(photo by Stephen Shore)You have to go to this fabulous exhibit at the Fraenkel Gallery for all of us. The exhibit is called “Edward Hopper & Company”. It illustrates how Edward Hoppers paintings influenced later 20th century photographers like Walker Evans and Stephen Shore. I'm intrigued by this idea because Hopper is one of my favorite painters (the Off Hesperus logo is a Hopper painting called "House at Dusk") and lately I've been reading a lot about photographers from the 60s and 70s like Stephen Shore, William Eggleston and Robert Frank. It shouldn't surprise me that links have been made between the two aesthetics. People are probably drawn to Hopper in the same way they are drawn to these photographers.
Just drawing a quick comparison between Hopper and Stephen Shore, they both focus on mundane settings and ordinary people. The subjects in their work (whether it be a person or a building) seem lonely and abandoned. And yet while desolate, there is a beauty in the desolation. The penetrating late afternoon sun on a a city building, lonely people sitting at a bar late at night, a pancake breakfast for one at a roadside diner. These are sad, indelible images.
E! I might have to make a return trip to San Francisco!
oh casey i will! Thank you for the tip - i did not even know that this was going on. i do love living here and this is one of the reasons why. When are you coming back? There are so many more places to see!
ReplyDeleteHere is my quick list of things I want to do when I return to SF:
ReplyDelete1) Finally see the Palace of Fine Arts
2) See the newly renovated and fabulous California Academy of Sciences
3) See the permanent Dorothea Lange collection at that Oakland Museum
4) Finally get a coffee and dessert at Tartine
5) Take the ferry to Sausalito
6) Do the drive from SF to LA (and visit Sudeep and Abby!)
7) Head out to my old hood: the 680 corridor and get a burger at In-n-Out and then head to my favorite brunchy/lunchy place in Lafayette, Chow.
And somehow do all that AND all the things you want to do, E!