Edward Hopper at the Whitney Museum is the Daily Pic by Blake Gopnik
The Daily Pic: Edward Hopper's paintings are worse than his drawings – which makes them better.
(Drawing – Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Josephine N. Hopper Bequest; painting – Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Gift of the T. B. Walker Foundation, Gilbert M. Walker Fund)
This is a study for Edward Hopper’s “Office at Night", from 1940, and the finished painting based on it, as paired in the Hopper drawings show now at the Whitney Museum in New York. The oohing and aahing around this show seems all about Hopper’s skills as a draughtsman, but it’s pretty clear that by the commercial-art standards of his time (or even of ours) those skills were fair to middling. His work only becomes interesting when he transfers his drawings to paint, where his technique was quite simply absent. But it’s that absence of quality – the same absence of culural value that we see in his banal office or diner or other subjects – that makes his paintings unique to him, and to his place and moment. He needs to display a level of skill that brings him closer to an American sign-painter than to a French academician.
For a full visual survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.
See more of our coverage in your search results.
Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.
Register below to read this article for free or subscribe
to unlock unlimited access to The Daily Beast.
Monthly
$1
First month then $5.99/month
Annual
$35
First year then $59.99/year
Premium
$79
First year then $119.99/year
*Substack access provided by the next business day, using your subscription email. Choosing the Premium plan constitutes your permission to share your subscription email with Substack and your agreement to Substack’s Privacy Policy.
Already have an account? Sign In
Looks like you already have a subscription!
You're all set!
Thanks for subscribing.