ROCKEFELLER SERTS

The Rockefeller Centre roof has by far the best and most dramatic view over New York, both up and downtown, the horizon measured against the Empire State Building's proud silhouette, Liberty Island off to the right. Raymond Hood's architecture is as good up there as it is at ground level, where Lee Lawrie made the relief over the front door, above left. It's inside the main lobby that the real treasure lies, for me. I should despise Jose-Maria Sert's murals, not only for their anachronism but because they were commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller to replace Diego Rivera's fresco when the fiery Mexican communist refused to remove a portrait of Lenin, not part of the approved design, but I love Sert's work. I love his crazy Baroque vision, his louche style, his circus compositions. I love that his preferred medium was oil on gold or, better still, platinum leaf. 

A giant worker, above, atop the fluted Art Deco columns, while threatening, gathering clouds of airplanes seem to herald the war to come, in the ceiling painting, titled Time. War, instead, top right, has an evil gang playing football with a globe. Two of the elevator banks, below, feature construction and machinery that seems to reflect the vast mechanism of the building itself.