Let the artists of the 21st century know. This New York that expels them for real estate expansion (greed) is nothing new. It is a trace of his soul, of his identity.
It comes from afar as is shown in this letter that is preserved on typed and almost parchment paper, from that time when nobody talked about gentrification.
“3 Washington Square has long been known for its famous residents and facilities for painting and sculpture...If the eviction of these artists takes place, there will be little chance of finding comparable homes and studios.”
And he continues: “Citizens must be awakened to the usurpation of Washington Square by the University of New York. I have been a resident for 33 years. It sounds like today, but Edward Hopper wrote it on March 9, 1947. He sent it to Robert Moses, the great planner of the Big Apple and whose urban legacy left little room for the social attentions of its inhabitants.
Moses responded by diverting the complaint of the already famous artist to another estate.
This document, unpublished until now for the general public, serves to illustrate the exhibition that the Whitney Museum will open on the 19th (until March 5), which was presented to the media this Wednesday. This is the first exhibition organized by the Whitney, in Manhattan's West Village, to focus on the life and work of Hopper (1882-1967) in the city he visited as a child and adolescent (he was born in Nyack, New York). ), where he studied illustration and settled in 1908.
From 1913 until his death, he lived in the same building at 3 Washington Square, although he moved to a larger apartment (with its own bathroom) and better views, essential for him, when he married Josephine (Jo) Verstille Nivison , his muse and artist. They lived and worked together.
It is curious that Hopper is considered the painter of America and that he achieves it from the inspiration and observation of a metropolis that seems to many Americans to be a place from anywhere other than their country.
“While he is an iconic artist, we cannot forget a human being who lived and worked just a few blocks from where we are now. Through his works, through the material from the archives, we show the perspective of the person, a different side of Hopper, ”says curator Kim Conaty.
The show is organized as if the viewer were moving around the city. Assembled in eight chapters, emulating the sensation of walking through the streets, it includes more than 200 paintings, watercolours, engravings and drawings.
In these elements, he reflects his fascination with the city, which serves as an observatory and inspiration. He erases boundaries between what he sees and what he imagines, "imaginative realism" or, as he put it, "creating realistic art in which fantasy can grow."
According to Adam Weinberg's definition, "he painted the world he saw, the one he invented and the one he desired". Glimpsing on his walks through the streets, in theaters or in restaurants, traveling on elevated trains or looking out of windows (an essential element in his work), he became interested in the interplay of interiors and exteriors, without a photographic objective. . He improvised from the memory of that vision.
We must insist on the window, one of Hopper's symbols, which served him to explore both the inside and the outside. “He never shows us curtains on those windows, it's always a permeable space. And this is very representative of a big city, you know that even inside you can be seen from the outside”, emphasizes Conaty. "It's something he constantly plays with, the fusion of public and private life," adds the curator.
New York existed on the map and in his mind. But it is not the Big Apple of the tourist postcard. In his paintings, there are men and women alone in bedrooms, in offices, there are bar scenes, there are rooftops, bridges (not the one in Brooklyn). What is missing? There are no skyscrapers. "His indifference to tall buildings is remarkable for a painter of New York architecture," said art historian Alfred H. Barr. “I was never interested in vertical,” Hopper joked.
"It's a personal vision without noise, without crowds, forged by omission," remarks Conaty.
He suggests looking at the dark box at the top right of Early Sunday Morning (1930), one of his wonders. It is a low building and that upper box symbolizes the future, this is the Chrysler Building, opened in 1930 as the tallest skyscraper in the world.
