For Love of Art

[PowerRR]

Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World (1948)

Days of Heaven!

[drinkanddestroy]

I'm gonna continue posting my Hopper pics taken at The Whitney Museum of American Art.

Btw, beginning with those two long posts of Hoppers I made yesterday, these are all from Photobucket; I sized the pics to a width of 680 (and the height will of course depend on the painting's "aspect ratio.") If you think the pics are too big or too small and would prefer I make them smaller or bigger, lemme know and I'll be glad to make the changes.

I'm gonna try to crop frames as much as possible, per the preferences of our dear CJ  

Once again, all paintings are oil on canvas unless otherwise noted. Here goes....

High Road (1931) watercolor and graphite pencil on paper



Rooms for Tourists (1945)



Mass of Trees at Eastham (1962) watercolor and graphite pencil on paper



Here is a very early painting, called Man Seated on Bed (1905-1906), it is oil on canvas mounted on board. Of course, I've seen black-and-white artworks before - but in etchings and drawings; I can't recall ever having seen an oil painting in black-and-white.

[drinkanddestroy]

[drinkanddestroy]

As I've mentioned, Hopper started making really good stuff in the early 1920's; I don't have mush use for his prior work – and indeed, hardly any of his early paintings sold. Therefore, this next painting, called Small Town Station (1918-1920), is significant for me, cuz it is the earliest Hopper painting that I really like




Railroad Crossing (1922-1923)




Burly Cobb's House, South Truro (1930-1933)




New York Interior (1921)



Italian Quarter, Gloucester (1912)

[drinkanddestroy]

I'm going to now post some of Hopper's early work.  
Hardly any of the early stuff sold. (After Edward Hopper died, his wide Jospehine died about a year later, and bequeathed all their works to the Whitney. So any Hopper painting that is owned by Whitney courtesy of the "Josephine N. Hopper Bequest" means that it never sold. Almost all of his work prior to 1920 was bequeathed by Jospehine Hopper to the Whitney; but very few from afterward.)
Lots of the early work was painted in Paris, and he also continued painting in the style in which he painted in Paris, and scenes of Paris, after he came back to USA. (He later said, "It took me a decade to get Europe out of my system." Thank God he did   )
 Enjoy the shit!









If you wanna hear a short audio clip from Whitney about this painting, click here http://whitney.org/WatchAndListen/AudioGuides?play_id=195



Le Pont Royal (1909)



Le Quai des Grands Augustins (1909)



Ecluse de la Monnaie (1909)

[drinkanddestroy]

okay, here is the last painting from the Whitney Hopper exhibit; it is the great New York Movie (1939)


on pp.429-430 of STDWD, Frayling discusses the paintings (Hopper and others) that influenced the look of OUATIA. I'll quote the bottom paragraph of p. 429, in which he discusses Hopper:

The New York paintings of Edward Hopper which Leone found most useful, for reference purposes, were Drug Store (1927) and the artist's signature piece Nighthawks (1942), both of which provided the visual inspiration for Fat Moe's speakeasy-turned-diner. Also New York Movie (1939) was the template for the scene where Carol meets the elderly Noodles in the hallway of the Bailey Foundation, and From Williamsburg Bridge plus Manhattan Bridge Loop (both 1928) provided ideas for the set-dressing of the Lower East Side. Hopper, who spent most of his life in New York, specialized, as he put it, in "painting the loneliness of the big city." His people, when they appear, tend to be stranded in night-time limbo – and his best-known paintings have the eerie, artificial quality of studio-bound cities in gangster movies, like stills or snapshots from a film noir. They are echoes of the real city, isolated from their context. Such paintings, said Leone, "worked on my imagination."

[BTW, Frayling is wrong that OUATIA takes place on the Lower East Side (which is in Manhattan); it actually takes place in Brooklyn. (True, The Hoods took place in the Lower East Side; and true, the Lower East Side is the most famous Jewish immigrant neighborhood; and true, the name of the neighborhood is never actually mentioned, but) all the exterior locations that were filmed in New York were filmed in Brooklyn – and not just any random street that can pass for anywhere, but filmed in streets that are recognizably Brooklyn and can't stand in for the Lower East Side or anywhere else, including:
--the famous shot of the Manhattan Bridge that's on the movie poster, taken from Washington Street in Brooklyn;
--the shot of the Williamsburg Bridge on South 8th street, where the gang first sees Young Max on the wagon when they're trying to roll the drunk;
--the scene under the bridge where they run into Bugsy and Dominic gets shot;
--the scene where Old Noodles returns to the neighborhood - we see him driving his car in Brooklyn, as the skyline of Manhattan is clearly visible across the East River, and then he turns onto the street by the bridge, before getting out and walking around in the old neighborhood, which we see has changed so much.]


Okay, back to painting now... so I am kind of obsessed with the idea of getting a painting's color accurate, i.e., when I buy a book of paintings or a poster of a painting, I check up and compare a bunch of them, compare them with my memory from a museum, etc. to try to see which has the most accurate colors. Cuz frequently, I'll look at a few different pictures of a painting, and the color will look different – often significantly so.

Well, I've come to realize how much the lighting in the museum can affect each picture of a painting, and can affect how that painting's colors are perceived. Here is a photo of the same painting that's above, taken with the same camera I used for the photo above; but the above photo was taken at Whitney, while the one below was taken at MoMA



The Whitney painting looks so much brighter, the MoMA is darker. Both with same camera (both taken without flash, of course. So, when displaying New York Movie, Whitney must have used more light than MoMA did, and that's why the photo taken at MoMA looks so much darker;

So, maybe I shouldn't get so agitated over discrepancies in the color of a photo of a painting; maybe it's not really inaccurate, just different lighting  

--

anyway, that's all for the Hopper paintings for now  

[drinkanddestroy]

Sotheby's held a big art auction on Monday, headlined by the sale of Monet's 1906 painting Nympheas (one of water lilies paintings) for $54 million, the second-highest amount ever paid at auction for a Monet painting
BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-27991977
Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-23/monet-s-water-lilies-sells-for-54-million-in-london.html

[cigar joe]

Nighthawks

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/opinion/05moss.html?_r=0

& From Tom Waits Nighthawks At The Diner Eggs & Sausage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDo1617aXX4

[dave jenkins]

okay, here is the last painting from the Whitney Hopper exhibit; it is the great New York Movie (1939)


on pp.429-430 of STDWD, Frayling discusses the paintings (Hopper and others) that influenced the look of OUATIA. I'll quote the bottom paragraph of p. 429, in which he discusses Hopper:

The New York paintings of Edward Hopper which Leone found most useful, for reference purposes, were Drug Store (1927) and the artist's signature piece Nighthawks (1942), both of which provided the visual inspiration for Fat Moe's speakeasy-turned-diner. Also New York Movie (1939) was the template for the scene where Carol meets the elderly Noodles in the hallway of the Bailey Foundation, and From Williamsburg Bridge plus Manhattan Bridge Loop (both 1928) provided ideas for the set-dressing of the Lower East Side. Hopper, who spent most of his life in New York, specialized, as he put it, in "painting the loneliness of the big city." His people, when they appear, tend to be stranded in night-time limbo – and his best-known paintings have the eerie, artificial quality of studio-bound cities in gangster movies, like stills or snapshots from a film noir. They are echoes of the real city, isolated from their context. Such paintings, said Leone, "worked on my imagination."

[BTW, Frayling is wrong that OUATIA takes place on the Lower East Side (which is in Manhattan); it actually takes place in Brooklyn. (True, The Hoods took place in the Lower East Side; and true, the Lower East Side is the most famous Jewish immigrant neighborhood; and true, the name of the neighborhood is never actually mentioned, but) all the exterior locations that were filmed in New York were filmed in Brooklyn – and not just any random street that can pass for anywhere, but filmed in streets that are recognizably Brooklyn and can't stand in for the Lower East Side or anywhere else, including:
--the famous shot of the Manhattan Bridge that's on the movie poster, taken from Washington Street in Brooklyn;
--the shot of the Williamsburg Bridge on South 8th street, where the gang first sees Young Max on the wagon when they're trying to roll the drunk;
--the scene under the bridge where they run into Bugsy and Dominic gets shot;
--the scene where Old Noodles returns to the neighborhood - we see him driving his car in Brooklyn, as the skyline of Manhattan is clearly visible across the East River, and then he turns onto the street by the bridge, before getting out and walking around in the old neighborhood, which we see has changed so much.]


Okay, back to painting now... so I am kind of obsessed with the idea of getting a painting's color accurate, i.e., when I buy a book of paintings or a poster of a painting, I check up and compare a bunch of them, compare them with my memory from a museum, etc. to try to see which has the most accurate colors. Cuz frequently, I'll look at a few different pictures of a painting, and the color will look different – often significantly so.

Well, I've come to realize how much the lighting in the museum can affect each picture of a painting, and can affect how that painting's colors are perceived. Here is a photo of the same painting that's above, taken with the same camera I used for the photo above; but the above photo was taken at Whitney, while the one below was taken at MoMA



The Whitney painting looks so much brighter, the MoMA is darker. Both with same camera (both taken without flash, of course. So, when displaying New York Movie, Whitney must have used more light than MoMA did, and that's why the photo taken at MoMA looks so much darker;

So, maybe I should get so agitated over discrepancies in the color of a photo of a painting; maybe it's not really inaccurate, just different lighting  

I would never have thought that museum lighting could make such a difference. Well done, Drink! 

[cigar joe]

[BTW, Frayling is wrong that OUATIA takes place on the Lower East Side (which is in Manhattan); it actually takes place in Brooklyn. (True, The Hoods took place in the Lower East Side; and true, the Lower East Side is the most famous Jewish immigrant neighborhood; and true, the name of the neighborhood is never actually mentioned, but) all the exterior locations that were filmed in New York were filmed in Brooklyn – and not just any random street that can pass for anywhere, but filmed in streets that are recognizably Brooklyn and can't stand in for the Lower East Side or anywhere else

I don't think there was enough of the Lower East Side left to shoot back in 1983 and Brooklyn was a good stand in obviously

"--the famous shot of the Manhattan Bridge that's on the movie poster, taken from Washington Street in Brooklyn"
How the shot should have looked Pike & Henry St. Manhattan, looking at Brooklyn

[drinkanddestroy]

So, maybe I should get so agitated over discrepancies in the color of a photo of a painting; maybe it's not really inaccurate, just different lighting  

obviously, there is a typo in that sentence; it should have said, "So maybe I shouldn't get so agitated over discrepancies ... " I will update the original post to correct that typo 

[drinkanddestroy]

Nighthawks

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/opinion/05moss.html?_r=0

Any Hopper fan knows that he generally didn't paint exact copies of places out of doors. Rather, he would make a bunch of sketches, bring them to the studio, and then make a painting based on those sketches – but using his imagination as inspiration as much as using the specific place. Just cuz he was a realist painter doesn't mean he painted places exactly as they appear (with the possible exception of some paintings that are specifically named after a place, like The Circle Theater http://www.wikiart.org/en/edward-hopper/the-circle-theatre or Sheridan Theater http://www.wikiart.org/en/edward-hopper/sheridan-theatre , but that is just a guess ). It's true that one of the famous mysteries Hopper fans love talking about is, "Which place really inspired Nighthawks?" But the fact that there isn't one specific place that looks like the diner in Nighthawks doesn't surprise or disappoint me. To the contrary. Hopper's New York was the New York of his imagination.
And this writer bemoaning modernization and new buildings replacing old ones, nothing makes me roll my eyes more than that sort of shit.

[drinkanddestroy]

was in a used book store the other day, got a nice book called "The Hudson River and Its Painters," by John K. Howat http://goo.gl/pJe2ar

Has about 100 paintings of by the Hudson River School; I thought it was cool how the paintings are arranged in geographic order, following the river from New York City, going up through the suburbs and upstate .... About 30 of the plates are in black and white, which is absolutely useless (except to inform you of the name of the painting so you can search for it in color elsewhere), but about 70 plates are in color, and many of them are beauts. This is my introduction to the Hudson River School, and I'll definitely be looking into it more ... 

[drinkanddestroy]

Visited THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM recently; www.brooklynmuseum.org/home.php
 The museum is HUGE. It is 5 floors; the first two floors are closed for renovations now, but just looking through floors 3, 4, 5 took me and my friend 4 hours and 45 minutes
They have a nice collection of European paintings, and an amazing collection of American paintings.
Some magnificent Colonial-era portraits; great works from Hudson River School painters; and a Hopper painting called MACOMBS DAM BRIDGE.
I don't like the setup at The Brooklyn Museum for 3 reasons:
A) some galleries have poor lighting;
B) They often hang one painting on top of another; e.g., in the most egregious case, the bottom of the Hopper painting is 8 feet off the floor, way too high for normal viewing, and then the lights have a glare; very disappointed with how the Hopper was displayed;
C) When they have the placards with title/description of artwork, sometimes they will just put a few paintings together, then a few explanatory placards together, and it is unclear which placard is for which artwork! So that was annoying, but anyway ....

They don't just have paintings, but also furniture and silverware, etc. This was mainly on 5th floor.
3rd floor has a whole buncha shit of ancient Assyria, Egypt, Rome, etc. including 4 mummies wrapped in the linen wrappings, and next to each mummy is a CT scan of the mummy showing the skeleton, body inside each mummy. Creepy shit.

[drinkanddestroy]

So, the Whitney Museum of American Art will be moving into a new building in the Meatpacking District on May 1. (The Metropolitan Museum will be using the old Whitney building for at least eight years starting in 2016.)

To celebrate the new Whitney building, they will have an exhibit from May 1 – Sept. 27 called "American Is Hard to See," featuring about 650 artworks from the museum's permanent collection http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/AmericaIsHardToSee They haven't yet listed the artworks that will be shown in this exhibit.

DJ and I have made plans to visit the museum, probably in June.

In the meantime, I have plans to visit the Met Museum this weekend. We'll see what happens with that ...