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30 Rock. Home to NBC Studios and a slew of other business offices, it's an iconic skyscraper in midtown Manhattan, towering 850 feet and capped by the ticketed Top of the Rock Observation Deck. It forms the backdrop to the famous ice-skating Rink at Rockefeller Center and, in December, New York City's largest Christmas tree. Designed by architect Raymond Hood, it was originally named the RCA Building (1933–1988) after its main tenant, and then the GE Building (1988–2015), but since 2015 it has been the Comcast Building.
In June I stopped by to take in the art deco sculptures on the exterior, particularly the three limestone bas-reliefs over the main entrance, depicting Wisdom in the center, flanked by Sound on the left and Light on the right. This sculpture group was carved by Lee Lawrie (1877–1963) and painted and gilded by Léon-Victor Solon (1873–1957), who designed the color scheme for Rockefeller Center. Underneath is a trifold screen comprising 240 rectangular blocks of glass cast in eighty-four different molds, executed by Corning Glass Works.
Lee Lawrie (American, 1877–1963), Wisdom, with Light and Sound, 1933. Polychromed limestone, 240 cast-glass bricks. Comcast Building, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.
I wanted to see how the iconography works, as I knew the central lintel to feature a Bible verse. It's an excerpt from Isaiah 33:6: "And wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times, and strength of salvation: the fear of the LORD is his treasure" (KJV). In this oracle from the eighth century BCE, the prophet Isaiah is speaking to the people of Israel as they face threats from Assyria. He assures them that a wealth of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge is theirs as long as they revere God.
It's not surprising that for this commercial building built in 1933, the biblical quote is truncated to exclude mention of God—the ancient prophet's words are appropriated to suit a modern corporate context in religiously pluralistic America. Instead of (explicitly) honoring a divine source of wisdom and knowledge, the decorative program celebrates human ingenuity, which is practiced by workers inside the building in the fields of media, medicine, law, and finance, among others.
So what of the imagery that this Bible verse captions?
The central figure of this work represents the genius which interprets to the human race the laws and cycles of the cosmic forces of the universe, and thus rules over all of man's activities. On the right of the central panel is represented Light, and on the left, Sound—two of these cosmic forces. The compass of the genius marks, on the glass screen below, the cycles of Light and Sound.
Although there are other cosmic forces which govern the universe, Mr. Lawrie selected those of Light and Sound because they are an active and vital part of everyday life, and particularly because within contemporary times great discoveries have been made by means of them, and man's technical knowledge of the laws of these two forces has been vastly enlarged.
The official title of the sculpture group is Wisdom, a Voice from the Clouds, with Light and Sound. A commanding presence, Wisdom, depicted as a nude male with a long windswept beard, measures, discerns, harnesses, creates. With his right hand he wields a compass to scribe a circle, and with his left he shoves back clouds of ignorance. He embodies humanity's accumulated philosophical and scientific knowledge and creative power. The male and female figures on either side of him "herald the advent of radio (sound) and the motion picture industry and television (light), two industries that were achieving global significance as the Center was being built," the Rockefeller Center website says. Circles emanate from Sound's mouth, and electrical signals from Light's raised arms.
It's a humanistic artwork, exuding optimism and complemented throughout the Center by other works such as the four lobby murals by José Maria Sert collectively titled Man's Intellectual Mastery of the Material Universe (1934), which picture the evolution of machinery, the abolition of slavery, the suppression of war, and the conquest of disease; American Progress (1937), another mural by Sert; Lee Lawrie's bronze Atlas(1937), showing the titular Titan holding the celestial vault on his shoulders; and Paul Manship's gilded bronze Prometheus (1934), depicting the Titan champion of humanity who stole fire (representing technology and culture) from the gods and gave it to humans.
In the art at Rockefeller Center, human agency and advancement are emphasized, but the Christian God is not entirely absent from the narrative they collectively tell. Frank Brangwyn's Man's Search for Eternal Truth (1933) in the south corridor of the 30 Rock lobby addresses the importance of Jesus's teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, particularly on love and brotherhood, depicting modern folks gathered around an elevated Christ figure and an inscription that reads, "Man's ultimate destiny depends not on whether he can learn new lessons or make new discoveries and conquests, but on his acceptance of the lesson taught him close upon two thousand years ago."
A key visual influence on Lawrie's Wisdom sculpture was William Blake's Ancient of Days, a hand-colored relief etching that shows a white-bearded nude male crouching in a heavenly sphere with a large golden compass, creating the world. This is Urizen, a mythological deity invented by Blake to personify reason and law.
William Blake (British, 1757–1827), The Ancient of Days, 1794. Relief etching with watercolor, 23.3 × 16.8 cm. This hand-colored print is the frontispiece to Blake's poem Europe, a Prophecy, copy D, owned by the British Museum in London.
Urizen is a reconfigured version of Yahweh in the Old Testament. The title of Blake's print is taken from a prophetic vision of the Divine in the book of Daniel: "As I looked, thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat. His clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool. His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze" (Dan. 7:9 NIV).
This verse has inspired centuries' worth of iconography picturing God as an old man—because hey, he's ancient (in fact, he's the oldest being there is, as he has always existed), and Daniel saw him with white hair! Also, age and wisdom are traditionally correlated.
Depictions of God the Father as a fully anthropomorphized, aged being with white hair didn't show up until the late Middle Ages and didn't become a trend until the Renaissance.
When medieval artists portrayed scenes from Genesis 1 and 2, they typically cast Christ in the role of Creator, intentionally avoiding depicting the first person of the Trinity, who is spirit, but also drawing on New Testament references like John 1:1–4 and Colossians 1:15–17 that describe Christ as participating in the creation of the universe. They often gave him a compass, an architectural tool, to show him marking out the planet Earth and celestial bodies with studied precision. Christ is sometimes conflated with the person of Wisdom in Proverbs 8, who proclaims that "when he [God] prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth . . ." (v. 27 KJV, emphasis mine).
From a Bible moralisée, France, ca. 1225–50. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 2554, fol. 1v.
From a Bible moralisée, France, ca. 1225–50. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 1179, fol. 1v.
From the Bible of St. Louis (Bible of Toledo), vol. 1, fol. 1v, France, 1226–34. Toledo Cathedral, Toledo, Spain.
From the Holkham Bible Picture Book, England, ca. 1327–35. London, British Library, Add. 47682, fol. 2r.
From a French translation of Augustine's De Civitate Dei (The City of God), France, ca. 1370–80. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Français 22913, fol. 2v.
From the Bible historiale of Jean de Berry, France, 1380–90. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Français 20090, fol. 3r.
From Histoire ancienne, depuis la création (Ancient History, Since Creation), France, 15th century. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Français 250, fol. 13r.
From a Bible historiale, France, 1411. London, British Library, Royal 19 D III, fol. 3.
From a verse redaction of L'Image du monde, France, 1425–50. London, British Library, Harley MS 334, fol. 34v.
In his epic poem Paradise Lost, John Milton describes how the "Omnific Word" created all that is:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and in his hand He [Jesus] took the golden compasses, prepared In God's eternal store, to circumscribe This universe, and all created things: One foot he centered, and the other turned Round through the vast profundity obscure, And said, "Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds, This be thy just circumference, O world." (VII.224–31)
In his making of Ancient of Days, Blake was no doubt influenced by the many visual and literary depictions of God as architect of the universe, as compass-wielding geometer, that came before. And so Lawrie, too, implicitly drew on this heritage when he sculpted the majestic figure of Wisdom for the main building of Rockefeller Center.
At first glance, you might interpret the prominent trio at the Center's entrance as God creating the heavens and the earth, assisted by angels. But while Christian iconography factored into the design, and a Judeo-Christian sacred text forms the inscription, the sculpture group is mainly meant to represent the promise of science and technology.
Construction began at 30 Rockefeller Plaza during the Great Depression (though the Center was conceived prior to that national economic crisis, in 1927); John D. Rockefeller Jr. said he wanted to build a place where New Yorkers could come and surround themselves with art and motifs that celebrated the best of the human spirit. When you step off West 49th or 50th Street into the plaza that's featured in so many New York City–set movies and TV shows, Rockefeller's wish was that you'd feel hopeful and energized.
When I was there, during Pride Month (hence the temporarily rainbow-painted sidewalk), the mood was indeed uplifting, with locals and tourists alike passing through with ice-cream cones and lemonades and conversation. It being summer, the Rink was transformed into an al fresco dining area with umbrella-topped tables providing some relief from the heat.
While my faith in humanity's future is rooted in God and not ultimately our own capabilities, I am obviously grateful for and supportive of progress and achievement. God wants us to grow in knowledge and skill and to use them responsibly and imaginatively to better the world.
In his essay "On Fairy-Stories," J. R. R. Tolkien says that we humans are "sub-creators" under God, expressing the image of our Creator by exercising creativity. While he was talking specifically about writers creating fantasy worlds, the principle applies to people in any vocation, whether you're making a book, a bed, or a nanochip. God bids us, "Create!" That we would see ourselves in Lawrie's Wisdom, crowned and bearing power and authority, is therefore not necessarily arrogant or sacrilegious, as the cultural mandate in Genesis 1:28 charges humans with the noble task of cultivating the stuff of creation, including discovering and leveraging the physical laws of nature, for the flourishing of all.
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