Edward Hopper’s New York

Oct 19, 2022–Mar 5, 2023

Watercolor view of the waterfront, with a building and parked buggies in the foreground, with a soaring bridge and city skyline behind.
Watercolor view of the waterfront, with a building and parked buggies in the foreground, with a soaring bridge and city skyline behind.

Edward Hopper, Manhattan Bridge, 1925–26. Watercolor and graphite pencil on paper, 13 15/16 × 19 15/16 in. (35.4 × 50.6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Josephine N. Hopper Bequest 70.1098. © Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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Para Edward Hopper, Nueva York era una ciudad que existía en su mente a la vez que en el mapa, un lugar que tomó forma a través de la experiencia, la memoria y el imaginario colectivo. En sus últimos años indicó, “es la ciudad americana que mejor conozco y que más me gusta”. 

Nacido en 1882 en el pueblo de Nyack a orillas del río Hudson, en el estado de Nueva York, Hopper conoció Manhattan durante visitas familiares. Luego de terminar sus estudios medios superiores, iba regularmente a la ciudad en ferry para asistir a clases de arte y a donde eventualmente se mudó en 1908. Desde 1913 hasta su muerte en 1967, vivió y trabajó en un apartamento en Washington Square Park, donde pasó de ser un prometedor ilustrador independiente a uno de los artistas más célebres del país.

A lo largo de su carrera, en frecuentes caminatas por el vecindario y viajes en trenes elevados, Hopper observó asiduamente la ciudad, perfeccionando su comprensión del entorno de sus construcciones y las particularidades de la experiencia urbana moderna. El Nueva York de Hopper, sin embargo, no era un retrato exacto de una metrópolis del siglo veinte. En el transcurso de su vida, la ciudad experimentó enormes cambios, los rascacielos alcanzaron alturas que rompieron todos los records, las construcciones se multiplicaron en los cinco distritos y aumentaron exponencialmente su población cada vez más diversa; su representación de Nueva York seguía siendo a escala humana y mayormente despoblada. Hopper dejó de lado el icónico skyline de la ciudad y sus pintorescos sitios de referencia como el puente de Brooklyn y el Empire State Building, en su lugar volcó su atención hacia lugares poco conocidos e incluso ignorados y pequeños espacios fuera de los trayectos más frecuentados; atraído por el choque incómodo de lo viejo y lo nuevo, lo cívico y residencial, lo público y privado que capturaban las paradojas de una ciudad cambiante. El Nueva York de Edward Hopper traza la permanente fascinación del artista por la ciudad, revelando una visión de Nueva York que es una manifestación tanto del propio Hopper como un registro de la ciudad que lo rodea.

City sites

Explore Edward Hopper’s New York then and now. See the sites he painted as they look today. 

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Resources

Access additional Edward and Josephine Hopper resources.

Press Highlights

“…this is Hopper’s New York, emphasis on the possessive, and for all its crowd-pleasing fare this is a more challenging show about his dominion over the city.” —New York Times

“Curated with great intelligence and care by Kim Conaty, “Edward Hopper’s New York” is a terrific show based on a great idea, and it’s weird that no one thought to approach his work in this way before.” —The New Yorker

“But as a startling and immaculate show at the Whitney Museum of American Art makes clear, some of Hopper’s most gothic allegories of disconnection and loneliness were set in the perpetually raucous metropolis.” —Financial Times

“…a celebration of the city and the master who co-exist and reveal the immortality of New York.” —Forbes

“The show succeeds at revealing a different side of Hopper, eschewing many of the artist’s most famous paintings in favor of ones that cultivate a sense of him as a New Yorker and an artistic innovator.” —The Guardian

“…the artist shows us urban dreamers but keeps their thoughts private.” —Wall Street Journal

“…the diverse selection of works encourages us to do away with clichés and consider that Hopper’s vision of the city was as varied and complex as the man himself.” —The Art Newspaper

“…captures a lifelong love that shifted with the city itself, sometimes uncomfortably, but never grew stale.” —The Boston Globe

“…a dynamic mix of artworks and archival materials that tell the story of Hopper’s life and work in New York City…” —Artnet

“It’s a chance to see how one New Yorker saw our city evolve over almost six decades.” —NY1

“One of the joys of this Whitney show is the many preparatory sketches on display.” —The Village Voice

“...the first exhibition to take an in-depth look at the painter’s relationship with New York City, where he lived for six decades.” —PIX11

“Edward Hopper's New York features about 200 works that capture a changing and changeless city, and illuminate the inner lives of city dwellers.” —CBS Sunday Morning

“...the Hopper exhibition is perfectly on brand: an invitation to New Yorkers, past, present and future, to navel-gaze and ponder the enigma of why the greatest city in the world is both the cause and cure of loneliness.” —The Washington Post

“…Hopper’s strongest works are invigorated by tension between an apparent naturalism and lucid structure and an implied, enigmatic—rather than overt—narrative..” —The Wall Street Journal 

“What Hopper discovered was that when the people are gone, the buildings come to life.” —New York Review of Books

“Stillness at the threshold of movement is a crucial feature in the illusionistic dramaturgy of Hopper’s work.” —Artforum

“Rarely does a museum so effectively recalibrate the public’s understanding of a non-living artist.” —The Art Newspaper

Publication

Edward Hopper's New York

Kim Conaty

This engaging book delves into the iconic relationship between Edward Hopper (1882–1967) and New York City. This comprehensive look at an essential aspect of the revered American artist’s life reveals how Hopper’s experience of New York’s spaces, sensations, and architecture shaped his vision and served as a backdrop for his distillations of the urban experience. During sidewalk strolls and elevated train rides, Hopper sketched the city’s many windowed facades. Exterior views gave way to interior lives, forging one of Hopper’s defining preoccupations: the convergence of public and private. These permeable walls allowed Hopper to evoke the perplexing awareness of being alone in a crowd that is synonymous with modern urban life.

Drawing on the vast resources of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the largest repository of Hopper’s work, and the recently acquired gift of the Sanborn Hopper Archive, this book features more than 300 illustrations and fresh insight from authoritative and emerging scholars.

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An image of a book with text on the cover reading "Edward Hopper's New York"
An image of a book with text on the cover reading "Edward Hopper's New York"

Edward Hopper’s New York catalogue cover

On the Hour

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Frank WANG Yefeng, The Levitating Perils #2

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