WATER TOWER- A GEM ON THE HORIZON OF MANHATTAN
The city is many things but — on the surface of it all — it is a careful agglomeration of utilities, of services, of infrastructure. This basic urban function is so fundamental that it is often taken for granted, unquestioned and forgotten as just what to expect in a city. It’s here that art plays a crucial and transgressive role, to remind citizens of the fundamental functions of a city, to shed fresh eyes on previously underestimated aspects of a system. A perfect example of art’s power to achieve this is Rachel Whiteread’s seminal American art installation, Water Tower.
Authorized by the Public Art Fund and initially introduced in 1998 on a housetop in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, Water Tower is Whiteread’s first public art installation to be imagined and shown in the United States. The British craftsman scoured the city looking for a quintessentially New York subject. Looking over the East River to Manhattan during a visit to Brooklyn, she was struck by the numerous water towers roosted high over the boulevards, attracted to their pervasiveness in the cityscape. Such an odd spatial feature to include aidis the towering skyscrapers of Manhattan: a simple water tank. It’s precisely this odd but apt feature that Whiteread hoped to highlight through this project.
Whiteread is known for casting natural articles in resin and mortar, and for her capacity to make individuals see these items and spaces under new light. Water Tower is a resin-cast of the inside of a once-working cedar water tower, picked explicitly for the surface. The translucent gum catches the characteristics of the encompassing sky; the figure’s shading and brilliance change for the duration of the day, and it turns into a close undetectable murmur around evening time. Whiteread has called this work ‘a gem on the horizon of Manhattan.’ Soaring and fleeting, it moves city inhabitants and guests the same, to take a gander at the strong, profound water towers they typically observe without taking note.
Just like that, a simple water tank was (literally) recast into a symbol for the city of New York: not just a big apple, or a towering skyscraper, but a humble water tank. It captures the dreams and aspirations that millions of people bring with them on their journey to New York: there, amidst that towering cityscape, in the rush of a million kinds of people, stands that one simple dreamer Unseen, unheard but just as essential to the city that never sleeps: with it, that unknown hero loses sleep as well, standing vigil over the urban forest. A water tank, high above a building, surveying a city of a million kinds.
Text by Kaira Puri
Image Courtesy: Public art fund
Find more about the Artist and the artwork:
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/82016
https://www.moma.org/artists/6910#works
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/38723?artist_id=6910&page=1&sov_referrer=artist