In A New York Minute 

Dan Graziano's painting captures a New York taxi in oil on what appears to be a small canvas. The composition directs us immediately to that yellow cab, halted at a zebra crossing in a typically congested city street. Painted perhaps in the twenty-first century, this image is part of a longer tradition of urban realism, that captures the rhythms of working-class life. In its use of high-keyed colour and gestural brushwork, we might detect an effort to reclaim painting as a vehicle for conveying the energy and dynamism of modern life. A key resource here might be the artist's other cityscapes: are there common themes? As a historian, I'm interested in how this canvas presents an established set of visual codes to suggest an enduring sense of place. As our cities change, how might the artist help us to recognize what has been lost?