Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

Apr 2, 2016–Apr 2, 2017

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The American art world grew rapidly in the first half of the twentieth century, instilling artists with both confidence and uncertainty. Excited by new opportunities yet pressed to distinguish themselves from their renowned European counterparts, American artists became preoccupied with depicting themselves and their intimate circles of friends, lovers, and collaborators in other fields. One such community was the Whitney Museum itself, along with its precursor, the Whitney Studio Club. Many of the portraits on view here reflect its early history as a magnet for figures such as Edward Hopper at a time when few artists had found institutional support or even gathering places for likeminded colleagues. Other works capture the vital presence of émigrés, such as Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Stella, or point to the rising prominence of women artists, such as Isabel Bishop and Georgia O’Keeffe. Alternately styled as virtuoso, hero, technician, bohemian, or everyman, both the creators and subjects of these portraits staked a claim to their authority as artists, addressing themselves directly to an audience increasingly attuned to their endeavors.

Below is a selection of works from Portrait of the Artist.

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Although Edward Hopper drew and painted numerous self-portraits in his early years as an artist, this is one of the few he completed during the mature phase of his career. Around 1918, Hopper made an etching in which he portrayed himself wearing a hat. Self-Portrait preserves the pose of this earlier image, while his heavier features and laugh lines suggest the effects of time’s passage. Dressed in a suit and tie, Hopper gives no indication of his profession; indeed, he appears as the antithesis of the stereotypical bohemian artist. Though the interior space he occupies is nondescript, his hat suggests a moment of transition—that he is on his way somewhere else. Like so many of the people he portrayed on trains and in hotels and waiting rooms, Hopper looks as if he has been captured in a contemplative, in-between moment, engaged in a scene that hints at narrative possibilities but remains mysterious.

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Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

Portrait of the Artist

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SELF PORTRAIT, 1925

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Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

Portrait of the Artist

3

SELF PORTRAIT, 1925

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection