Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

Apr 2, 2016–Apr 2, 2017

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Throughout its history New York has inspired writers, musicians, and visual artists. As the portraits in this room demonstrate, the city may serve as a stage for intrepid self-invention or as a backdrop that shapes the dreams and fears of its inhabitants and visitors alike. Artists including Susan Hall and Howard Kanovitz use views of the city to impart their subjects with a nearly mythic sense of style and sophistication. Others, such as Nan Goldin and Ryan McGinley, depict tense and gritty realities. Many of these works capture quintessential New York types, from disillusioned commuters to the downtown artists who flocked to the city in search of freedom, community, or the promise of fame. Leidy Churchman's painting of the dazzling view from New York's tallest residential tower presents a portrait not of an individual but of the city itself.

Below is a selection of works from New York Portrait.

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Idelle Weber’s graphic paintings and collages of businessmen from the 1960s and 1970s capture the cosmopolitan milieu of New York during that period. In Lever Building II, the anonymous silhouettes of white-collar workers are visible through the windows of the eponymous midtown skyscraper, where Weber’s husband worked as a corporate lawyer. An icon of the International Style of architecture, the building, with its gridlike metal frame and curtain wall of glass, presents an ideal setting for Weber’s voyeuristic scene, which unfolds simultaneously across four floors. Amid a crew of identically dressed men, a female figure stands alone, her hair, dress, and tentative posture distinct from that of her male counterparts. Through this isolation, Weber suggests the social alienation and discrimination that women faced at this time, an experience that she knew well as a female artist operating in a male-dominated art world.

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Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

New York Portrait

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LEVER BUILDING II, 1970

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Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

New York Portrait

5

LEVER BUILDING II, 1970

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection