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A Tale Of Two Cities

Howard Halle -- Interior Design, 9/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

Sarah Morris makes mesmerizing nonnarrative films and formal, geometric paintings that defy easy explanation. "I'm interested in systems," she says. One might describe her subject matter as the dynamic urban landscape, a terrain that encompasses the physical and the abstract—a city's inhabitants, their ambitions, and the economy driven by them.

Although her mural for the Public Art Fund is located at Lever House in Midtown, the piece is named Robert Towne after the writer, director, and producer who's known for his screenplay for Chinatown, a film in which the Los Angeles of the 1930's plays as big a role as any other character. Morris interprets Towne as simultaneously player and outlaw. "He's an insider and an outsider," she explains.

Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill also deconstructed the difference between in and out at Lever House. And the underside of the building's podium, which shelters both lobby and plaza, is the surface that Morris painted, all 19,744 square feet of it. Her jazzy grid of interconnecting elements incorporates sunny L.A. colors as well as the greens and grays of Bunshaft's curtain wall.

Connection is an essential ingredient of her approach: Lever House and Robert Towne are icons of their respective cities—merging the two, she paints a picture of the modern metropolis as a work of art.