Prometheus and Sky Mirror, part one

Anish Kapoor's Sky Mirror, on view at Rockefeller Center until the end of this week, couldn't be more perfect. It's not Kapoor's best work, but the combination of art object, the time, and the place makes a perfect art historical rhyme. To understand why, let's first go back to 1915.

Influenced by the Widener family (whose Old Masters, European decorative arts, and so on fill the National Gallery), John D. Rockefeller, Jr. hired John Singer Sargent to paint his father's portrait. The two men got along better than anyone expected, and when Sargent suggested that Rockefeller sit for a bust by a sculptor named Paul Manship, Rockefeller assented.

Manship had a pedigree that Rockefeller was likely to appreciate. He had studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Art Students League and he learned to infuse his work with classical references after he won the coveted Prix de Rome. In between-the-wars America, Manship's mixture of allegory, neo-classicism and softened modern lines was mighty popular: It tied America's new wealth and broadened ambition, as demonstrated on an international scale by America's involvement in World War I, with past empires. The two busts Manship made of Rockefeller were a great hit and a relationship between sculptor and patrons was forged.

A decade later, in the middle of the Great Depression, Junior would build Rockefeller Center. The project was, from beginning to end, a great challenge. Junior started the project just before the stock market crashed in 1929, and no one expected it to succeed. After all, who needed millions of new square feet of office space at a time of economic catastrophe?

But, obviously, Junior pushed forward. He even stuffed Rockefeller Center with art, including work by Isamu Noguchi, Margaret Bourke-White, and Lee Lawrie. The most famous work at Rock Center was created by an artist with whom Junior had a prior relationship: Paul Manship.

Manship's Prometheus is one of the most famous sculptures in America. It presents Prometheus in the heavens, just after he has acquired fire. He has not yet brought it back to earth. He hovers above the signs of the zodiac, more floating with the gods than falling back to earth. The sculpture is a faithful, selective representation of the Prometheus myth: Prometheus created man out of clay figures that came to life when Athena breathed life into them. Later on, Prometheus nobly stole fire from the hearth of the gods and brought it down to man, only to be punished by Zeus, who sent an eagle peck at his liver for eternity.

Manship's sculpture, installed near the base of Rock Center's tallest building, is an allegorical glorification of Junior and the Rockefeller Center story. Rockefeller created a major urban development at a time of national crisis; He breathed fire into the city. And because of the aggressive way Rockefeller pursued tenants and other business dealings perceived to be monopolistic, he was excoriated by the press and the public. Manship had known the Rockefellers for years -- he knew how mixing the Prometheus myth with the Rockefeller story would appeal to his patrons. The result is a sculpture that stands in for the story of the Rockefellers, their development, and America, all joined by Manship's aesthetic. Seventy years later, it still works.

Related (and corrected): Manship was last surveyed in a 1989 retrospective at what is now the Smithsonian American Art Museum. (Thanks NW.) Studies for Prometheus in SAAM's collection. Daniel Okrent's history of Rockefeller Center, at 72 percent off.