Vacation, part four: MFA

You only have a few more days to see the Edward Hopper exhibit at Boston’s MFA. Do it. Barring that, see the next major exhibit of his work, wherever they put it. I now have a new favorite painter.

Of course, Hopper isn’t exactly obscure, and one sees various of his pieces as one visits museums hither and yon. But I never paid a lot of attention. I was always certainly taken by the people in his paintings and what they were up to juxtaposed against what the world seemed to be up to, if anything. There’s a sphinx-like quality to his people that forces you to think about them in unique ways. But that’s only a small part of his work, and at some level, I think of that as a merely accidental extension of other parts of his work. That is, he’s not a painter of disconnected people, he’s a painter of objects that capture the imagination for reasons that are difficult to articulate. He paints buildings with no life from angles that make them into architectural touchstones. He takes the quotidian and portrays it in a way that makes it no less quotidian, but absolutely commanding of your attention. It doesn’t matter if it’s people or buildings. I have no intention of offering an art critique of his work, for which I am not equipped. But I was standing with jaw agape over and over again. You might too, if you give him a chance.

Another aspect of the exhibit was a lot of his watercolors. I’m new to this, so my previous exposure to his work was the famous oil paintings, which stylistically all have a semi-diffuse nature to them; he’s not exactly a sharp realistic painter. But his water colors were bright and breezy, many of them at summery locations. Beaches, lighthouses, that sort of thing. It would be silly to portray this as a day to the night of his oils, and it would also not be accurate, but there is feel to these that is completely different from the oils. Much to think about, when all is said and done.

So we went to MFA to check it out, and figured they had the Hopper, so what the hell. It turns out that the Hopper will probably become something of an obsession going forward. As for the rest of the place, some nice pieces, especially La Japonaise by Monet (new to me and therefore a jaw-dropper), some PRBs, Whistler and Sargent in a from-the-attic room, more Sargent mural work, a solid American collection of art and crafts, all very nice for a provincial little city. Now if they could only figure out a way to have theater for the whole year, and streets that a human being could actually drive on while maintaining such sanity as that person had at the point of starting the engine, and if they could get over winning the World Series once every millennium, they’d be a nice place to visit again some day. Till then, as the song says, I’ll take Manhattan…