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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Arnold Newman (1918–2006), Yasuo Kuniyoshi, New York City, 1941. Gelatin silver print, sheet: 7 7/8 × 9 15/16 in. (20 × 25.2 cm); image: 7 3/4 × 9 7/8 in. (19.7 × 25.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Weiss 91.50.5

Photographer Arnold Newman began taking portraits of artists in 1941 because, as he said, he wanted to “work with positive personalities, people who did something with their lives, and with life.” Newman developed what he described as an “environmental” approach to portraiture: instead of posing his subjects in front of a false backdrop, he photographed them in their homes or places of work, often surrounded by their own art. Newman captured the artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi in his Fourteenth Street studio, seated next to several folk art objects. By the time Newman took this photograph, Kuniyoshi had amassed a large collection of Americana. “I picked up all kinds of materials,” the Japanese-born artist recounted, including “cigars and toys and weather vanes . . . I picked them for shapes, colors, textures.” Kuniyoshi incorporated these objects, which he imbued with symbolic meanings, into his still life paintings. Newman’s image offers the viewer insight into Kuniyoshi’s artistic process and his investment in the history of American culture.

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Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

Portrait of the Artist

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YASUO KUNIYOSHI, NEW YORK CITY, 1941

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Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

Portrait of the Artist

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YASUO KUNIYOSHI, NEW YORK CITY, 1941

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection