wcw DECEMBER 2022

major art exhibits continued
• Cubism and the
Trompe l’Oeil at
The Metropolitan
Museum of Art
At The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, Cubism and the Trompe
l’Oeil Tradition are presented in
an entirely new understanding of Cubism
by connecting it to the strategies, motifs,
and playful provocation of trompe l’oeil
(“deceive the eye”) illusionism.
This transhistorical, international loan
exhibition brings together more than 100
objects, the majority being by the three
Cubists who addressed the practice of
trompe l’oeil in the years 1909-1915:
Georges Braque, Juan Gris, and Pablo
Picasso. Their paintings and collages
(and, in the case of Picasso, sculptures)
are paired with works by European and
American artists from the 17th through
the 19th century—from Samuel van
Hoogstraten and Cornelius Norbertus
Gijsbrechts, to Louis Léopold Boilly and
William Harnett.
Though these trompe l’oeil painters
were often disparaged for merely copying
nature, they filled their pictures with
ingenious tricks and allusions, elevating
the seemingly humble genre of still life.
As the exhibit reveals, the Cubists both
parodied and paid homage to classic
trompe l’oeil devices, while inventing
new ways of confounding the eye and the
mind. Despite vast differences in overall
appearance, both art forms interrogated
the nature of representation, raising philosophical
questions about the real and
the fake, and the ephemeral and the enduring,
that resonate powerfully today.
Cubism and the Trompe l’Oeil Tradition
unfolds across ten thematic rooms,
charting the dialogue between Cubism
and the past and the three-way competition
between Braque, Gris, and Picasso.
The exhibition includes an ensemble of
collages and papiers collés (paper collage)
by Braque, Gris, and Picasso, most
of them rarely seen. Picasso’s Still Life
with Chair Caning (1912)—the first Cubist
collage—is displayed in the United
States for the first time in 30 years.
Information: www.metmuseum.org/.
• Edward Hopper
at The Whitney
Edward Hopper’s New York runs
through Mar 5, 2023 at The Whitney.
The city of New York was
Edward Hopper’s home for nearly six decades
(1908–67), a period that spans his
entire mature career and coincides with
a historic time of urban development.
Edward Hopper’s New York is the
first exhibition of its kind to focus on
the artist’s rich and sustained
relationship with the city that
served as the subject, setting,
and inspiration for so many of
his most celebrated pictures.
The survey takes a comprehensive
look at Hopper’s life
and work through his depictions
of the city—from his early impressions
in sketches, prints,
and illustrations, to his late
paintings, in which New York
served as a backdrop for his
evocative distillations of urban
experience.
Drawing from the Whitney’s
extensive holdings by the artist
and amplified by key loans, the
exhibition brings together many
of Hopper’s iconic city pictures
such as Automat (1927), Early
Sunday Morning (1930), Room
in New York (1932), New York
Movie (1939), and Morning
Sun (1952), as well as several
lesser-known yet critically important
examples including the
artist’s watercolors of downtown New
York and his painting November, Washington
Square (1932/1958).
The presentation also includes a variety
of materials from the Museum’s
recently acquired Sanborn Hopper
Archive—printed ephemera, correspondence,
photographs, and journals
that together offer new insights into
Hopper’s life. whitney.org/exhibitions/edward-hopper-new-york.
• Looking Ahead…
MoMA has Ed
Ruscha/Now Then
The Museum of Modern Art has
ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN, the
most comprehensive presentation
of the artist’s work, and his first
solo exhibition at the Museum, September
23, 2023 through January 6, 2024.
This is great timing for a fall 2023 visit in
New York so you can plan ahead.
Spanning 65 years of Ed Ruscha’s
career and mirroring his own cross-disciplinary
approach, the exhibition
features over 250 works, produced
from 1958 to the present, in various
mediums—including painting, drawing,
prints, film, photography, artist’s books,
and installation—displayed according to
a loose chronology.
Alongside the artist’s most acclaimed
works, the exhibition highlights lesser-known
aspects of his practice, offering
new perspectives on one of the most
influential figures in postwar American
art and stressing Ruscha’s role as a keen
observer of a rapidly changing world.
Raised in Oklahoma City, Ed Ruscha
(American, born 1937) moved
to Los Angeles in 1956 to
study commercial art at the
Chouinard Art Institute (now
CalArts). Beginning with these
formative years, the exhibition
includes rarely seen paintings
and works on paper made
during, or in reference to, his
extensive travels throughout
the United States and Europe,
revealing the artist’s keen
attention to everyday sights—
including vernacular architecture,
consumer items, and
public signage.
The exhibition also reunites
a number of breakthrough
paintings, which Ruscha made
shortly after graduating from
Chouinard, in order to demonstrate
his foundational and enduring
interest in language for its plastic and
sonic qualities. For instance, OOF (1962,
reworked 1963), a painting in MoMA’s
collection, depicts a one-syllable word
with a bold shape and guttural sound
that not only recalls the dynamic exclamations
found in comic strips, but also
highlights Ruscha’s acute understanding
of design and typography. https://www.
moma.org/artists/5086.
Cross-media installations throughout
the retrospective offer insight into Ruscha’s
working methods. Viewers have
the opportunity to trace the migration
of subjects across mediums—following,
for example, an image of a Standard
gasoline station from its small blackand-white
reproduction in his self-published
artist’s book, Twentysix Gasoline
Stations (1963) to the
monumental, brightly
rendered oil paintings
made shortly
after, which remain
as some of Ruscha’s
most recognizable
works.
These displays
will also highlight
the artist’s continual
experimentation with
unconventional materials
and techniques,
including drawings
made with gunpowder,
airbrushed paintings
of enigmatic
silhouettes, and vintage
drum skins emblazoned
with double
negatives. https://
www.moma.org/.
28 WEST COAST WOMAN DECEMBER 2022