School of the Visual Arts presents the Turn of the Century A Carousel
Date1999
Dimensions28 x 22 in. (71.1 x 55.9 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LinePoster House Permanent Collection
Object numberPH.2025.37
DescriptionThis poster promotes an exhibition, The Turn of the Century: A Carousel Celebrating 100 Years of Ups and Downs, created by students at the School of Visual Arts in New York at Grand Central Station in 1999. They refurbished a 90-year-old Victorian-style carousel and installed 30 objects representing key figures of the 20th century in place of the original horses. The carousel played music and spun a range of characters, including Ghandi, Einstein, Louis Armstrong, Elvis, Cookie Monster, Liberace, and Dolly the cloned sheep. Rafał Olbińsk, a Polish-born artist, emigrated to the United States in 1982 and quickly established a hugely successful career as painter, illustrator, and designer. He is especially well-known for his opera posters and for his cover illustrations for numerous magazines, among them Time, Newsweek, and the New Yorker. Olbińsk began teaching at the School of Visual Arts in 1985. The composition he made for this SVA project showing a girl dancing against a bright blue sky in a red dress whose skirt falls in the shape of a carousel reflects the poetic surrealism for which his work is known. Many of his designs also feature young women set against white-clouded blue skies like this one, some of them in similar red dresses.On View
Not on view
1960
