As if a photographer had used a canvas and brushes, Edward Hopper spent his six decades in New York imagining, exploring and painting the megalopolis like no one had ever done before.
Part of this prolific work on the city that hosted him from 1908 to 1967 is part of the “Edward Hopper’s New York” exhibition at the Whitney Museum, which brings together the artist’s largest collection, on his 3,100 listed works and his special relationship with New York.
Works like Automatic (1927), Early Sunday morning (1930), Room in New York (1932), New York film (1939) et Morning sun (1952) are at the center of this exhibition, along with watercolors of roofs and bridges, sketches for his works and documents that shed light on the American artist’s life. In total, more than 200 works from the Whitney Fund and loans from public and private collections make up this exhibition, open until March 2023 in Manhattan.
Some of the pieces on display are from a collection of works that once belonged to a Baptist minister, Arthayer Sanborn, who lived in the 1960s near Hopper’s childhood home. In an October poll, the New York Times he wondered how a shepherd could have accumulated up to 300 works by the painter. Prior to his death in 2007, Sanborn had claimed, without proof, that these were gifts from the Hopper couple or pieces recovered from the artist’s apartment after his death.
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Snapshots of New York
Far from the clichés about the world-city, forest of skyscrapers, incredible cultural mosaic and world financial lung, Hopper’s New York is on a human scale. “Hopper spent most of his life here, just a few blocks from the Whitney Museum”observes Kim Conaty, the curator of the exhibition.
“He knew the same streets and witnessed the permanent cycle of demolitions and reconstructions, like today, where New York constantly reinvents itself”says the expert in a press release from the museum. “Because few have done it so touchingly, Hopper has captured a city that is both mutable and immutable, a special place frozen in time and clearly shaped by his imagination”, concludes Mrs. Conaty.
Hopper preferred unknown, even ignored places, those off the beaten track, to the Manhattan skyline and iconic landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge or the Empire State Building. “I’ve never been interested in the vertical”he once joked. Man liked to isolate himself from the fury of the outside world.
Solitude
From 1913 until her death in 1967, Hopper lived with artist Josephine Nivison Hopper – whom she married and who was also a model for her paintings – in an apartment in Washington Square, Greenwich Village, Lower Manhattan. From a freelance illustrator, he has grown into one of the most famous artists in the country.
A sort of “voyeur”, the painter, born in 1882 in Nyack, a town on the banks of the Hudson River in northern New York, has never stopped exploring the porous boundaries between public and private life: windows, a constant element in the his work, allow you to show both the exterior and the interior of a building.
Hopper described this experience as a “Common visual sensation”. He paints fireplaces, empty buildings, shops, bridges and everyday scenes of loneliness. The painter’s particular light can cause a stir “Scary, very dark” and also a sensation “empty”explains Jennifer Tipton, specialist in lighting for the theater, cited by the Whitney Museum.
