The 9/11 paintings are from photos in the New York Times, of the atrociously sublime day I experienced and saw outside my apartment in SoHo, and, soon thereafter, with my NYU students (in time for the first tower to fall) in Washington Park. I tried to have empathy and compassion for each of the victims I painted, hoping that I could do something to help them, or at least the memory of them and their experience, and ours, by painting these pictures—the most difficult images I have ever worked upon. They really seemed like a world lost, or like our ship at sea, compounded by the fact that at the time of painting Wall Street had just crashed and we were in an ideological war for our president and what he and America stood for.

We had heard the planes fly overhead from our tiny apartment and went out in the street and saw the hole in the building with the tiny people inside from our view on the corner of Sullivan and Prince streets, along with all the other dazed onlookers that morning. I had to teach at NYU, and went to class in a state of shock—my students were there in a similar state—it was one of the first weeks of school for a freshman drawing class, and I told them I didn’t know what else to do but to go “and draw this event”… Art wasn’t necessarily therapy, but school hadn’t been canceled, I didn’t feel like teaching composition “via the gag cartoon” as I had previously planned for that day, and that we should go to Washington Square Park and deal with it by drawing it. We got there in time for the first tower to fall. The adults in the park were screaming and crying, my students were great and hugged and consoled them—I told them, “Class is canceled, go home and call your parents and tell them you are okay,” and went back myself to be with Andrew, and call my father, who had been staying with our cousin uptown and had no idea what was happening.

Dad and I had just been to the Staten Island Ferry the day before, weirdly serendipitously went to Fort Sumter the day before, and commented on how the United States had never been attacked in our domestic country, Hawaii excluded, and commented on the Towers, how my sister used to work there—that night we even ate at a local restaurant, and my Dad asked how to get uptown, and I had mentioned you can always see the Twin Towers and know your directions!). He had saved the papers that day, and mentioned to me that I should really paint from the pictures—at that time there was no way I could do this—I never would want to “exploit the situation” and could only paint it by way of allegory. But after years of nightmares of the people falling (being a John Lennon fan I would reach out to the people in the dream, exclaiming, “All you need is love!”) I finally dug out the papers, went to the NY Picture Collection, and being a son of a psychoanalyst, painted these images.

I also painted three works with the intention of having them hang together as a sort of triptych. I designed them so that the first image Empathy for Those in the Towers, would be on the left, Ode to Falling Man would be in the middle, and Compassion for Those in the Towers would be on the right.

These, along with the 9/11 painting at the Whitney that was exhibited as part of the inaugural exhibition of the new Whitney, were the hardest paintings I have ever painted. I had nightmares of the people falling for years, and finally decided to paint these images to “get the nightmares out.” While painting these, the only way I could do it was to listen to tapes of the Dalai Lama, monks singing and chanting, and in quiet meditation—I would break down in tears often. Each time I painted one of the victims, I would recite a Buddhist prayer for their behalf, and tried my best to have empathy and compassion and to take on the suffering for each and relieve them of their suffering, painting the images in homage to their lives. I had never seen the famous “Falling Man” image, as they kept it from us New Yorkers and it wasn’t published in local publications when it happened, and we had no access to the bigger world. When painting it, it felt that the edifice of the Tower was opening into another world, and I hope that the “falling man” was entering a sort of heaven, an otherworldly transcendence I hope all the victims and heroes of the tragedy were able to find.

Adam Weinberg at the Whitney, in my “Breakfast with the Director” talk with him during the My American Dream painting installation at the Biennial, mentioned he most thinks of me as a “history painter,” and truly, it is my goal to have these paintings serve as a reminder of what happened, and the emotions it might have invoked.

I was also inspired by Monet’s train paintings (that were radical in their time, as painters didn’t paint contemporary technology/industry, but seem conservative now with age), and Turner’s Burning of the Houses of Parliament and Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons. Like Turner, I wanted to depict these scenes that I witnessed, to remember those who lost their lives in this tremendous tragedy that changed our world, and like Monet, wanted to paint from my heart depictions of my contemporary life that brought out the synesthetic qualities of that day, and that was of a scene that was fundamentally important to our modern world. I think if there is anything edgy about the paintings, it is that they are “conservative” and traditional type of history oil paintings but done in a contemporary time. Also, I’m pleased once again to mention that I have never had any adverse reaction to any of these works—quite the opposite, as it seems that people are moved by them in a way that perhaps people who once saw paintings like this in history were moved as they depicted scenes that had affected their lives in a painterly manner. People were really moved by the 9/11 paintings. I was super nervous about them, but I only received good responses—I watched people go into the room, standing between the images of the people in the two buildings, and begin to cry. This wasn’t my intention, but, I have to say, I was overwhelmed that the viewers were able to feel and experience, synesthetically, what I felt about that horrible day and time. It made me feel that I had successfully conveyed what I wanted to express: emotion, remembrance, honor, and so on. Perhaps the abstracted, unconscious elements were part of this experience as the viewers’ brains perceived the image, I don’t know.

There is something that comes between content and form, signifier and signified. It’s the mortar between the bricks, perhaps it has to do with brain perception, but also perhaps it has to do with the Buddhist interpretation of the self, or even an idea of the “soul.” I don’t know if I’m the only one on this path, but as a monk for art and a pilgrim for artistic journeys, I hope I have a lot of fellow travelers who are passionate about their pursuits.

It very much pleased me that the paintings were accepted donations to institutions—not to private hands—in cities that were affected by this horrible tragedy—the 9-11 triptych to the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, and the 9-11 painting to the Whitney.(Since the time of this initial entry writing, the Corcoran has sadly closed but I’m proud that the triptych is now part of the American University Museum in Washington, DC.)