Hidden New York City Art Installations

New York City resident Marc Latamie is an artist who's been working and exhibiting in many countries, including Cuba, Spain, Sweden, and Senegal. Marc Latamie is especially interested in installation art.

While most people know that New York City is home to some of the finest art museums in the world, many may be surprised to learn that free art installations exist all over the city. They can be easy to overlook. For example, in a SoHo loft one can find The New York Earth Room behind a door with a small plaque. Commissioned by the Dia Foundation, the Earth Room is simply a room full of dirt that has been there since 1977.

Another often-overlooked piece of installation art is located right near the trendy High Line park in the Chelsea Market passage. Spencer Finch put together a grid of colored glass blocks to represent the Hudson River. He took a photo each minute for 700 minutes and this installation is the result.

Even Times Square has art installations. The 42nd Street-Times Square subway station actually features a mural painted by none other than pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, commissioned in 1994 by the MTA. Don’t forget to look around as you travel to the famous art museums--you may run into art you would have missed otherwise.

Marc Latamie - A Look at Marcel Duchamp

Primarily based in New York City, artist Marc Latamie utilizes the theme of universalism in most of his works. One of his strongest influences is Marcel Duchamp; Marc Latamie had lectured on Duchamp works at the Cooper Union School for the Arts and at New York University and contribueted to the online journal dedicated to the research on Duchamp..

Born in 1887 in France, Marcel Duchamp became one of the most influenced artists of the 20th century. Called a “one-man movement” by Willem de Kooning, Duchamp developed a counter-field from his contemporaries by approaching the mental rather than the visual aspects of art. During the first part of his career, he experimented with then-popular styles such as impressionism and cubism. His 1912 Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) used the cubist style to present his subject in motion rather than the traditional static image. Arguably his most famous painting, it initially received negative reviews in Paris, where the work was banned from the important Salon d'Automne.

Following this period, Marcel Duchamp introduced the “readymade,” perhaps his most lasting legacy. Abandoning painting in the years before World War I, Duchamp utilized everyday objects as art. He placed mass-produced pieces such as bicycle wheels, shovels, and windows on display to challenge conceptions of art and beauty. Despite being considered a pioneer with the Dada movement, Duchamp became also a master on playing chess. He passed away in 1968.

Beauty and Universalism in Art

An accomplished artist, Marc Latamie has appeared as a guest lecturer at Columbia University, Harvard University, the University of Massachusetts Boston, and New York University. In his art, Marc Latamie strives for universalism.

Universalism revolves around the idea that beauty is deeply ingrained in human nature. Prior to his death in 2010, philosophy professor Denis Dutton authored a book called Aesthetic Universal, which examines the definition of universalism in the context of cognitive science and human evolution. The book explores the work of scholars such as Leo Tolstoy, Clive Bell, and Friedrich Schiller, all of whom addressed the universal meaning of art and its significance. Their studies had one specific element in common: the presupposition of a set of universal aesthetic preferences.

A study conducted by NYU tested whether or not beauty is truly “in the eye of the beholder.” Students were shown 109 paintings representing a number of cultures and historical periods. An MRI was used to measure blood flow within the brain of the subjects as they observed the paintings. Each subject was asked to rate the works on a scale of 1 to 4, depending on how greatly they were affected by each piece. The study showed that while the brain of each individual was engaged in the same way, the parts of the brain related to aesthetics differed from person to person. This leads to the conclusion that while aesthetic experiences are unique to individuals, commonalities still exist.