Making Art by Day, Guarding It by Night.
Greg Kwiatek, a painter, at his studio in the garment district in Manhattan, April 21, 2023. Over 25 years walking the museum’s midnight shift, Kwiatek learned how to look for the hidden subtleties of paintings, which helped inform his own. (Victor Llorente/The New York Times)
NEW YORK, NY.- The small hours of the morning — when the galleries were empty, hushed and dim — were Greg Kwiatek’s favorite part of his 25 years as a night guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, when he could spend hours looking at a single painting like El Greco’s “Christ Carrying the Cross,” J.M.W. Turner’s “Whalers” or Johannes Vermeer’s “A Maid Asleep.”
Then, shortly after sunrise, Kwiatek, now 74, went home to his rent-controlled railroad flat apartment in Hoboken, New Jersey ($557 a month) to work on his own paintings, which were often inspired by those he’d guarded at the museum.
Now Kwiatek’s work is on view, through May 14, in a small group show at Fierman Gallery on the Lower East Side.
“He developed a very intimate relationship with much of the collection, and a lot of that has really permeated his practice,” said Alissa Friedman, who organized the show, “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,” which includes work by artists Chonon Bensho and Amy Bessone. “Some of his works are direct homages.”
Working at the Met taught Kwiatek how to look. When the Met had a Francis Bacon retrospective in 2009, for example, Kwiatek said he logged about 70 hours.
“You get an hour to do a route,” Kwiatek said in a recent interview at his cramped garment district studio, referring to one of the museum’s seven sections. “I would do a route in maybe 40 minutes, and then I would have 20 minutes to focus on one piece. I got to know some paintings pretty well by doing that.”
Kwiatek is emblematic of a large but little-known swath of the art world — those who have never been famous and likely never will be but doggedly, passionately keep at it anyway.
His paintings are quiet and understated. He often makes versions of the same image repeatedly — in particular a series inspired by a 1906 photograph of Paul Cézanne carrying his paintings. The small ones go for about $5,000; the larger ones for about $20,000. He also painstakingly sews needlepoint images, many of which echo his paintings of the moon and sun.
A tall, solid man from a Polish family in Pittsburgh, Kwiatek radiates the taciturn intensity of an introvert who would much rather be communing with paintings than humans.
Indeed, this is what made Kwiatek gravitate toward the overnight shift at the Met in 1987, where he worked until retirement in 2011. “I’m not a people person,” Kwiatek said. “I figured by working at night, I wouldn’t have to deal with the public much.”
The schedule wasn’t easy — working from 12:15 a.m. to 8:20 a.m. and then going home to paint meant he was always tired. But the lifestyle suited him. And he took pride in the work.
“My job was to walk at least four hours a night,” Kwiatek said. “You know every square inch of this building — you’re doing surveillance. You cover every gallery, every catwalk, every roof, cellar, offices, bathroom. You’re looking for fire and water and so on.”
It’s been over a decade since Kwiatek last walked these routes, yet the Met’s physical plant remains in his bones. “Route Three includes European painting, painting conservation, Japanese art, musical instruments, Arms and Armor,” he said. “The Rockefeller wing, that would be Route Six. You’re looking at all the cases. You’re looking at that boat that’s hanging from the ceiling.
“We’re drinking 20 cups of coffee a day. I would sleep an hour on my lunch break at 4 o’clock in the morning,” he continued. “You’re living with works of genius. And I’m not a genius. But I knew that what I had the privilege of guarding — it was otherworldly.”
Kwiatek was featured in Alexandra M. Isles’ 2011 documentary “Hidden Treasures: Stories from a Great Museum” talking about the layers in El Greco’s “View of Toledo.”
“From this point of view, this modest-size painting looks like a very large painting, the details are not clear — is it a landscape? Is it an abstraction? Maybe it’s a mirage,“ Kwiatek says in the film. “The hidden subtleties will not reveal themselves unless one is willing to come back time and time again and live with this work in an extended relationship.”
Growing up near Polish Hill in Pittsburgh — where his father worked in the steel mill, and his mother crocheted in front of soap operas — Kwiatek got his first exposure to art at the historic Immaculate Heart of Mary Church, which was influenced by baroque and Renaissance architecture.
areudirty
theartofmadeline
turnnoffyourmind
vaporwave
blakekathryn
kianamaiart
izzy806
