#roberta smith

Edward Hopper, The Sheridan Theater, 1937. Oil on canvas.

This painting shows the voluptuous shell of glowing, orange-tinted space that is "The Sheridan Theater,” which depicts one of the Art Deco movie palaces that Hopper so loved to paint. The scene is inhabited by a lone woman who watches the screen standing at the back of the house, her chunky figure contradicting the flowing architecture.

A mouthwatering curiosity is what the viewer takes away from Edward Hopper’s painting “The Sheridan Theatre” (1937), the subject of a splendid little exhibition at the Newark Museum. The painting depicts a disquieting scene of a woman alone at the back of a movie theater, watched by two figures, one of them an usher. Is she waiting for friends, or has she simply arrived late? We don’t know, for her behavior doesn’t fit with any typical pattern of moviegoing.

     —Roberta Smith in the NY Times

The pleasures of this painting are numerous, from the ambiguity of the central figure to the stylized, evocative architecture and graceful shifts of lighting in the balcony. It is one of Hopper’s best movie-theater paintings. …

A cinéaste, Hopper once remarked to a friend: “When I don’t feel in the mood for painting I go to the movies for a week or more. I go on a regular movie binge!” His favorite movie theater was the Sheridan in the West Village of Manhattan, not far from a townhouse on Washington Square where he and his wife and model, the artist Josephine Nivison, lived on the top floor for most of their lives. Calm, silent and luminous, “The Sheridan Theatre” … oozes strangeness.

Being an artist quotes

 (37 quotes about being an artist)

Bob and Roberta Smith, ‘What Unites Human Beings’, 2017 

"Was it something exciting? Are you a gangster? To rob a bank?" "Hey, what do you think I am!" "Well, you're in here, aren't you?" "Well, I didn't do anything." "Oh, I see, you're innocent, huh?" "Hey, you know, you're kind of fresh." "No, I'm not. But when somebody does something, I like them torn up and admit they were wrong."

first posted in facebook april 6, 2020

carlo crivelli -- "the annunciation, with saint emidius" (late 15th cent.)

"a picture-maker of dazzling ambition, intense expressive power, and luxuriant ornamentation, carlo crivelli (1430 or 1435 to about 1494) may well be the finest renaissance painter you’ve never heard of. if you do know him — and he has what amounts to a secret cult following — my bet is that, like me, you’ve never quite got your head around him" ... sebastian smee

[this painting is] "the mother of all annunciation paintings. everything in this elaborate composition [...] is as lavish and detailed as possible, whether it’s the robes and hair of the archangel, the luxurious paneled bedroom of the virgin or the scrolling classical reliefs on doorways and entablatures. shifting tones of terra-cotta, pink and cream are gently unifying, as is the light. and the plunging perspective of the walkway adds visceral drama to that of the annunciation itself. the gold, while restrained, has moments of undeniable flair: it defines, of course, the archangel’s and virgin’s halos and god’s impregnating ray, descending from the sky. less usual is that this ray enters the room through a gold-trimmed mouse-hole opening, and in the middle distance, a man who shades his eyes, stares at it. he is the only one who seems to grasp what’s happening, and every fold of his robe is outlined in gold" ... roberta smith

"all these ingredients come together to make a potent cocktail — something sharp, even citrusy on the surface, but with darker, more potent stirrings and an arresting metallic aftertaste" ... sebastian smee

"i think the most striking thing is the cucumber that is prominently displayed in the foreground, balanced on a ledge and projecting toward the viewer" ... monica bowen

"it’s an extraordinary work pulsing with full-blown renaissance ambition, not only in its virtuosic control of perspective but also in its classical references, its expression of civic pride, its secular sumptuousness — peacocks, anatolian carpets, wood paneling, you name it — and its sense of the sacred unfolding in a real world of air and light and encompassing space" ... sebastian smee

"crivelli appears to have been obsessed with cucumbers [...] thomas golsenne considers that they appear in almost all of crivelli’s paintings, as a symbolic signature, although studying each one carefully enough to be confident would be no easy task. there seems no good reason for crivelli to celebrate the humble cucumber in his paintings." ... howard hoakley