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My Murals for the Newark Airport:

An Interpretation - By Arshile Gorky

The architectonic two-dimensional surface plane of walls must be retained in mural painting.  How was I to overcome this plastic problem when the subject of my murals was that of the unbounded space of the sky-world of aviation?
How keep the walls from flying away or else crushing together as they would be sure to do in a pictorial narrative?  The problem resolved itself when I considered the new vision that flight has given to the eyes of man. The isle of Manhattan with all its skyscrapers from the view of an aeroplane five miles up becomes but a geographical map, a two-dimensional surface plane. This new perception simplifies the forms and shapes of earth objects.   The thickness of objects is lost and only the space occupied by the object remains.  Such simplifications removes all decorative details and leaves the artist with limitations which become a style, a plastic invention, particular to our time.  How was I to utilize this new concept for my murals? 
   In the popular idea of art, an aeroplane is painted as it might look in a photograph. But such a [[strikethrough]] hackneyed [[/strikethrough]] slavish concept has no architectural unity in the space that it is to occupy nor does it truthfully represent an aeroplane with all its [[strikethrough]] ramifications [[/strikethrough]] relationships. A plastic operation was imperative, and that is why in the first panel of "Activities on the Field" I had to dissect an aeroplane into its constituent parts. An aeroplane is composed of a variety of shapes and forms and I have used such elemental forms as a rudder, a wing, a wheel, a searchlight, etc., to create not only numerical interest, but also to invent within a given wall space, plastic symbols of aviation.

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Transcription Notes:
Completed , top of the title was hard to make out Added a missing sentence piece and words that were striked through. I think "By" should add to the front of "Arshile Gorky"