Edward Hopper – Show Stopper: An afternoon at the Whitney Museum of Art (NYC)

Well.. I did end up connecting two loose themes in my life this afternoon…they hovered… not around the edges waiting to be noticed… but like an old set of mismatched bookends…  putting them together seemed neither obvious nor necessary..

The occasion … an Edward Hopper retrospective… introspective? The weather was perfect…a cold clear, sunny winter afternoon. The location – less so – that dismal concrete monstrosity that houses the… Whitney Museum of American Art . The free audio tour is worth it… and so is the ticket ($15).

The first painting “Early Sunday Morning” …has a fairly neat audio commentary – almost ‘art critic’ routine… when Art Spiegelman (of Maus fame) chimes in.

 Early Sunday Morning (on exhibit)

His musings from the perspective of a comic artist was well… humbling. Art chatters on about quadrinos (Spanish for comics).. compares the fire hydrant and the barbershop sign to R2D2 and C3PO, and does to one’s ear what he usually does to one’s eye. Art on Art!

Also on exhibit was Soir Bleu … Paris, worker, clown, whore and bourgeoisie… all mingle under chinese lanterns on water’s edge. More elements of comic art… inspiration for Metal Hurlant?

 

“New York Movie House” (see way below) captured the essential irony of movie theaters.. a dark private group space … the essence of urban anonymity… the usherette’s utter alienation. Imagine Mr. and Mrs. Wayne, catching the show with young Bruce.. only pages away from the fatal encounter that spawns Batman.

I rounded off the afternoon with a grim warning from the “grimm” Wim Wenders .. (see his best work – Paris Texas) about the impending violence  in Nighthawks (see way below)… the essential elements of film noir, 1930s Gangster Comics, Dashiell Hammett and more.

The crowd in the lobby did not help. The museum store - a disaster. Hopper, comic art.. bookends with much in between. I exited the Whitney – quickly!

==== Prose in Praise =====

An afternoon invading Hopper’s ’people optional’ world… is like no other…

a magnificent desolation at once uniquely American..

and its people…grafted on a landscape, pasted on almost unwillingly…

alone.. even in company… a DMZ of the self….if people unseen then … people implied… 

if people seen – then mannequins…

frozen in intent  and moment .

But always the clear cold light and the clean cool lines…  

 Second Story Sunlight (on exhibit)

of homes in cape cod and the Carolinas, and yes… paris … 

of rooms and lives organized around the spare, sparse modern habitat… indulgent, naked..

   A Woman In The Sun(on exhibit)

yet trapped.

And  film …image and sound, flat, no life, and people – seated, standing… still, quiet, pensive…life.

   New York Movie House(on exhibit)

And film noir… Goodnight. 

   Nighthawks(on exhibit)