New York: Finger Paintings by Jorge Colombo

By Jorge Colombo, Jen Bekman and Christoph Neimann

If New York City is a state of mind, then Jorge Colombo captures the metropolis' thoughts like no other. Colombo's beautiful illustrations of New York City have graced the cover of The New Yorker several times, brilliantly depicting icons such as silhouetted rooftop water towers, the illuminated Chrysler Building at night, Fifth Avenue in the snow, or the ubiquitous hot dog stand. All of the images were finger painted on location on an iPhone; to passerby walking by the artist, he simply appeared to be sending text messages or reading a very long email. This sophisticated volume presents one hundred of his best pieces in full colour, accompanied by his recollections and comentaries about each location. Every scene is unmistakably New York: familiar, grand, timeless, yet filtered by modern, cutting-edge technology. Immediately recognizable to native New Yorkers, but also perfect for anyone who admires the Big Apple, this is a monograph of an artist and of a city.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chronicle Books Digital
• Release date: Dec 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452111971

Jorge Colombo

Jorge Colombo, a Portuguese-born illustrator, designer, and photographer, has lived in the USA for more than twenty years, and he has been depicting American urban landscape ever since. His lushly rendered scenes are currently finger painted from life, on location, and using an iPhone, bringing the idea of traditional outdoor easel painting into the 21st century. Regularly released as 20x200.com limited edition prints, his images have appeared several times on the cover of The New Yorker, and there is a blog devoted to his work, Finger Paintings, on newyorker.com. His view of the city and his art are influenced by Woody Allen movies, Edward Hopper paintings, and Arthur Getz illustrations, among others. His first cover for The New Yorker, in June 2009, was the first time a smartphone-created image made the cover of a magazine.

Book preview

NEW YORK

FINGER PAINTINGS BY JORGE COLOMBO

with essays by Jen Bekman and Christoph Niemann

For my aunt Teresa Colombo.

40TH STREET AND EIGHTH AVENUE

BROADWAY AND 72ND STREET

Contents

DEDICATION

INVISIBLE CITY by CHRISTOPH NIEMANN

HOME TURF by JEN BEKMAN

FIELD WORK by JORGE COLOMBO

NOTES by JORGE COLOMBO

ABOUT the AUTHOR

COPYRIGHT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INVISIBLE CITY

BY CHRISTOPH NIEMANN

LEXINGTON AND 53RD STREET

MY FAVORITE DRAWING IN THIS BOOK IS THE NIGHT VIEW OF THE CHRYSLER Building viewed from Lexington Avenue. It’s not Jorge’s drawing though—it belongs to me.

The chaotic and blurry mix of car and traffic lights. The patterns of night-lit office windows. The Chrysler Building, hovering above the scene like an aristocratic spaceship. I have carried that image in my head for years.

Actually, before I saw this drawing it was not one image, it was a hundred images. I have looked at this street scene countless times: getting out from the airport shuttle at Grand Central, all dizzy and jet lagged on my first trip to New York, racing to catch a Metro North train on a Friday night for a trip upstate, or walking back from a midtown dinner, late at night, fighting for a cab and usually ending up taking the subway after all. There must be millions of photos of this very view, but each of them can only represent a single facet. Jorge, on the other hand, has taken this whole pile of my accumulated mental snapshots and melted them into a single piece of art.

Like many illustrators, I constantly scout life in New York for new and unusual facets, trying to connect to the reader through high-strung irony and multi-layered references. Jorge reminds me that there is a much straighter path to the viewer’s mind: he wanders around town and visually records everything he sees. He devotes an even artistic love to everything he sees, whether it is a majestic skyscraper or a run-down highway bridge.

When you spend years living in a city, there comes the moment when it becomes so familiar that it almost appears invisible. Jorge seemingly just puts his focus on the surface of things, filters it through his eyes and hands, and thus helps me re-appreciate the city.

In art school, they teach you to always keep a sketchbook, and I sometimes regret not spending more time to record my very subjective impressions of New York. Looking at Jorge’s drawings, however, it is a relief to see that somebody else can actually do that for me.

HOME TURF BY JEN BEKMAN

EVEN BEFORE I’D SEEN HIS WORK, JORGE AND I WERE friendly for years. I had the pleasure of chatting with him at cocktail parties and openings at my gallery—these encounters were later supplemented with a steady stream of online banter that kept (and continues to keep) me apprised of his constant creative output. As our friendship evolved, I paid keener attention to those updates, but it was a post on the venerable Design Observer’s website that tipped me off to the iSketches that are the subject of this book. Immediately intrigued by work that unified two of my abiding passions—NYC and technology—I was thrilled to discover that my mustachioed friend had created it, and thrilled again when he quickly agreed to work with us at 20x200 to publish physical prints of his heretofore-virtual works.

Like those prints, the drawings that follow are the result of Jorge’s lifelong dedication to being an artist, both in training and trade. A master in multiple mediums, Jorge has made a seamless transition from notebook sketches, illustrations, and paintings, to iPhone drawings. He was among the very first to adopt this most modern of media — the touch screen of his iPhone and a popular app called Brushes.

As he wrote in the original statement that accompanied his prints on 20x200, they’re "drawn on location using an iPhone application called Brushes. No photo references, no tablets, no brushes to wash: just my finger on the tiny touch screen. Don’t even need a proper light: