b"recent park panoramas. It is a view from the parks south-east corner, just inside the Wien Walk at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street. The eponymous Sherman statue stands in the distance, ringed by a halo of blossoming pear trees and streaking taxis. Along the periphery we nd the people, buildings, plants, and animals seen at this intersection on any typical day. But Ruttenberg has REVELATIONsacralized the streetscape with the suggestion of something unseen. We are invited into the picture by a pair of ghostly gures in the foreground. Ruttenberg has borrowed their poses from Decades would pass before Ruttenberg brought those perceptive powers to Central Park. TheMarcantonio Raimondis engraving of The Judgment of Paris (circa 1510), which was based on idea to do so came from a fellow artist. In the 1980s, the neoclassical painter James Childsa drawing by Raphael, who had originally adapted the reclining gures from ancient sarcophagi brought a skylit studio on Columbus Avenue to Ruttenbergs attention. He suggested she takehe saw in Rome. Over three and a half centuries later, these same gures would inspire Manets advantage of the studios location by nding interesting subjects to depict in the park. Howpicnickers in Le djeuner sur l'herbe and, later still, reemerge many times in modern and contem-corny, Rutternberg thought at rst, I would never do that. But a seed had been planted and,porary art, as they do in some of Ruttenbergs earliest images of Central Park. over time, she found herself closely observing the human pageant unfolding every day on the parks lawns, lanes, and promenades as she walked from her home on the East Side to her studioAround the turn of the millennium, she took to visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Arts rooftop on the West. During one such walk, a revelation appeared in the form of a stunning, multi-racialsculpture garden to study, photograph, and sketch the south-facing vista. This elevated perch woman nursing her baby. The scene riveted Ruttenbergs attentionthe artist had raised fourafforded her an extreme wide-angle perspective on the parks leafy canopy below and the skyline children of her ownand the thought struck her: Oh my God, this is subject matter. Ive got tobeyond, stretching across the breadth of midtown Manhattan. At times, she recorded the scenery get to work. What Ruttenberg saw beneath that tender tableau of mother and child was the veryon several sheets of paper which, when aligned horizontally, gave rise to (continued on page 27) soul of Central Parkits arresting beauty and diversity; its ageless comforts and constant renewaland, since then, she has sought to paint that soul in its myriad manifestations.ABOVE J udgment of Paris with Central Park Skyline, 2013-2020, watercolor, graphite, cut-paper collage on unprimed linen, 16 x 70 inches.OVERLEAFGeneral Sherman, 20072013, oil, graphite, paper collage, and As an entry point into Ruttenbergs work, let us take the 2007-2013 multi-media painting Generalgold leaf on canvas; 82 x 180 inches, with projected video. The video frame of 128 synchronized LCD Sherman, one that brings together the elements that appear under different guises in her morescreens was added 2019. 1819"