Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time

As American artists rebelled against the academic art and aristocratic portraiture that predominated at the turn of the 20th century, they began looking to modern life for their subject matter. One of central figures in this dramatic shift was Edward Hopper, whose work is exhibited in relation to his most important contemporaries in Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art until April 10th. New York Interior

Placing Hopper beside such artists as Robert Henri, William Glackens, John Sloan, George Ault, Guy Pène du Bois, George Bellows, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Charles Demuth, Ralston Crawford, Paul Strand, Charles Sheeler, Charles Burchfield, Ben Shahn, Lisette Model, Thomas Hart Benton, and Reginald Marsh, the show traces the development of realism in American art in the first half of the twentieth century. The exhibition, organized by Whitney curator Barbara Haskell and senior curatorial assistant Sasha Nicholas, and shown previously in different form at the Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg, and the Kunsthal Rotterdam, is installed in the second-floor Mildred & Herbert Lee Galleries.

The work of Edward Hopper (1882-1967) has been presented often by the Whitney throughout the institution's history, beginning with his first-ever solo exhibition, held at the Whitney Studio Club in 1920, but Modern Life is the first Whitney exhibition to focus specifically on the context in which he worked. It follows Hopper’s evolution into America's most iconic realist painter, tracing his connections to the artistic movements that paralleled his work while also highlighting his development of a singular aesthetic that would ultimately distinguish his art from that of his contemporaries. Hopper Self-Portrait

Modern Life begins in 1900, the year that Hopper arrived on New York’s art scene. In the exhibition's first section, his art is seen alongside the work of the Ashcan School artists, who boldly depicted the changing social and political environment of New York using rapid, loose, impressionistic brushstrokes, heavy impasto, and a dark, gritty palette. In the first decade of the century, Hopper studied with both Robert Henri and John Sloan, and quickly began to exhibit with the artists in their circle. The lessons Hopper learned from them — especially the urge to paint everyday, even mundane subjects, and a passion for capturing dramatic light effects — were immediately evident in his early paintings. Among the wealthy art patrons of the time, only Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney would stake her reputation and fortune on the work of the Ashcan artists and their successors. Her advocacy, crucial to the flourishing of a distinctly American modernism, led to the founding of the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1930 and to the formation of the collection on view in this exhibition.

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Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time

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