Art Eyewitness Review: Edward Hopper’s New York at the Whitney Museum

 

Edward Hopper’s New York 

 Whitney Museum of American Art

October 19, 2022 – March 5, 2023 

Reviewed by Ed Voves

Original Photography by Anne Lloyd

Robert Henri (1865-1929), the dean of the Ashcan School, was a fount of encouragement to his many students at the New York School of Design.

"Paint what you feel. Paint what you see. Paint what is real to you." 

Henri's  lecture points were enthusiastically received by the likes of George Bellows, Stuart Davis, Rockwell Kent and Man Ray. Some students require additional encouragement, however, and Henri offered a well-intended suggestion to an intense, buttoned-down young man from Nyack, New York.

"Go to the theater," Henri advised Edward Hopper.

If Henri thought that Hopper would engage with the rough and tumble of life after watching it on the stage, he was mistaken. Hopper certainly took Henri's advice about going to the theater. But he remained a distant observer, focusing on ironic details of human existence which other painters scarcely noticed. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022)

 Edward Hopper's Two on the Aisle, 1927

Sitting in the mezzanine or the balcony - as he usually did - Hopper might well have condemned himself to the status of a minor genre artist. Instead, as a fabulous exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art testifies, Hopper chose as his favored subject one of the greatest themes in American culture: life in New York City.

Edward Hopper’s New York is an exhibition which only the Whitney could have mounted. After Hopper died in 1967, his widow Josephine bequeathed a vast number of sketches, prints and paintings to the Whitney. More recently, a trove of Hopper's notebooks, ledgers, letters, newspaper clippings and, incredibly, theater ticket stubs have entered the Whitney's archival collection.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) 

Gallery view of Edward Hopper's New York,

 showing a selection of Hopper’s ticket stubs

Over the years, the Whitney has organized numerous exhibitions of Hopper's work, more than justifying Josephine Hopper's choice of that museum to be the steward of her husband's art. Now relocated from its former "Museum Mile" site to Gansevort Street in the Meat Packing district, the Whitney's new location is much more in keeping with the ambiance of New York City as Hopper knew it. An added bonus is the spectacular view from the terrace of the Whitney's restaurant of the Hudson River and New York harbor with Lady Liberty holding her torch aloft. I think even Hopper would have been impressed.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022)

 View of the Hudson River & New York Harbor

 from the Whitney Museum of American Art 

Hopper was much more than a New York City artist, of course. After leaving the exhibit, a visitor to the Whitney has only to take the elevator up a floor to explore the museum's permanent collection. Here one can see Hopper paintings dealing with his Paris years, his summers in New England and travels around the U.S. 

New York was the city which Hopper knew best and, in his unsentimental way, loved. It was the center of his artistic universe. Yet, it only became so by a process of patient adaptation to the many moods of the Big City.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) 

Detail of Edward Hopper's Blackwell's Island, 1911

In his earliest days as an art student and working illustrator, Hopper commuted to New York from Nyack. He traveled by train, ferry and elevated transit lines. It was a daily grind but it provided him with long intervals to study the real New York: gritty, crowded, hard-edged, care-worn - and proud.

Edward Hopper, Approaching a City, 1946

The Whitney exhibit recalls the the young Hopper's experience of arriving in an urban environment which was ever in flux. Hopper's 1946 masterpiece, Approaching a City, is juxtaposed with a video of a 1916 silent film, New York City (From an Elevated Railroad). 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) 

Gallery view of Edward Hopper's New York,

 showing the 1916 film, New York City (From an Elevated Railroad)

Both the painting and the film show entirely man-made environments. Neither reveal any outward sign of human life. It was Hopper's task to supply the people and, at first, he demonstrated outstanding talent in portraying the people on New York's streets. 

Mounted Cop, executed in pen and ink and graphite pencil on paper, is a marvelous  work. It is a true portrait without a hint of caricature. Every aspect of this remarkable drawing speaks to having been sketched - at least in its first stage - from life.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) 

Edward Hopper's Mounted Cop, 1899–1906

 Determined, if disgruntled, the police officer casts a wary eye, peering out from under the peak of his cap. He sits astride his horse, brilliantly suggested by the merest outline of its flanks. A few, slanting lines capture the effect of the pelting rain which, sooner or later, will seep though his poncho.

Numerous examples of Hopper's skill in depicting New Yorkers, native and newcomers, are on view in the opening galleries of the exhibit.

 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022)

  Edward Hopper's New York and Its Houses, 1906-1910

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022)

 Detail of Edward Hopper's The Balcony, 1928

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022)

 Detail of Edward Hopper's In a Restaurant, c. 1916–1925

These include an elderly chap battling a headwind as he trudges up the steps of a brownstone, playgoers absorbed in one of the dramas Hopper attended and a "slice-of-life" scene of two "gents" sealing a deal over a coffee and brandy.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022)

  Edward Hopper's Self-Portrait, 1903-1906

Hopper's early self-portrait, dating to some point during the years 1903-06, likewise, demonstrates a high level of accomplishment. A skillful handling of skin tones and unblinking insight into his own rather forbidding persona shows that Hopper could have secured a place near the top rank of American portrait painters, had he wanted to take that career path.

Hopper's choice lay elsewhere, as we know. But one of the many strengths of the Whitney exhibit is the way that it allows us to follow Hopper's dwindling interest in the unique likenesses of the people around him. Following this, we are enabled to trace his deepening engagement with the human dilemma on a wider, more cosmic level.

Hopper's initial steps in that direction began when he devoted himself to etching around 1915. His sensational skill in printmaking resulted in such masterpieces as the haunting Night Shadows created in 1921. The 1920's and 1930's would prove to be the golden age of American printmaking, with Hopper setting a standard of excellence which others, notably Louis Lozowick and Martin Lewis, would rival but not surpass.

Edward Hopper, Night Shadows, 1921

These brilliant etchings are also significant in showing the path which Hopper's oil painting was taking him, deeper and deeper into uncharted realms of emotional isolation and unspoken desire.

The 1920's were the brash years of American exuberance. Hopper, however, caught a counter-veiling note to the Jazz Age. In Automat, the frantic pace and chronic loneliness of life in the 20th century is indelibly expressed.  Hopper definitively portrays the modern condition where individualism translates into being "a face in the crowd."

Edward Hopper, Automat, 1927

Automat was painted in 1927, the year of Charles Lindbergh's one-man flight across the Atlantic Ocean. While newspaper headlines exulted over the Lone Eagle's heroics, this stylish young "flapper" looks less-than-pleased about "flying solo" through life.

Some clues to her discontent are obvious, the empty chair, the receding  reflections of the overhead lights. But the most telling detail is the fact that she has removed only one glove. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022)

 Detail of Edward Hopper's Automat, 1927

In modern day America, you can get a cup of coffee anytime your want. But don't bother to take both gloves off. Drink-up and keep moving. There is no place of rest on the daily treadmill of existence.

Hopper's switch from magazine illustration to painting was well-timed. As the 1920's progressed, photography increasingly gained the upper-hand in the publishing world and commercial opportunities for artists began to decline. 

By the late 1920's, Hopper's emphasis on realism and figurative painting had secured the interest of wealthy patrons like Stephen Clark. A signal event was the donation by Clark in 1930 of Hopper's House by the Railroad to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, which had opened its doors the year before.

The House by the Railroad (which reputedly served as the model for the Bates Hotel in the Hitchcock film, Psycho) is not included in the Whitney exhibition. But another mysterious dwelling is prominently displayed, House at Dusk (1935), from the collection of the Virginia Museum of Art. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022)

 Detail of Edward Hopper's House at Dusk, 1935

I had never previously seen House at Dusk and was really intrigued by this haunting work of art. Hopper contrasted the setting sun with the lights shinning forth from some of the apartment windows, while others remained darkened or dimly lit. A pavement stairway extends off into the menacing darkness of the nearby park. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022)

Detail of Edward Hopper's House at Dusk, 1935

With these brilliant effects, Hopper created a setting that is both reassuring - the beckoning glow of house lights - and unsettling.

House at Dusk evidently struck a chord with the visitors to the exhibit. There always seemed to be a big crowd in front of it. At one point, a father was showing the painting to his toddler in the stroller. I was both charmed and bemused. How do you explain a picture of mystery to a child - or to anyone? 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) 

Gallery view of Edward Hopper's New York, 

showing House at Dusk, 1935 

Every person will have there on theories about a Hopper painting. That explains his continuing popularity. Which brings up another salient point about the Whitney's exhibition. Edward Hopper’s New York was mobbed on the day Anne and I visited. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) 

Gallery view of Edward Hopper's New York at the Whitney Museum 

Hopper's works clearly strike a chord with museum visitors. Part of the reason is that Hopper composed many of his paintings with a stage-like setting. Works like Automat and others which followed during the 1930's might well have illustrating scenes from a play by Eugene O'Neil. Hopper's visual narrative, however, is never resolved. It's left for you, the viewer, to decide the plot and outcome of the drama of paintings like Room in New York.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022)

 Edward Hopper's Room in New York, 1932

In what may be his greatest painting, New York Movie, Hopper focused his probing vision on to the motion picture industry. Here, during the 1930's, happy endings were the order of the day. Maybe on the "silver screen", but not for Hopper.

New York Movie was painted in 1939, the peak year of America cinema. Hopper based the setting of the theater on a series of meticulous studies of several Manhattan movie "palaces." Hopper also carefully studied the patrons staring at the black-and-white film. These preparatory works are on view in the exhibition, along with the masterpiece itself, from the MOMA collection.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022)

 Detail of Edward Hopper's New York Movie, 1939

The "star" of New York Movie is, of course, the youthful usherette, standing in listless isolation. She is having a "Hamlet moment." Instead of looking at the film, she is lost in melancholy. It is surely one of Hopper's ironic - almost perverse - touches that the young woman has movie star looks. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022)

 Study for Edward Hopper's New York Movie, 1939

As with the other elements in this painting, Hopper carefully sketched the facial features of the usherette. This represented a change of approach from his usual handling of the people in his pictures. Increasingly, as noted above, Hopper devoted less-and-less effort to the faces and figures of his protagonists. The human dilemma was what mattered, individual human beings not so much.

This trade-off resulted in Hopper's tremendous visual statement on life and  society in modern America. But there was a price to be paid for Hopper's choice and it came due in two ways.

The first was exacted in the strained, ultimately tragic, nature of his marriage.  This is not the place to go into great detail about the relationship of Edward and Josephine Hopper. A recent book which I intend to review in coming weeks, Last Light by Richard Lacayo, treats this topic in great detail and I will discuss it there.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022)

 Edward Hopper's Intermission, 1963

For the present, it is enough to note that though Hopper used his wife repeatedly for a model, he never painted a full, "human-scale" portrait of her. Repeatedly, Jo Hopper shows-up, as in the lonely theater-goer in Intermission, as a stock character, never herself.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022)

 Detail of Edward Hopper's Intermission, 1963

This failure on Hopper's part to acknowledge his wife was part of the greater trend in his art. As the years passed, individuals, with all their quirks and eccentricities, were erased from his paintings. As a result, part of Hopper's own individuality withered and his art suffered too.

It is only in the early galleries of the wonderful Whitney exhibition, Edward Hopper's New York, that we see Edward Hopper "New Yorkers." After that, there are plenty of paintings of rooftops but no more rain-spattered cops, no more wind-blown, top-hatted gents, no more soulful flappers. It was a great loss to American art.

When Robert Henri advised Hopper to open his heart to humanity by going to the theater, Hopper should have bought himself a front-row seat, instead of watching from the balcony.

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved. Original Photos: Anne Lloyd, All rights reserved 

Images of Edward Hopper's paintings, drawings and prints from the Whitney Museum of American Art and other U.S. museums are © 2022 Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York                                                                                                                              

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) Edward Hopper's Self-Portrait, 1925–30. Oil on canvas: 25 3/8 × 20 3/8 in. (64.5 × 51.8 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art,New York; Josephine N. Hopper Bequest 70.1165.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) Edward Hopper's Two on the Aisle, 1927. Oil on canvas: 40 1/8 x 48 1/4 in. (101.9 x 122.5 cm). Toledo Museum of Art, OH; purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment; gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) Gallery view of Edward Hopper's New York, showing a selection of Hopper’s ticket stubs. The Sanborn Hopper Archive at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Frances Mulhall Achilles Library and Archives, New York; gift of the Arthayer R. Sanborn Hopper Collection Trust 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) View of the Hudson River and New York Harbor from the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) Detail of Edward Hopper's Blackwell's Island, 1911. Oil on canvas, 24 3/8 × 29 5/16 in. (61.9 × 74.5 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Josephine N. Hopper Bequest 70.1188

Edward Hopper (American, 1882-1967) Approaching a City, 1946. Oil on canvas: 27 1/18 x 36 in. (68.9 x 91.4 cm) The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; acquired 1947. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) Gallery view of Edward Hopper's New York, showing the silent film, New York City (From an Elevated Railroad), c. 1916, 4:37 min. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington D.C.; Ford Motor Company Collection

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) Edward Hopper's Mounted Cop, 1899–1906. Pen & ink and graphite pencil on paper: 10 5/8 x 8 5/16 in. (27 x 21.1 cm) Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Josephine N. Hopper Bequest 70.630 a-b

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) Edward Hopper's New York and Its Houses, c.1906–10. Brush and ink, transparent and opaque watercolor, and graphite pencil on paper: 21 13/16 x 14 13/16 in. (55.4 x 37.6 cm)  Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Josephine N. Hopper Bequest 70.1347

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) Detail of Edward Hopper's The Balcony, 1928. Drypoint:Sheet: 13 x 16 15/16 in. (33 x 43 cm); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Josephine N. Hopper Bequest 70.1058 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) Detail of Edward Hopper's In a Restaurant, c. 1916–25. Charcoal on paper: 26 11/16 x 21 5/8 in. (67.8 x 54.9 cm) Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Josephine N. Hopper Bequest 70.1449 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) Edward Hopper's Self-Portrait, 1903-06. Oil on canvas: 25 15/16 x 22 1/8 in. (65.9 x 56.2 cm) Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Josephine N. Hopper Bequest 70.1253 

Edward Hopper (American, 1882-1967) Night Shadows, 1921. Etching: Sheet: 12 x 15 15/16 in. (30.5 x 40.5 cm. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Josephine N. Hopper Bequest 70.1047

Edward Hopper (American, 1882-1967) Automat, 1927. Oil on canvas, 28 1/8 × 35 in. (71.4 × 88.9 cm). Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa; purchased with funds from the Edmundson Art Foundation, Inc. © 2022 Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Rich Sanders, Des Moines, Iowa

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) Detail of Edward Hopper's Automat, 1927. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) Details of Edward Hopper's House at Dusk, 1935. Oil on canvas: 36 1/4 x 50 in. (92.1 x 127 cm) Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; John Barton Payne Fund 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) Gallery view of Edward Hopper's New York, showing House at Dusk. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) Gallery view of Edward Hopper's New York at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) Edward Hopper's Room in New York, 1932. Oil on canvas, 29 × 36 in. (73.7 × 91.4 cm). Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska—Lincoln; Anna R. and Frank M. Hall Charitable Trust.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) Detail of Edward Hopper's New York Movie, 1939. Oil on canvas: 32 1/4 x 40 1/8 in. (81.9 x 101.9 cm) The Museum of Modern Art, New York; given anonymously 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) Edward Hopper's Study for New York Movie, 1939. Fabricated chalk and charcoal on paper:15 x 11 1/8in. (38.1 x 28.3 cm) Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Josephine N. Hopper Bequest 70.455

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) Edward Hopper's Intermission, 1963. Oil on canvas: 40 x 60 in. (101.6 cm x 152.4 cm) San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; purchase in memory of Elaine McKeon,with funds provided in part by the Fisher and Schwab Families, and an anonymous donor.

Art Eyewitness Review: Alice Neel at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Alice Neel: People Come First

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

March 22 - August 1, 2021

Reviewed by Ed Voves                                                                       OriginaL Photos by Anne Lloyd

Alice Neel waited until very late in her life to paint a formal self-portrait. Neel was seventy-five when she started, soon giving-up on the work, only to resume and complete it five years later, in 1980.

Neel's Self-Portrait was - and is - an unsettling work. It is unsparing, unsentimental, uncompromising. The list of "un's" keeps growing the longer you look at it. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2021) 

Gallery view of the Alice Neel exhibit, showing Neel's Self-Portrait

Neel portrayed herself in the nude, without any attempt to minimize or gloss over the ravages of time on her aging body. But the indomitable look in her eyes is the most striking feature of this work. With only four years left to live, Neel stared Death in the face, in order to fix the image of herself for the world to remember.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2021) Detail of Alice Neel's Self-Portrait, 1980

This remarkable work of art is now on view in a magnificent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met's exhibit is the first in twenty years to examine Neel's entire career in detail and it does justice to her life-long determination to live and paint her way.

It is singularly appropriate that the Met should mount an exhibition of the life and work of Alice Neel (1900-1984) at this troubled moment when so many are struggling. For the most part, Alice Neel focused on individual people or very small groups of people facing life's challenges.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2021) 

Metropolitan Museum banner for the Alice Neel exhibition 

The Met show's title, Alice Neel: People Come First testifies to Neel's artistic creed, which she summed up in profound statement.

Every person is a new universe with its own laws emphasizing some belief or phase of life immersed in time and rapidly passing by.

With the Covid-19 pandemic crisis entering its second full-year, people are starved of the human interaction or opportunity to express their individuality which we see depicted in Neel's paintings. It was truly wonderful to see the visitors to the Met's Tisch Gallery, where the Neel exhibit is displayed, relating to each other, as well as the masterpieces on the museum walls. This humane environment is something many of us took for granted before the pandemic - and hopefully will not do so again.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2021) 

Gallery view of the Alice Neel: People Come First exhibition

Neel seldom took anything for granted. It needs to be acknowledged, however, that the difficult circumstances of her life gave her few opportunities to rest on her laurels.

Alice Neel was born in Merion, PA, at the turn of the twentieth century. Merion is a suburb of Philadelphia. Neel, who showed  artistic promise from an early age, attended the Philadelphi School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art), 1921-1925. The same year of her graduation, she married a Cuban artist, Carlos Enriquez, whose portrait by Neel appears in the Met exhibition.

For a brief period, Neel's future seemed one of promise. Then, in 1927, her young daughter died. Neel suffered acute depression, culminating in a nervous collapse and an attempt to take her own life. Estranged from her husband, Neel faced the Great Depression with little to sustain her, except occasional sales of her work. Then, in 1933, she secured on-again/off-again employment with the Public Works of Art Project which operated under the direction of Juliana Force of the Whitney Museum.

Painting and devotion to social justice issues helped Neel survive the hard times of the 1930's and 1940's. The range of her work during this period, often gritty and brutally honest, is well illustrated by the works on view in the Met exhibit. Neel's cityscapes of New York and her portraits of neighbors and friends in Spanish Harlem reveal her talent for realism and her penetrating insight into human character.

Focusing on two early portraits, Kenneth Fearing and T.B. Harlem enables us to grasp the wider implications of Neel's oeuvre.

Alice Neel, Kenneth Fearing, 1935

Kenneth Fearing, painted in 1935, combines realism with elements of Symbolism and Surrealism. Against a background similar to her cityscapes, Neel portrays Fearing, a prominent left-wing poet and writer, surrounded by diminutive figures from his verses. Here, enlightenment, conjured in the vision of a light bulb, combined with elements of horror and fantasy. The skeleton holding Fearing's bleeding heart seems utterly in keeping with Fearing's character and the tenor of his socially conscious writing.

Alice Neel, T.B. Harlem, 1940

The stark reality of T.B. Harlem (1940) needed no embellishing details. The searing portrait of this dying victim of tuberculosis told its own tale and people of the time would have recognized the bandage over his chest as the result of the medical procedure to treat a collapsed lung of the T.B. patient by removing part of his rib cage. 

The martyred protagonist of T.B. Harlem was Carlos Negron, brother of Neel's lover/companion during the late 1930's, José Negron. The haunted look in the eyes of Carlos is so overwhelmingly powerful and compelling that we, today , might well miss the point that his bandage is placed exactly where the skeleton and bleeding heart were positioned in Kenneth Fearing. 

Did Neel herself make the connection in these two wounded breasts, painted five years apart? Perhaps not, but suffering, physical, emotional, psychological, runs through Neel's work like an electrical current over the long years of her career.

Another terrible torso scar appears much later in what is Neel's most famous portrait, that of Andy Warhol. Neel painted Warhol in 1970, following the  assassination attempt by Valerie Solanis. The portrait was done at Warhol's request, rather than Neel's. This is significant for it shows that Neel, after years of neglect during the high tide of Abstract Expressionism, was gaining a measure of celebrity. It also explains the ambivalence in the portrait, so different from the spirit of T.B. Harlem.

Warhol and Neel did not clash during the painting session, but the closed eye stance of Warhol may partly reflect an awareness that he and Neel were not kindred souls. In fact, Neel felt a powerful antipathy to Warhol's "brand", if not to him personally.

Alice Neel, Andy Warhol, 1970

Warhol, "as an art-world personality...  represents a certain pollution of this era," Neel stated bluntly. "I think he's the greatest advertiser living, not a great portrait painter."

Yet, in this depiction of the physical evidence of violence, Neel brilliantly captured the pain behind Warhol's averted eyes. There are moments and memories of suffering so intense that we have to close our eyes or look away. We need to do so in order that we can reconnect with our injured humanity and to grapple with the inescapable fact of our mortality. 

Pondering over human individuality and the complex emotions of the portrait sitters comes thick and fast in Alice Neel: People Come First at the Met. Indeed, it is almost impossible not to engage with Neel's portraits without deep reflection. And that is true of her cityscapes, as well, despite the seeming lack of inhabitants.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2021) Alice Neel's 107th and Broadway, 1976

Spend a few moments looking at 107th and Broadway, painted in 1976. There are people behind those windows - you can feel them, sense their eyes peering back at us. 

The same can be said of the shadow of a neighboring building as it is cast on the white-hued structure which otherwise engulfs the picture plane. There is a human presence in this ghostly form. It may seem ominous, at first, until we become aware that the shadow is of the building where Neel lived and worked during her final years of life.

These were the years when Neel finally achieved the recognition she deserved. With the long years of struggle behind her, she might have settled back and painted portraits of the "rich and famous." But the ordeal of her early career resonated with Neel for as long as she lived. A woman of great wit and earthy sensuality, Neel's empathy was greater still.

I felt this strongly as I moved back and forth, looking at three late-career portraits of mothers and their infant children: a Hindu woman and her child, Neel's daughter-in-law, Nancy and her twin daughters, and lastly, Carmen and Judy, painted in 1972.

There was something incredibly poignant about Carmen and Judy. I could not quite fathom it, until I read the "backstory" of this modern-day Madonna and Child. Carmen Gordon, whose face is frozen in a look of desperate hope, was the Haitian woman who worked and cared for Neel in her later years. Judy, underweight, listless and struggling, was Carmen's baby daughter. She died, tragically, soon after the painting was completed.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2021) Alice Neel's Carmen and Judy, 1972

Neel must have sensed, along with Carmen, that the baby was at risk. The feeling of life's preciousness so infuses this work that the bond between a mother, who had lost her daughter in 1927, with one who was about to lose her child in 1972, was already firmly established.

This gift of empathy, so evident in Carmen and Judy, was Alice Neel's greatest gift. And it remains, long years after Neel's death, a gift to us. Ours for the taking, should we choose to accept.

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves. Original Photos: Anne Lloyd.  All rights reserved. Images of Alice Neel paintings, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  

Introductory image: Alice Neel (American, 1900-1984) The Spanish Family, 1943. Oil on canvas: 34 × 28 in. (86.4 × 71.1 cm) Estate of Alice Neel.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2021) Gallery view of the Alice Neel People Come First exhibition, showing Alice Neel's Self Portrait, 1980. Oil on canvas: 53 1/4 × 39 3/4 × 1 in. (135.3 × 101 × 2.5 cm) National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2021) Detail of Alice Neel's Self Portrait, 1980. National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2021) Museum banner for the Alice Neel: People Come First exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2021) Gallery view of the Alice Neel: People Come First exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

Alice Neel (American, 1900-1984) Kenneth Fearing, 1935. Oil on canvas: 30 1/8 × 26 in. (76.5 × 66 cm) The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Hartley S. Neel and Richard Neel, 1988.

Alice Neel (American, 1900-1984) T.B. Harlem, 1940. Oil on canvas: 30 × 30 in. (76.2 × 76.2 cm). National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay.

Alice Neel (American, 1900-1984) Andy Warhol, 1970. Oil and acrylic on linen: 60 × 40 in. (152.4 × 101.6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Gift of Timothy Collins.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2021) Photo of Alice Neel's 107th and Broadway, 1976. Oil on canvas: 59 3/4 × 34 in. (151.8 × 86.4 cm). Private collection, Washington D.C..

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2021) Photo of Carmen and Judy, 1972. Oil on canvas: 40 × 29 7/8 in. (101.6 × 75.9 cm) Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Westheimer Family Collection

Art Eyewitness Essay: A Snowy Day in New York City with Agnes Tait and Friends

Art Eyewitness Essay:

A Snowy Day in New York City with Agnes Tait and Friends

By Ed Voves

"Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life," Oscar Wilde wrote in his 1891 essay, The Decay of Lying.

Far be it for me to contradict the eminent Victorian aesthete, but I think that a better quote would be “Life anticipates art.”

A creative person never knows when, where or how he or she will be inspired. But life happens. Every day, all the time.

 

Art is ready to respond to life’s stimuli, often before the artist is aware of what is happening or what will be the result.

Earlier this month, I made a trip to New York City for the preview of a new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The month of March held to its usual unpredictable nature. The weather report suddenly turned very bleak with yet another winter storm warning, trains cancelled, TV meteorologists commenting at length on the foreboding computer simulations.

                                      

Ed Voves, Photo (2019) Photo of Paul Manship's Group of Bears, cast in 1960                                     

“Snowmageddon” never happened. 

Paul Manship's Group of Bears, cast in 1960,looked far more alarmed at the weather report than they needed to be. These Art Deco bears, whose "lair" is located in a playground on the 79th Street side of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, were inspired by the bears which Manship created in 1934 for the bronze gates of the Bronx Zoo.

New York's snowfall for the March 4th storm, according to the newspapers, measured five inches in Central Park. It looked a lot less to me when I reached the Metropolitan Museum after a blissfully easy commute. By my reckoning the snowfall total was just enough to close school and make for a great sledding day.

I had time to spare for a jaunt in Central Park and my calculation was proven correct. The Park was indeed a Winter Wonderland.

Ed Voves, Photo (2019) Sledding on Cedar Hill, Central Park, NYC

As I watched the kids (and parents) sledding down Cedar Hill, I was reminded of a painting which I saw at the Smithsonian American Art Museum last autumn when I visited there for the Bill Traylor exhibition. A landscape painting by Agnes Tait caught my eye. It was created in a folk art style which we now associate with Anna Mary "Grandma" Moses (1860-1961). Tait painted Skating in Central Park in 1934. Grandma Moses began painting in 1935 after arthritis forced her to give up embroidery. Clearly, there was no influence - either way - between Agnes Tait and Grandma Moses.

Life anticipates art, as I wrote. The New York City-born Tait (1894-1981) reached back to her childhood, just as Grandma Moses drew from the well of memory. Enduring art was the result in both cases.

Ed Voves, Photo (2018) Photo of Agnes Tait 's Skating in Central Park, 1934.

Agnes Tait studied art at the National Academy of Design in the years before World War I and then joined the exodus of American artists to Paris during the 1920's. When she returned, the Great Depression had struck. Very much a working artist, Tait could not afford to paint for "pleasure" until she was employed by the New Deal's Public Works of Art Project. Once her financial woes were addressed, Tait started to paint this wonderful scene of the "Big Apple" in wintertime.

I was struck by a number of features of this joyous work of art. However, it was only later, after thinking about the bridges in Central Park that I started wondering about Tait's frame of mind while she was painting Skating in Central Park.

The bridge depicted in Tait's painting resembles the Bow Bridge over Central Park's Lake, close to Fifth Ave. and 72nd street. The Bow Bridge has a stone balustrade similar to Tait's version. Yet, there are enough differences in the design of the Bow Bridge to rule out that theory.  A closer fit would be the Gapstow Bridge, built in 1896, on the Pond, near to Fifth Ave. and 62nd Street. But the volume of this stone edifice is much greater than the slender, arching form of Tait's bridge.

I'm not a native New Yorker and perhaps there's another bridge in Central Park that I've missed. But I think that Tait constructed this one in her mind's eye and that this fantasy structure served as a bridge from happy recollections of her childhood to the careworn, cash-short 1930's of her present. This is a bridge of memory.

            Ed Voves, Photo (2018) Detail of Agnes Tait 's Skating in Central Park, 1934                                                                                           

At the risk of indulging in "pop" psychology, I wonder if any of the New York City kids sledding down Cedar Hill will be moved by memories of their fun-filled day in the snow. There was such carefree joy to be seen in Central Park that March morning! It is the kind of memory that links the years from my childhood to now. A precious memory.

Ed Voves, Photo (2019) Sledding on Cedar Hill, Central Park, NYC

From what I can gather, Agnes Tait had a mystical side to her personality. She had visited Haiti on the way back from Europe to the United States. In 1941, she and her husband settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She left behind her this "remembrance of things past" to act as a talisman for us to hearken back to our respective pasts.

I was particularly struck by the way that Tait handled the winter mists, rising above the trees of Central Park. The day is passing. The park lights are coming on. Soon the looming apartments and office buildings will be obscured by the darkness of night, with only glowing windows to mark their presence. 

Ed Voves, Photo (2019)

 Close-up of Agnes Tait 's Skating in Central Park, 1934.

All this, Agnes Tait painted during a winter, seventy-five years ago, when the only thing that the American people had to fear was "fear itself."

Or was it just yesterday? 

Great works of art "bridge" the gulf of years and centuries. Tait's joyous Skating in Central Park brings to mind the scenes of people skating and playing ice hockey off in the distance of Pieter Bruegel's, Hunters in the Snow, 1565. 

Recently, I wrote about Bruegel's unforgettable masterpiece, commenting on the implications of the weary, bone-chilled hunters trudging home after killing a predatory fox. The village people could enjoy some winter sports because of the dedication and hard work of the hunters and the woman bowed-down beneath a huge bundle of kindling.

The same is true today. The kids sledding in Central Park, the visiting art lover snapping pictures of the happy scene are able to do so thanks to the diligent workers of the New York City Department of Streets, the cab drivers, the traffic cops.

Joy in life is precious, but never entirely spontaneous. So too in art! Life anticipates art not only by a moment of inspiration but through "perspiration" too, the toil and devotion to duty of others. 

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may! But don't forget to say thank you for the "simple" joys of life. 

***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved                                                                

Introductory Image:                           
Ed Voves, Photo (2018) Detail of Agnes Tait 's Skating in Central Park, 1934. (full caption details below).

Ed Voves, Photo (2019) Photo of Paul Manship's Group of Bears, cast in 1960. Located at the Pat Hoffman Friedman Playground at Fifth Avenue and 79th Street in Central Park. 

Ed Voves, Photo (2018) Photo of Agnes Tait 's Skating in Central Park, 1934. Oil on canvas: 33 3/4 x 48 in. (85.8 x 121.8 cm)  Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor, 1964.1.15

Ed Voves, Photo (2019) Sledding on Cedar Hill, Central Park, NYC, March 4, 2019.

Ed Voves, Photo (2018) of Agnes Tait 's Skating in Central Park, 1934. Oil on canvas: 33 3/4 x 48 in. (85.8 x 121.8 cm)  Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor, 1964.1.15

Ed Voves, Photo (2018) Detail of Agnes Tait 's Skating in Central Park, 1934.

Ed Voves, Photo (2018) Close-up of detail of Agnes Tait 's Skating in Central Park, 1934.

Ed Voves, Photo(s) (2019) Sledding on Cedar Hill, Central Park, NYC, March 4, 2019.

Ed Voves, Photo (2019) Close-up of detail of Agnes Tait 's Skating in Central Park, showing the New York City skyline, 1934.