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rediscovered-art · 3 months

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New York Movie (1939) - by Edward Hopper

(Oil on canvas; 81.9 x 101.9 cm; MoMA, New York)

#edward hopper #new york #New York movie #New York art #oil on canvas #american art #new york artist #40s art #cinema #1940 #quit art

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burntpink · 1 year

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Capas da Rio Magazine das décadas de 1940 e 1950 fonte: Hemeroteca Digital da Biblioteca Nacional

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introspect-la · 2 months

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SWIMMER BY GEORGE QUAINTANCE (1947)

#Swimmer #sculpture #george quaintance #Gay art #gay #1940s #1947 #40s art #1940s art

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ouijafrank · 9 months

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quick cute little vintage lady for today. think im gonna name her charlotte

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arthist0rian · 2 years

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1942 Imagine a sleepless night, you have just moved to the big city, the one that never sleeps, New York, and you haven't gotten used to it yet.

So you go for a walk. The streets are empty not a soul in sight. Your footsteps echoes in the dark, the tall building wrap around you. The windows of the shops are now all gray and dark. Maybe it's not true, even New York go quite, deep into the night. But in front of you appears a diner. Still open. The lights drawn you closer. They almost hurt your eyes. You look closer...

The Nighthawks Edward Hopper 1942 oil on canvas, 84,1×152,4 cm, Art insitute of Chicago, Chicago

At the center of the works of the current of American Realism, developed in the early twentieth century, there is the daily life of ordinary people in large cities of the United States. They are snapshots in painting, and Nighthawks is no exception.

We are faced with the window of a diner inspired by a real one in Greenwich Village, New York, but could easily be found in any American metropolis. It is late at night, as we can guess from the darkness of the deserted street, but in the diner we recognize four figures: the bartender and three patrons, each immersed in their thoughts. They don't seem to know each other, much less want to get to know each other. Perhaps the only thing they have in common is insomnia, which pushes them to spend the night in a diner instead of turning around unsuccessfully in their respective beds.

It is a scene of profound solitude, the one depicted by Hopper, in which the only source of light comes from the artificial lighting of the diner. A light that has nothing benign or salvific. The characters are victims of an incommunicability from which they do not know how to get out. There is something paradoxical about these people, who live in the City that never sleeps, with its millions of inhabitants, but who eventually find themselves alone, late at night, in silence over a cup of coffee.

Like all the figures represented by Hopper in his paintings, they too are as if waiting. They are not intent on carrying out any particular activity but seem, on the contrary, waiting for something unspecified, which perhaps could awaken them from their stupor. Something that, however, does not arrive.

At the same time, the viewer has the impression of being part of this scene and of being excluded from it. It is as if he had turned the corner and found himself in front of the illuminated window of the diner; a handful of steps would be enough for him to get closer. Yet, we do not see the front door. The viewer is forced to witness this scene only from the outside. Similarly, the four figures are only physically close: their inability to communicate actually keeps them more distant than it seems.

Gail Levin has speculated that Hopper was inspired by the diner of Ernest Hemingway's short story The Killers. Although we certainly find the parallelism fascinating, we do not know if it really went like this. Edward Hopper, in any case, declared that he had "in all probability painted, on an unconscious level, the loneliness of a big city". A solitude not only American, but that takes on a universal character.

#edward hopper #art academia #art #art history #dark academia #light academia #academia #chaotic academia #classic academia #painting #american realism #40s art #usa art #solitude #ernest hemingway #the nighthawks

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eyesup-orion · 3 months

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