Eric Drooker’s “Grand Central Terminal”

The story of any crisis is told, in part, through images. In the weeks since the coronavirus appeared Stateside, cities across the country have seen their businesses, subways, and public spaces become ghosts of their normal selves. One such space, featured on Eric Drooker’s cover, is Grand Central Terminal—a building that, on any normal day, sees hundreds of thousands of people walk through its doors. We recently talked to Drooker about how he and his art have been affected by quarantine.

Artists and writers tend to work alone. Do you always work from home, or has your routine shifted since the pandemic?

I typically work at home, seven days a week, in a solitary studio, so my daily routine hasn’t changed that much . . . yet. (When I step out into the city, it’s a different story, of course.) Over the years, I’ve completed some of my best art during protracted storms, blizzards, and man-made catastrophes.

This image evokes the public art created under the Works Progress Administration, during the Great Depression. Has the pandemic changed your notions of what public art should look like in times of crisis?

I always loved the public art of the nineteen-thirties. I’m drawn not only to the democratic aesthetic of the W.P.A. but to the very concept of public works. During the New Deal, the U.S. government actually hired artists to create grand works in public places. And the experiment was hugely successful; it gave relief to thousands of Americans—and meaning to millions—and helped pull the country out of the Great Depression. In recent decades, concepts such as “public space” and “public health” are often branded as socialist, but many of my images are influenced by the art of that era.

Are there artists whom you turn to for solace in times of upheaval?

Francisco Goya immediately comes to mind; I find myself returning, in times of tumult, to his etchings. Pieter Bruegel, James Baldwin, and, recently, Emil Ferris have helped me through many a long, dark night. And I’m as inspired as the next guy by Bill Shakespeare. He’s thought to have written some of his best plays (“King Lear,” “Macbeth”) while the theatres were closed during an outbreak of bubonic plague.

What has been your main source of news for the pandemic?

I read a wide variety of newspapers, and especially the foreign press, which generally gives a more nuanced, rounded, and relevant picture than U.S. media.

See below for other covers that were published during times of crisis: