Interrupting Infinity Exclusive Commentary. © 2010 by David St.-Lascaux
Edward Hopper 1882-1967, Soir Bleu,1914. Oil on canvas. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Josephine N. Hopper Bequest 70.1208. © Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper, licensed by the Whitney Museum of American Art. Photograph by Sheldan C. Collins.
His Own Drummer, in Spite of Everything
Edward Hopper and His Time
The Whitney Museum of American Art
October 28, 2010–April 10, 2011
by David St.-Lascaux
Given the Whitney’s 2006 and 1979 Edward Hopper exhibitions, and the volumes of scholarship devoted to this American icon, one could easily be forgiven for asking why we needed yet another Hopper show, let alone another critical review. The brilliance of the Whitney’s approach, the new insights delivered, and the show’s hidden weaknesses provide ready answers.
First a bit of perspective: As this exhibition makes explicitly clear, Edward Hopper was on the ground floor of the founding of the Whitney Museum. As a Greenwich Village artist and protégé of Ashcan ringleader Robert Henri (HEN rye), Hopper was among those patronized by Mrs. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, whose risqué, reclining odalisque portrait by Henri is as provocative in the current show as it was in 1916 when her husband banned its hanging in their New York apartment (he objected to the pants). Mrs. Whitney, a widely displayed sculptress whose own work is oddly missing (if necessarily shown in photographs) given the show’s contextual trope, was a pioneering promoter of American art in the first half of the Twentieth Century, founding the Whitney Studio Club exhibition space, which would evolve into the Whitney Museum in 1931 after the Metropolitan Museum declined her offered collection.
The show begins with “Manhatta,” a 1921 film by Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler with superimposed lines from Whitman’s “Mannahatta,” (yes, they’re spelled differently) extolling New York, the teeming masses, industry and modernism. This is important as a precursive metaphor for the unbending, optimistic faith in America shown by American artists that infuses the artwork in this show. The film is followed by the first of a series of wall captions, easily the best-written this critic has ever read: on point, clear, concise and informative.
The Whitney’s approach, which only the Whitney could pull off, is ingenious: Hopper’s work is shown in the mostly chronological, sometimes thematic (e.g., factoryscapes) or stylistic (e.g., art deco) context of other American artists in the Whitney’s collection. The result is that the viewer has unprecedented insights into Hopper’s American peer milieu and the depth of the Whitney’s holdings, as well as a Whitney-centric view of American (read New York) art in the Hopper years.
Given the Whitney’s contextual approach, it’s unfortunate that Hopper’s self-portraits beginning in 1903 and ending in 1925-30 (Hopper died in 1967) are not, but should be shown beside contemporary photos, which are relegated to a vestibule that most people understandably pass by to ogle Mrs. Whitney. It’s also highly unfortunate – and illogical – that Hopper’s emerging-career 1925-30 self-portrait is shown in the last chronological room, which includes his late work.
The show provides two major insights: First, the extreme degree to which Hopper was stubbornly monostylistic – representational – throughout his career, eschewing cubism, Dada and surrealism, and later abstract expressionism. The magnitude of Hopper’s obviously conscious decision is somewhat hidden by placing his work beside fellow Whitney-collected American artists: Henri, John Sloan, George Bellows (“Dempsey and Firpo”; 1924), Sheeler and, later, Paul Cadmus (“Floozies and Sailors”; 1938) and Thomas Hart Benton, who also worked representationally. Those who remember the 1979 exhibition will recall how Hopper’s dual career as fine artist and commercial illustrator portrayed a dual, if consistent, visual personality (all collected art literally commercial). Ultimately, we are informed, Hopper was left behind, rendered obsolete. By 1967, and frankly well before – Jackson Pollock’s “Number 5” was painted in 1948, this was a legitimate criticism.
Second, Hopper was not, at least visually, politically interested, nor were his Whitney-coddled colleagues, raising the question of why. Either because of a curatorial decision that would be staggeringly egregious or, more likely because of the sensibilities of the artists themselves, the three major events of the Twentieth Century – World War I, the Great Depression and World War II – have no representation in this show. Hopper was 35 in 1917, but still one wonders why Mrs. Whitney in silk pajamas is what the Whitney considers representative from this tumultuous period, which also included women’s suffrage and Prohibition. What’s implicit is that these artists, happily patronized, were disinterested in subjects lesser than their own careers and attending Whitney’s Long Island parties.
Regarding the Great Depression: Hopper sold well – in fact, his career burgeoned – precisely as the Depression got underway, simultaneous with the founding of the Whitney Museum in 1931. No Dorothea Lange photographs analogous to Paul Strand’s film occupy the 30’s galleries. One speculates that this is because the Whitney artists didn’t want to admit that their earlier infatuation with American capitalism was discredited. It is no small irony that Sheeler’s featured 1932 painting of Ford’s River Rouge plant – the nation’s first assembly line – was commissioned earlier by an advertising agency. A new book by photojournalist-artist Andrew Moore, Detroit Disassembled, features a photograph of the interior of the abandoned, rusting plant today, with commentary that a Russian conglomerate bought Rouge Steel in 2004. Sic transit gloria Americæ.
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