H O B O K E N W A T E R F R O N T
E R N E S T L A W S O N 1 9 3 0
Industrialization has taken over the natural landscape.
The water churns with the crisscrossing wakes of
passing tugs and ships. Putting the land and the
surrounding population to factory use made for
tumultuous times.
These tugs are right out of a Popeye cartoon.
Give Popeye a can of spinach and he will
get the job done. You can bet on it.
Cause he's Popeye the Sailor Man.
Toot toot!
E A R L Y S U N D A Y M O R N I N G
E D W A R D H O P P E R 1 9 3 0
Painting Seventh Avenue in Greenwich Village,
one year following the stock market crash of '29.
It was the beginning of the Great Depression.
Hopper shows a street silent, stark...
drained of vitality. Abandoned by life.
A barber pole and a fire hydrant cast impossibly
long shadows; stand-ins for the absence of
human form.
G E O R G I A O ' K E E F F E
A L F R E D S T I E G L I T Z 1 9 1 8
O'Keeffe left her teaching job in Texas to become
an artist living in New York. The photographer
Alfred Stieglitz was immediately captivated by her
as an artist and as a woman. They fell in love.
Stieglitz divorced his wife and married O'Keeffe
despite their twenty-three years difference in age.
Over the course of twenty years Stieglitz produced
more than three hundred images of O'Keeffe as she
transformed into an artist of world renown.
J O H N ' S D I N E R
J O H N B A E D E R 2 0 0 7
Actually it's John's Chevelle, the artist's car, out front.
The Diner's name is his one big fiction.
How many artists would choose this drab scene for
their next artistic statement? The next Night Hawks
cafe. The artist, Baeder, saw these modest food spots
as shrines for everyday Americans. A decent cup of
coffee for a dime and a spot of conversation on the side.
All this in the midst of a general blight settling about.
It was a time worth preserving
in this dry, skeptical manner.
T H E N I G H T
M A X B E C K M A N N 1 9 1 9
The senselessness of human cruelty.
Paramilitary thugs invade a home, terrorizing
the family within. The man hanged. His wife
violated. Their son dragged off into the night.
There are no sanctuaries in which to hide when
faced with this kind of political violence.
It was 1919 Germany, its society in collapse
following the nation's defeat in World War I.
Life was brutal, ugly. No time for Renoir.
No time for Impressionist beauty and romantic
picnics. Art became one big nervous breakdown.
I S A W T H E F I G U R E 5 I N G O L D
C H A R L E S D E M U T H 1 9 2 8
"AMONG THE RAIN / AND LIGHTS
I SAW THE FIGURE 5 / IN GOLD
ON A RED / FIRETRUCK / MOVING
TENSE / UNHEEDED / TO GONG CLANGS
SIREN HOWLS / AND WHEELS RUMBLING
THROUGH THE DARK CITY"
THE GREAT FIGURE
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
POET AND FRIEND OF THE ARTIST
* * * * *
OVER EASY
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