Under Union Square

Isabel Bishop was a perceptive chronicler of New York and often painted around the bustling area around Union Square. This sparsely composed image of the massive subway station below Union Square was the first of three she made in 1957-58. Bishop was fascinated by the engineering marvel of the New York subway but she also pondered how the spaces felt. She struggled with the paradox of a solid, forbidding interior that served as a means for rapid movement; a place of crowds yet one of alienation.In a 1959 interview she stated that she liked the sense of “appearing and disappearing” that occurs in this version but strove in later variations to make it seem less like a “prison.”