[Music]
I'm Carter Foster, Curator of Drawings at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
We're here at number 3 Washington Square North
which was the site of Edward Hopper's studio
where he lived and worked much of his life.
Edward Hopper moved here in 1913 and stayed here until his death in 1967.
It's kind of amazing that his easel is still here.
And this was the press Hopper used to print.
He started etching in the teens and made etchings for about ten years.
What we're going to be doing today is going out
sort of taking the walk that Hopper probably frequently took
when he went out and explored Greenwich Village.
We're going to see some of the sights that inspired him.
We'll go down the 74 steps that he used himself to go out into the street.
Then we can take a walk up to Greenwich Avenue and 7th Avenue.
There's three corners on Greenwich Avenue that were significant for Hopper, spatially,
because of the way they angle into each other and create these triangular intersections
and that spatially influenced Hopper when he was thinking about "Nighthawks."
He actually wrote about walking up Greenwich Avenue
and looking at these intersections
and you can look between these two windows to the other side
so you can see the kind of space that Hopper was thinking about.
From old photographs we know that this was
a dry cleaner and then it was a newsstand
and it actually had an advertisement for tobacco
above this store at this angle, which Hopper appropriated for "Nighthawks."
He also included a tobacco advertisement.
So now we're just a little bit up Greenwich Avenue
at a significant spot for Hopper because the Sheridan Theatre
was right here behind me where this park is now.
It was a theater that Hopper painted in his 1937 painting.
And just right up this way was a restaurant called "Crawford Lunch."
He talked about "Nighthawks" being inspired by a restaurant
on Greenwich Avenue, and we know from photographs
that it was a place called "Crawford Lunch."
Also up 7th Avenue was the building Hopper painted
in his great painting "Early Sunday Morning."
So we're standing on 7th Avenue and 15th Street
across from the site that contained the building
that inspired "Early Sunday Morning,"
a painting he painted in 1930
and what's interesting about the site--the building, unfortunately,
is no longer there--it was replaced by this brick apartment building
in the late 1930s, not long after Hopper painted it.
But the building had gone up in 1878,
so by the time Hopper painted it in 1930,
it was actually an old building. Two large apartment houses are still there
and we know that those buildings were going up
when Hopper was painting "Early Sunday Morning."
So Hopper chose to focus on a much older building.
He isolates it out of the urban context.
He ignored the progress that was happening around him,
or--in a way--by ignoring it almost acknowledged it.
We're at the corner of 23rd street, 5th Avenue, and Broadway:
one of the most iconic intersections of New York.
It was also iconic when Hopper was alive
and I think that the so-called prow
of the Flatiron building is probably the
most direct inspiration for his painting "Nighthawks."
I think it's probably those wedge shapes on Greenwich Avenue
that may have given him the idea for the painting,
but because this is such a prominent thing
in New York--this intersection--
it's hard not to think that he was thinking about it as well.
So I think the important thing to understand
about Hopper is that he was a synthesizer.
We've seen all these spots that inspired his painting, but it's important to realize
that Hopper went back to his studio once he made drawings on site or was inspired by specific spots
and amalgamated the information while he was painting it. But what's always interesting in Hopper is that there's
always extreme specificity and generalization almost at the same time.
And I think that's what gives his art
the kind of uncanny quality that he is famous for.
You have to understand how much he was out in New York City looking at things very carefully
in order to paint them in his signature style
when he went back to his studio in Washington Square.