Existing comment:
Marketplace
Raoul Middleman, 1985
Raoul Middleman, Baltimore artist and long-time faculty member at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), has brought together his personal experiences of growing up in Baltimore with scenes of the harbor that remained much the same for decades prior to the 1970s when redevelopment altered it almost beyond recognition.
THe painting is focused on the fountain that was the focus of Marketplace. On one side was the fish market (now Port Discovery -- the Children's Museum) and on the other, the old farmers market built on a marsh and called the Marsh Market, in local vernacular, the "Mash Market." Colorful horse-drawn carts, with vendors called Arrabers, bought produce to sell around the city and watered their horses at the fountain. Harbor scenes from the Domino Sugars sign to Federal Hill, from freighters to the power plant (now an entertainment venue) to the dome of City Hall, form the background for a lively collection of colorful Baltimore figures. Friends and family of the artist populate the foreground. Baltimore's famous journalist, H.L. Mencken, peers from a window in the upper right.
Middleman's grandfather had a tobacco store a block from Marketplace. The artist lived and worked in the area in the 1960s and 1970s, painting many harbor scenes on his French easel. Those images were incorporated in this painting, which was first commissioned for a movie theatre on Marketplace.
Marketplace is on loan to the Baltimore Convention Center from the Maryland Institute College of Art. |