{"data":{"id":"3596","type":"artwork","attributes":{"id":3596,"topgoose_id":17350,"portfolio_id":null,"tms_id":3596,"title":"Conversation","display_artist_text":"Isabel Bishop","display_date":"1931","accession_number":"80.31.142","dimensions":"Sheet (Irregular): 11 5/16 × 9 11/16 in. (28.7 × 24.6 cm)\r\nPlate: 5 15/16 × 4 in. (15.1 × 10.2 cm)","medium":"Etching","department":"collection","classification":"Prints","credit_line":"Felicia Meyer Marsh Bequest","is_virtual":false,"is_portfolio":false,"portfolio_tms_id":null,"portfolio":null,"edition":"Proof","publication_info":"Printed by Isabel Bishop","description":"\u003cp\u003eIsabel Bishop, \u003cem\u003eConversation\u003c/em\u003e, 1931. Etching, sheet (Irregular): 11 5/16 × 9 11/16 in. (28.7 × 24.6 cm)\r\nPlate: 5 15/16 × 4 in. (15.1 × 10.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Felicia Meyer Marsh Bequest 80.31.142. © Estate of Isabel Bishop\u003c/p\u003e","object_label":"\u003cp\u003eThe two men pictured in Isabel Bishop's \u003ci\u003eConversation\u003c/i\u003e were likely Manhattanites, since the artist primarily found her subjects in New York's Union Square, which she could view from the studio she occupied for six decades. Yet her drawings, etchings, and paintings show familiar urban types as isolated from the city’s commotion. Bishop preferred depicting the solitary reverie and intimate conversations of career girls, young mothers, and unemployed men to the chaos and bustle of crowds. While \u003ci\u003eThe Conversation\u003c/i\u003e is an etching, it shares the intimations of movement and fluid lines of drawings, elements which allow Bishop to tease out the natural momentum of a gesture and explore the vitality of casual actions such as chatting, yawning, or drinking. When an idea engaged Bishop, she drew it over and over again, and the more laborious medium of etching was a way for her to verify, as she put it, whether there was \"any idea in the drawing.\"\u003cb\u003e\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","ai_alt_text":"Two older men in long coats and hats stand facing each other, one holding a cane.","alt_text":null,"visual_description":null,"on_view":false,"created_at":"2017-08-30T17:37:50.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-02-06T12:01:21.797-05:00","images":[{"id":95356,"url":"https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/3596/80_31_142_cropped.jpg"}]},"relationships":{"artists":{"data":[{"id":"122","type":"artist"}]}}}}