Ranan Lurie Unveils a Painting Designed to Travel
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 11.03.05 | 5:30 AM ET
It’s called the Uniting Painting, and it debuted Tuesday in the lobby of U.N. headquarters in New York. But the man behind the painting, political cartoonist Ranan Lurie, envisions an ever-changing work of art that will extend out the U.N.‘s doors, across the East River and througout the world. “I do not have one single country where it was offered that has turned it down,” Lurie told the Voice of America’s Barbara Schoetzau. “Right now we have South Africa’s Ministry of Culture. We have South Korea wanting to do it with the purpose of spreading the painting to North Korea. And that will be the tendency, to spread it around and in different phases, slowly but surely bringing a uniting painting that lives up to its title.”
Lurie started working on it in 1968, seeking to create a work of art that would travel the world and adapt to its changing environments. The shape and colors of the painting will change, Schoetzau writes, but the undulating lines will stay the same.
What spurred the idea? “I once looked at a painting and said, ‘The poor guy is stuck on the wall. How sad. No horizons, cannot take any trips.’ I thought, why should it not take a trip? Why should it not start moving? Why should it not start delivering its own motif left and right, north and south. And this is the way it started, and I was fascinated to see what kind of opportunities you have here to deliver a motif that can travel and make its own decisions.”
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
