The Temptation of Edward Hopper: Edward Hopper as Puritan at Craig F. Starr Gallery by Donald Kuspit - New York
about 5 months ago (12/12/2023)
The Temptation of Edward Hopper: Edward Hopper as Puritan at Craig F. Starr Gallery by Donald Kuspit advertise donate post your art opening recent articles cities contact about article index podcast main December 2023 "The Best Art In The World" "The Best Art In The World" December 2023 The Temptation of Edward Hopper: Edward Hopper as Puritan at Craig F. Starr Gallery by Donald Kuspit Edward Hopper, Group of Houses, 1923 or 1924 Watercolor, 14 x 20 inches, courtesy of Craig F. Starr Gallery, New York, NY. By DONALD KUSPIT December 6, 2023 Featuring Hopper’s Two Puritans , 1945—two New England houses, side by side, regarded as a “symbolic portrait” of Hopper and his wife Jo--the exhibition at Craig F. Starr Gallery argues that Hopper was a “man bred in Puritanism,” as Guy Pene du Bois wrote in 1931, a view Hopper accepted in an appreciative letter to Pene du Bois. As though to assert his Puritanism, Hopper’s witty Self - Portrait ( La Reve de Josie ), 1936—he’s casually seated, with a feather cockily in his hat and his cloak drooping off his shoulders--is a clever, subliminally mocking reprise of Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ magnificent sculpture The Puritan , 1936, grandly cloaked and majestically upright, confronting the spectator, indeed bearing down on him with steady legs and a firm gaze.