Michelangelos To Go
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Imagine, just for a second, that you are a hip-hop mogul with an enormous new home movie theater. You need to decorate it. But how? With the room’s finest moments occurring in the dark, shelling out for blue-chip art would be a waste. But when the lights come up, naked walls just won’t do – minimalism, however expensive, won’t wow your guests. Richard Solomon, a longtime artist representative and head of the newly formed company Art on a Grand Scale, envisions the perfect solution: Have one of his 20 or so artists paint a streetscape that you love, or an evocative scene in a jazz club or cafe, or even a portrait of you and your friends. Mr. Solomon will then have the picture digitally enlarged and mounted on a vinyl wall to cover the walls of your movie hall.
It’s an easy way to get a mural for relatively little money: a Michelangelo on a Michael Madsen budget. Granted, it’s still not a giveaway: at minimum, a project will cost around $10,000. But it’s still faster and cheaper than hiring a mural artist – and maybe you can reuse the image for your next album cover.
Mr. Solomon’s previous projects have typically appeared in offices or business places. An early collaboration with artist Gary Kelley in 1995 – a dusty tableau in which literary lions like Whitman, Wilde, and James gather for a drink – enlivens Barnes & Noble cafes around the country. Solomon artist Natalie Ascencios created the painting of Algonquin wits Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker that haunts the Algonquin Hotel’s Oak Room. And the MTA recently commissioned another of Mr. Solomon’s artists, Stephen Johnson, to create a public art piece saluting all things Brooklyn – originally done on paper but then rendered on mosaic tile for installation – that was unveiled in the Dekalb Avenue subway station this January.
Though he generally extols the romantic charms of old-fashioned illustration, Mr. Solomon is no luddite. He has at least one photographer on his roster, and is currently working with a group of multimedia artists on a top-secret public art display in a major transportation hub. Visit Mr. Solomon’s Web site, www.richardsolomon.com, for a look book of available illustrators and a gallery of completed projects.
