Saturated Places: Edward Hopper’s New York

Online, via Zoom

All members

Thursday, February 16, 6 pm
Monday, February 27, 6 pm

We’re bringing back our most popular online member program ever! Don’t miss two additional opportunities to explore Edward Hopper’s super-saturated paintings of the “concrete jungle,” on view in the ambitious exhibition Edward Hopper’s New York at the Whitney through March 5, with Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow Jason Vartikar.

Hopper’s many paintings of New York City invite us into an intense act of observation. The artist often composed his city scenes by editing and piecing together various urban spots and then painting them so generously that we feel welcomed to observe every bit, inch by inch. The artist painted the city as a place dense with meaning. In his works, it is as if he places us before our very own New York apartment windows or café perches, from which we are meant to linger and observe the sites before us. A mere radiator, the concrete curb, or even air and empty space invite deep contemplation. Through this virtual program, we will visit the historic New York corners Hopper frequented, lived near, fought to preserve, and painted, embarking on a journey to the saturated places he knew and wanted us to know.

Jason Vartikar is a Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow at the Whitney and a Ph.D. candidate in the department of art and art history at Stanford University, where he has been a Jones Fellow since 2016. He is currently writing his dissertation on melancholy in 1915–45 American art, focusing on the paintings of Charles Burchfield. His writing on Ruth Asawa’s wire sculptures appeared in American Art, the journal of the Smithsonian, which awarded the essay Frost Prize honorable mention in 2021.