Nighthawks
Before I get into the body of this I wanted to celebrate a few things that I’ve found recently. The first is Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing, this is a superb book celebrating art and reparative writing. It is perfect for those with curious minds looking for something with great writing that is interesting and positive. Inside this beautiful book is a love letter to Bowie, a look back at some amazing artists (incl. David Wojnarowicz, Derek Jarman, Hockney & Agnes Martin), brilliant authors (incl. Maggie Nelson & Ali Smith) and also a look at this seminal essay by Eve Kosofsky-Sedgwick called ‘Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, or, you’re so paranoid, you probably think this essay is about you’. The next and equally uplifting discovery was CULT - this is an art club that is run by a curator from the RA called Lucy Chiswell. She is hosting fortnightly zoom talks on a particular piece of art (think beautiful giant Renaissance paintings, the gossipy stories behind them and intelligent analysis). It’s very accessible and a wonderful way to ease into the weekend. You can sign up via her instagram account @join.the.cult.london and the next one is on the 15th May. My next discovery was the Marlburian Club - ostensibly for OM’s but open to all. They are hosting old pupils of refute to give a short (around 30mins) talk every two weeks. The next ‘Marlburian Monday’ is on the 18th May and will be hosted by the fantastic Frank Gardener (double points to those of us who, like Frank, are both OM’s and Exonian’s). I watched this weeks live and have also picked up the video’s from the previous weeks - I can especially recommend Richard Villar (PR, 1966-71) who gave a brilliant talk on his experiences as a Surgeon on the frontline of disaster, you can find this video on the Marlburian Club website and it’s well worth it. And finally Ryan and I have been listening to Adam Buxton’s new book together, called Ramble Book, on audible and it’s a big cuddle of friendliness and humour - well worth a listen.
But let’s get on with my other discovery….
************************
One perk of isolation & my furloughship has been some serious home maintenance. I have finally cleared that cupboard. I have catalogued my large collection of posters and started the frustrating task of ordering frames and mounts and hanging things to my walls. There has also been a re-discovering of lost memories. I have (or rather had) several shoe boxes & zip folders with a very miscellaneous collection of things from across the years. I will probably write another post on some of the gems that I discovered so I won’t say more for now other than I’m very grateful to the hoarding capacity of my past self. However, one particular thing I did discover was a postcard that I picked up - I think - in New York. It’s called Nighthawks and was painted by Edward Hopper in 1942.
Nighthawks by Edward Hopper 1942
Source: The Art Institute of Chicago, Fifty-third Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture. Chicago: 1942. (via https://en.wikipedia.org/)
This painting by Edward Hopper is one of my favourites. Favourite here denotes the fact that it has stayed with me (quite literally) and that it has always resonated. I think originally it was the case of me looking at this painting and desperately wanting to emulate the people in it. I wanted their steady detachment and command of adult life. America will always be cool and this painting both confirms this and, in time, I learnt it also tells a lot about what modernity and society does to us. But to go back to my young eyes. I saw a beautiful woman at a bar with a suitor (is he?) and imagined the perfect night out. For me this painting captures the bit before the crescendo (which at the time I understood as being whisked home). I felt looking at it that I could be that woman and that I wanted - as I imagined she was surely attaining - the command of a whole city, a whole life and all the joys that adulthood could bring (which reminds me of a comment by the psycho-analysis Adam Phillips about the well thumbed childhood notion that the solution to being a child is to be an adult). In short, for me, this painting captures what blissful feeling of the world being perfectly still and you being in the middle. As an adult I have experienced such evenings - that night in Rome for a birthday with Ryan, a final nightcap in a deserted city, the walk through a moon swept Brooklyn, a shared plate of tapas and the extended conversation with a friend in crisis. In these moments the surroundings fall away and what is left is the silent connection with another person and the sense of being in command, or rather not at the mercy of my surroundings. This painting also pulls up something mysterious and enticing. Looking at it now I still want to know what that gentleman at the front is doing there. Where has he come from? What is his story? I imagine, because I want to, that he is a private investigator and that he is pulling together a narrative in order to find a truth. He is tidying up something and it his intelligence, keen wit and that final drink that is facilitating this.
This painting also, I now understand, is saying something else. It is telling us a story about modernity and how we view ourselves. There is a narrative about experience, voyeurism and detachment. There is a profound emptiness to this painting. The streets are deserted and yet when I now consider it these people do not look like they are about to leave. They look stuck. The light in this space is too bright to suggest the gentle close of play that I had presumed when I saw it before. And then of course there is the other question - if the streets are deserted why are we, from the viewpoint we take alongside the painter, walking past and watching? If I embody this character - the painter - then the loneliness is quite oppressing . I am stuck ‘outside’ and away from the conversation, so to speak. When viewed like this it feels a bit like the protagonist in Near Window in that we can only guess at what we are seeing and yet are compelled to look. We choose to hide ourselves from other peoples’ glances but are happy to view & intrude on others. This - for me at least - is the oddity of modernity. Where intimacy is implicit but not directly expressed. This is the language of cool detachment with the emphasis being placed on being collected and polished, ie. Instagram ready.
And then, when you look closer this painting has one disturbing fact. These people cannot leave. When you start to analyse the space it becomes apparent that it is impossible. The perspectives are off. That brown door is too small and worse still it doesn’t seem accessible from any angle. And where would it lead to anyway? There is no front door to this restaurant, at least not one that is obvious. And how does the barman leave the bar? This painting suddenly takes on the quality of a sort of snow globe where everything is stuck down in place solely for our viewing pleasure. I’m not certain what the implications of this are. But it unsettles me. It makes me ask myself why I am viewing these trapped people, it opens me up to the bigger question of whether all this cool detachment and voyeurism is telling us something unsettling. That maybe interactions and life shouldn’t be so polished and singular. This is what I imagined to be perfect when in truth it now appears to be a trap.
It would be tidy to end this by linking this to our current isolation. And there is something in that - the fishbowl is called zoom and the front door is of no use as we can’t go anywhere. But this doesn’t really hold, does it? We are not coolly detaching ourselves from one another. In fact we are finding inventive ways to reconnect and come together. We are using modern technologies to reforge relationships and pull people in.
