Stephen Wiltshire turned a brief aerial view of New York into a sprawling drawing made from memory.
The British artist worked publicly at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute during the last week of October 2009, rendering the city across a long sheet of paper.
An aerial view became a panorama
Wiltshire’s official account describes a 20-minute helicopter flight followed by drawing from memory.
The scene brought together streets, bridges and buildings in a carefully developed panorama. The work took days to complete; the often-repeated 20 minutes refers to the flight, not the time spent drawing.
His official November 2009 announcement confirms completion of the New York work.
An individual artist’s practice
Wiltshire is autistic and has become known internationally for detailed cityscapes. His particular abilities should not be presented as a general characteristic of autistic people.
The project was also more than a memory demonstration. It involved artistic selection, drawing technique and the sustained work of organizing a complex city on paper.
New York formed part of a larger series of urban panoramas. Seeing the drawing as an artwork, alongside the unusual process behind it, gives a fuller account of why audiences came to watch him work.