NEW YORK—Look south on 11th Street in Long Island City and you‘ll see the Pulaski Bridge leading into Brooklyn. Look north and you’ll see the red-and-white smokestacks of the old Con Edison plant puffing away. On the corner at 46th Avenue stands a red brick building that looks slightly more welcoming than the rest of the nondescript buildings that surround it.
This is the new home-away-from-home for a group of about 35 artists dedicated to practicing the tradition of fine art begun in the Renaissance—what’s been called realism since the modern art movements of the last century changed people’s notions of what qualified as art.
For seven years, the Grand Central Academy (now Grand Central Atelier) existed on one floor of a Midtown Manhattan building on the same block as the Harvard Club, the New York Yacht Club, and the New York City Bar Association.
Grand Central Academy offered workshops and evening and weekend studio sessions six days a week.
Though these sessions drew after-work hobbyist types as well as serious career artists, the curriculum was vigorous. Regardless of whether one was a full-time or part-time student—or whether they intended to become working artists at all—everyone was expected to eventually be able to sculpt anatomically correct human forms, draw hands, eyes, and ears accurately, and master color theory, with the ultimate goal being to paint the figure in color.
The 42nd Street space just couldn’t match the ambition of its users. There was no easily accessible bathroom, no kitchen, and barely a spot to hang a coat. Because classes took precedence and space was limited, you couldn’t work after 5 p.m., which is when the evening classes start, and if you needed to relax for a moment, your options were to doze at your easel or escape to the nearest coffeehouse.
A Space for Ideas
This new sprawling space, 12,000 square feet of it, still smelling of construction on the day of my late December visit, is sectioned by movable walls into rooms for cast drawing, sculpture, still life, portraits, and nude studies. Every surface is tacked with drawings. Workspaces flow organically into each other without boundaries.
