neon abstractions
give the illusion we have
dispelled puzzlement
Edward Hopper’s New York, the sumptuous exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, gives us one more chance to retire — at least for a decent interval — those once glamorous words that have come to dominate, and increasingly suffocate, our experience of Hopper’s paintings: alienation, loneliness, voyeurism, the uncanny.
Such neon abstractions give us the illusion that we have dispelled the puzzlement we often feel in front of Hopper’s strange compositions.
What they actually do is give us license to stop looking at the pictures, causing us to miss crucial aspects of his achievement, such as his pervasive and peculiar sense of humor.
A painter who features an ad for Ex-Lax in a moody nocturne of a corner drugstore isn’t just concerned with alienation.
From Buildings Come to Life, by Christopher Benfey in the New York Review of Books.
No Haiku For You 