Up in Richmond, VA, for a conference, and it's about time we got a closer glimpse of the city. We've flown by on I-95 at 70 mph about a bajillion times and neither of us have ever stopped in. No longer! While I was at my mtg this morning db walked along the canal and got the lay of the land. He promised me a guest post -- the pix are great.
I took the excuse of a trip to Richmond to plan my getaway to Washington, D.C., for the Edward Hopper exhibit.
Go, friends. It runs through mid-January, and it's worth the trip. Forget what you know from the now familiar postcards and parodies/tributes. We all know Hopper was interested in the play of light, and many of these paintings are now familiar, but there is nothing like seeing them up close. They're incredibly vibrant and deceptively simple in technique and material, but you end up wondering less how he did it than how he saw it. How does an artist create an entire visual vernacular? I can't fathom.
How many times have we seen "Nighthawks" now? A trillion? Still, when you stand in front of it, you marvel. The colors, the scene, all that it does and says (and doesn't say). We stared at it for 5 minutes just drinking it in, and it's not near my favorite painting of his. Before seeing it yesterday, I was bored of it, frankly. Another familiar painting -- "Early Sunday" (below) -- was a highlight.
High on my list of favorites at the show were two of Hopper's notebooks in which he recorded sketches of and general notes about his paintings, including size, medium, materials, to whom he sold them and at what price (including his cut!). The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has a nice interactive look at one of his notebooks here.
Comments