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Afternoon Art

Early Sunday Morning, By Edward Hopper (1930)

There is a big Hopper exhibition in Rome right now. Last weekend, there was an interesting piece in the Times by Michael Kimmelman about the the show:

I quizzed some Italians and also a few New Yorkers at the exhibition, and it wasn’t that the Italians didn’t “get” Hopper, or didn’t like him. He’s world famous by now, beloved, and the Italians easily brought up the links to film noir and Antonioni. But New Yorkers, naturally, spoke quite differently about him.

…It’s about projection, in other words, which all good art provokes, whether by Sargent, Zille, Moore or Hopper, whose laconic and merciless drawings can, seen by a New Yorker passing through Rome, have a kind of Proustian eloquence. I stared at the ones he did of summer in the city and the sun splashing across Lower Manhattan before carrying my tracings of two of them to a favorite Sicilian bakery a few blocks away from the Piazza Colonna. It was unconscious, deciding to go there, but I realized it was because the cannoli reminded me of ones I fetched as a boy from a cafe on MacDougal Street, where the owner used to pack them in little white cardboard boxes tied with striped red string. I carried the pastries home to my family, past the Hopper-like brownstones, through the concrete park that faced our house, and across Sixth Avenue to our apartment, under what in my memory was forever a dusky Hopper sky.

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9 comments

1 Yankee Mama   ~  May 6, 2010 4:39 pm

I, too found the article interesting. Hopper has always been one of my favorites. I simply loved the lit up characters who were otherwise isolated in their aloneness, somewhat introverted. Their anonymity was a relief to me.

I stil see that image in the city when I'm looking in a coffee shop seeing a lone customer blankly staring into space. It happens daily. Sometimes that person is me.

I love Early Sunday Morning. So quiet and so light.

2 Alex Belth   ~  May 6, 2010 4:47 pm

One of the best. My uncle got me the catalog to a Hopper Show in the late 70s or early 80s, my first art book. I was always drawn to his pictures as a kid. Something about the lonliness, how NOBODY ever smiled.

3 ms october   ~  May 6, 2010 4:54 pm

a little bit before i left boson they had a pretty big hopper exhibit at the museum of fine arts. i had always been a little resistant to his work before, but for some reason i appreciate his work a lot more when i saw this exhibit.
maybe a different understanding of alone and loneliness.

i particularly like this piece - the contrast in the colors and the complete stillness of it all.

[1] exactly on sunday morning quite, light, and serene.

4 OldYanksFan   ~  May 6, 2010 7:43 pm

After the top of the 1st in Boston:
D Matsuzaka: 1.0 IP, 2H 4R, 4ER, 39-20, 15.88. LA up 4-0.

5 RIYank   ~  May 6, 2010 8:12 pm

[4] Yeah, that was delightful. Dice-K had a little trouble controlling his slider, you'd have to say. I think he threw it twelve times, once in the strike zone (that was watching, not from Gameday, so I'm not pretending to be precise). And then for more fun, they had a chance to get out of the inning relatively unscathed, bases loaded with one out, and Rivera hit a tailor-made double play ball to Scutaro, but Little Pony bounced the relay and Big Ugly botched the scoop and BoBBy scored. And then Kendrick doubled in two more runs. Heh.

Matsuzaka's attacking the strike zone more now, getting smacked but so far no real damage.

6 OldYanksFan   ~  May 6, 2010 8:30 pm

From Lohud: http://yankees.lhblogs.com/
--------------------------------------------------------------------
As it stands, the Yankees are hopeful that anti-inflammatories – and possibly some extra rest – will get Andy Pettitte through the mild stiffness around his pitching elbow. Unless the situation deteriorates or the problem refuses to go away, the disabled list does not seem likely.

“Right now the DL is not something that’s being considered,” general manager Brian Cashman said this afternoon.

7 OldYanksFan   ~  May 6, 2010 8:31 pm

Man.. Kazmir is doing everything to give this one back. 4-2 after 3.

8 RIYank   ~  May 6, 2010 8:46 pm

[7] Also, Dice-K has been slammed but line drives are sizzling straight to fielders. Jerry Remy just said that he's been good since the first! Definitely not true.

But, yeah, where has the old Scot Kazmir gone?

9 Alex Belth   ~  May 6, 2010 8:48 pm

Dig a Sox game thread in new post above...

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