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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An astute observer of Depression-era New York, Raphael Soyer evoked the inner lives of anonymous city dwellers. His paintings frequently depict the new generation of female workers he encountered in his Union Square neighborhood. Leaving the home for secretarial and clerical jobs, these “office girls” achieved an independence that was unprecedented for women of the period, even while unemployment remained high among men. While his artist colleagues usually portrayed these young women in optimistic terms, Soyer’s composition strikes a more ambivalent tone. Squeezed between a throng of rushing female workers and a glowering man, the central woman looks out at the viewer with a gaze that is at once weary and unflinching.

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Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

New York Portrait

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OFFICE GIRLS, 1936

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Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

New York Portrait

5

OFFICE GIRLS, 1936

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection