Gramercy Tavern

Cornucopia (1993-1994), is a twenty panel mural that was commissioned by restaurant owner Danny Meyer
for Gramercy Tavern, located in the Flatiron District of Manhattan.

“My studio is right next to Union Square Café, and I was sitting at the bar eating lunch sometime in 1986 or ’87 when I first met Danny Meyer, who was then maître d’. He visited my studio and said, “Your work is far better than what’s at the restaurant,” and then he bought a piece. A few years later, he approached me. “I know you are a serious painter and your work is collected in the best museums, but would you consider doing something for the new restaurant we’re planning. Something bold?” From seeing my work, Danny assumed I’d choose flowers. But I wanted to do food – vegetables and fruit. Art and food go very well together. I thought of Sandro Chia’s mural at the old Palio in Midtown, of the Kronenhalle in Zurich, of Matisse’s Still Life with Oysters.

“The commission came at a remarkably good time. I was about to sell my house upstate, and I really needed something to throw myself into. Danny gave me the guidelines: this would be a country inn that had been in the family for several generations, transported to New York City. I came up with the idea to use colors that would have been used in colonial America. The project was huge: Twenty canvases, each five feet square.  It was so big that just one wall of the painting took up a wall and a half of my studio.

“I began sketching to guide myself. It was summer. I drew vegetables from my garden. I wanted things that could grow in this region, but a little off: a persimmon, black radishes. I only work from life. I need to draw the thing. But there’s no seasonal theme: asparagus, in the painting, are black. Bold browns, fuschia, and turquoise were my inevitable rebellion against early American. I love the pineapple, a symbol of hospitality that ship captains returned with from the Caribbean and put in front of their houses, a classic New England trope.

“I worked every day for a year. I wanted the touch to be the same. I was totally warmed up. If you look very closely at the painting, you can see that I used quite a few layers of paint; that I embedded leaves from the neighborhood in the paint, that I extended objects across the canvases; and that there is no shading. It is very flat, Asian, a Matisse-like drawing that suggests volume.

 I was excited when the painting was installed, eight panels each on the east and west walls, four across the back. It looked better than I had hoped. Afterward, I had dozens of phone calls from restaurants. My answer: “I won’t be rushed and I am very expensive.” Today, when I walk over to the bar at Gramercy and have a drink with an out-of-town dealer and sit under the paintings, well, that’s one of the perks.” — Robert Kushner

From The Gramercy Tavern Cookbook by Chef Michael Anthony