Divergent views

In Robert Frost’s 1916 poem “The Road Not Taken”, he wrote:

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both”.

A dilemma that applies in cities as much as in forests, and metaphorically in life in general. The eternal “what ifs?”, the junctions and forking paths of decisions and fate. However, though one may not be able to journey along both routes, at least for the time being, there are occasions when it is possible to view both, taking a slightly boz-eyed  and divergent perspective to the scene. One of the most famous artistic renditions of this situation is surely “Paris Street: Rainy Day” painted in 1877 by the French Impressionist, Gustave Caillebotte, depicting a complex street intersection in the Quartier de l’Europe in the 8th arrondissement, and recently star of the show at a disappointingly meagre exhibition at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, whence the photo below:

Curiously, there’s a very similar work called “Rainy Day Boston”, painted in 1885 by the American artist Childe Hassam. Quite apart from both portraying a wet day in a city, these paintings share a surprisingly overall similarity in terms of structure and perspective, showing divergent streets with sharply angled buildings between them, in effect, offering to the eyes two focal points. Hassam was aware of Caillebotte’s work in general terms, although I don’t know if he had seen this particular painting, from eight years earlier, and there is no suggestion of plagiarism. 

And then there’s my own, done with full awareness of both of the above, but based on a photograph I took five years ago in the Place de Dublin, just a short distance up the rue de St Petersbourg from the Place de l’Europe:

Such works may sensitise us to one not uncommon theme of urban infrastructure and groundplan. Once we have seen these paintings, such arrangements are rendered more easily noticeable, and we become more aware of them. They are to be found at Times Square, for instance, at the Flatiron Building, and at other intersections where Broadway crosses north-south avenues in Manhattan, and they abound in Haussmannised Paris and, especially, in other rigidly planned cities and city districts. Anywhere that an orthogonal grid of streets admits an angled intruder you’ll find them: in Barcelona, Rome and Washington, DC, for instance, and even in Pimlico, SW1.

Once alerted, one starts looking for this pattern elsewhere, recognising how it features, for instance, in many of the photorealist paintings by Anthony Brunelli, in works such as “Court and Chenango” and “Main Street”, both from 1994. Diagonals, acute corners, divergent perspectives. This particular geometric feature lends itself to an odd species of energetic and visual excitement, for those so inclined, and often makes for an attractive fragment of cityscape. It doesn’t really have a name, it’s merely a minor subjectively geographical trope, just one component in the syntax of the streets which, when pointed out, can encourage our everyday perceptions to be organised a little differently, and perhaps made more enjoyable. One might even dream up a modern day equivalent of the “I Spy” or “Observer’s” book, probably an app that you could consult as you flâneured your way around – so you could declare to your companion, “oh look, it’s one of those”, and score yourself twenty five points.