THE GLIMPSE AND THE GAZE
for the new exhibition of the American master’s work now on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Underscoring every theme in the show—“show,” as in reveal, or as in a stage play, or as opposed to “tell”—that’s another concept to explore as we go—is a single observation: Edward Hopper’s New York isn’t New York. It’s the artist’s vision of the city that was, is, and was becoming, as seen through his desires and anxieties. I went right for psychology there, didn’t I? And isn’t that what we think of Hopper’s New York, that it’s a city filled with haunted, isolated individuals, people pent up with desire in a city that wants to deny them and grind them down? Our idea of American urban modernity—as alienation, as loneliness—is intricately, and intimately, bound with Hopper’s imagery. And yet, as I went through the images and read the essays in the catalogue, I was struck by the very real possibility that this thesis—an assumption, really, that New York is a character, an antagonist—is at odds with the truth.
