Painting
9-11 Elegy/Ghost City, Panel 4
- Description
- Painting titled 9-11 Elegy/Ghost City, Panel 4 by Ejay Weiss from the 9/11 Elegies series. The painting depicts a square in the center of the panel with a bright-blue tonal gradation, representing the sky, framed by black and gray paint rendered like plumes of smoke and ash (mixed with dust from Ground Zero). At the top is a stripe of blue, white, and red.
- Historical Notes
- As a witness to the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, artist Ejay Weiss mixed ash that he collected from Ground Zero with black acrylic paint to incorporate into a series of paintings. His images serve as a metaphor of both the towers’ windows and their footprints. The paintings combine a matrix of layered paint threads with the view beyond the towers to evoke the collapse of the buildings and the void created in the towers’ absence.
Curator's Comment
Ejay Weiss grabbed his binoculars and left his studio on West 21st Street and Ninth Avenue soon after hearing the roar of an airplane flying low overhead on 9/11. He zigzagged his way south and west, pausing at 14th Street, which had already been cordoned off by law enforcement. Training his binoculars at the fire burning in the North Tower, he saw the sun-drenched blue sky and clouds of smoke through the gash where the plane had penetrated the building. Weiss continued to peer through his binoculars as the towers collapsed.
A lifelong New Yorker, Weiss was overcome with grief and enraged at the atrocity perpetrated on the only home he had ever known. Within days, he felt compelled to witness the devastation for himself and rode his bicycle to Ground Zero, where he gathered some World Trade Center dust and grit. Weiss tried to comprehend the catastrophe by sketching and painting. By early 2002, he had completed four paintings, into which he incorporated bits of the dust and earth he had collected. By the first anniversary of the attacks, Weiss had completed a total of nine paintings in a series he later named the 9/11 Elegies.
One of the original four paintings in the series, this piece was displayed in the Museum’s inaugural special exhibition, Rendering the Unthinkable: Artists Respond to 9/11.
A lifelong New Yorker, Weiss was overcome with grief and enraged at the atrocity perpetrated on the only home he had ever known. Within days, he felt compelled to witness the devastation for himself and rode his bicycle to Ground Zero, where he gathered some World Trade Center dust and grit. Weiss tried to comprehend the catastrophe by sketching and painting. By early 2002, he had completed four paintings, into which he incorporated bits of the dust and earth he had collected. By the first anniversary of the attacks, Weiss had completed a total of nine paintings in a series he later named the 9/11 Elegies.
One of the original four paintings in the series, this piece was displayed in the Museum’s inaugural special exhibition, Rendering the Unthinkable: Artists Respond to 9/11.
- Accession Number: C.2018.129.1
- Dimensions: 59 3/4 in X 44 3/4 in X 1 5/8 in
- Dimensions (Metric): 149.86 cm X 111.76 cm X 2.54 cm
- Source: Ejay Weiss
- Credit Line: Gift of the artist, Ejay Weiss
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