that thousands of marathon runners, running through the largest city in the U.S.–with a population of over 8 million people–can finish a race of 26.2 miles, much less do so in an incredibly organized astounding feat of civic planning.
I don’t particularly enjoy even driving 26 miles. The fact that so many people not only participate but pay to torture their bodies is in itself perplexing. But what’s especially incomprehensible to me is how New York functions without falling into anarchy; it works. If New York is a microcosm of physics, albeit a big one, we are witnessing the laws of the universe in action.
So much chaos. Collection of molecules–people, cars, rats, pigeons–randomly going this way and that, but somehow it’s symphonic, an organized movement. Flux in check. This is what has always drawn me to New York City and why I still, after over a half-century of no longer living here, paint New York Cityscape art.
I’m fascinated not only by NYC architecture and urban streetscapes, but also by the organized chaos of the city. Very few cities in the world are this polyglot/multi-ethnic, relatively low-crime, and functional. If you visit my Cityscape gallery I hope you’ll see the sense of organized chaos. I don’t paint much in the way of the human form, but the high-density collection of skyscrapers and New York skyline buildings, I think, reflect the juxtaposition of the critical mass population density and the organized layout of the city. You can always drop me a line at robert (at) roberthandlerart (dot) com and tell me what you think or recommend some ideas for my next Cityscape art project.
