Some New Yorkers love it; others loathe it. But the 36-foot “Bust of Sylvette” has greeted passersby in a plaza on the Village-SoHo border since 1968.
Sylvette has been around long enough to get landmark status—which it achieved in 2008, along with the three I.M. Pei-designed Silver Towers apartment buildings it fronts between Bleecker and Houston Streets.
Technically it’s not even a Picasso sculpture but a “reinterpretation” of his much smaller “Portrait of Sylvette,” completed in 1934.
Pei asked Picasso to design a monument for him, so he had a collaborator recreate Sylvette by sandblasting her into 60 tons of concrete.
Tags: Bleecker Street, Bust of Sylvette, Houston Street, I.M. Pei, Pablo Picasso, Picasso in New York City, Picasso sculpture, Portrait of Sylvette, Public art in New York City, Silver Towers apartments, University Village apartments
Ephemeral New York 
March 3, 2010 at 4:45 am |
I lived a few blocks away from there at the time. Never cared for it.
March 3, 2010 at 4:47 am |
Me too, as a child. It scared me!
February 15, 2011 at 4:02 pm |
I’m pretty certain you are incorrect making the statement, “…Technically it’s not even a Picasso sculpture but a “reinterpretation”…” If Picasso worked with a collaborator and this piece is based on his drawing from 1934, then it is a Picasso. Most public sculptors collaborate with fabricators, masons, welders, stone-carvers, etc. to build pieces from drawings or scale models. That doesn’t make them any less or work of the artists original piece. When I lived in SoHo and worked at NYU I walked past this piece everyday on my way to work. Not one of my favorite Picasso works of art.
June 21, 2015 at 7:48 pm |
Portrait of Sylvete was completed 1954 not 34
Sylvete David (Lydia Corbett) was born 1934