ADAM WEINBERG: Edward Hopper’s etching, East Side Interior, was produced in 1922, well before he made a name for himself, and at the end of a period during which he primarily created etchings and prints. East Side Interior is a kind of bridge between two distinct and important phases in Hopper’s career. Curator Barbara Haskell.
BARBARA HASKELL: Through the medium of etching, he really honed in on a kind of subject matter that became his signature subject matter often depicting a person, a woman often in this case, alone in an interior or an exterior space lost in her own thoughts. In this piece, we have a young woman whose attention is caught by something outside the window.
ADAM WEINBERG: She sits at a sewing machine; a baby carriage beside her.
BARBARA HASKELL: And it brings to mind Hopper’s statement how difficult it was to paint the inside and the outside at the same time, by which he meant both the inside space and the outside space as well as the interior and the exterior of a person.
