Sunday 30 October 2016

Lift Up Thine Eyes

It's 1957 in New York City.  On the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, passersby walk along the sidewalk, eyes downcast.  It's just another mundane Manhattan day.  But if just one of the New Yorkers took the time to raise his head, he would see a man posting a sign LIFT UP THINE EYES.  He would see a beautiful edifice -- Gothic portals, tympanum arches and magnificent statues -- worthy of a European cathedral.  He would see a flock of doves flying free above the sidewalk.  But Rockwell's subjects bypass the magnificence of St. Thomas Church, choosing instead to focus on the greyness of the sidewalk.  "I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed," explained Rockwell, an America that was slowly losing its Christian faith in the mid-1950's.








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