Curio #11 - Edward Hopper, Social Networks and Peggy Gou
I’ve been spending a bit of time recently thinking about why I like newsletters as a medium. I’m considering writing something longer about this, but here are some initial thoughts.
Newsletters are intimate
As opposed to reading a blog or following someone on social media, the fact that you receive an email directly from the sender creates a sense of intimacy that’s hard to replicate in other forms of digital communication
Unlike on blogs or news articles which often rely on anonymous public comments, you’re able to reply directly to the author
Newsletters aren’t time sensitive
The content on blogs, news websites and social media constantly changes. This means you have to keep checking back and that it’s easy to miss things. The newsletter is frozen, to be read at a time that’s most convenient for you
Newsletters have edges
Newsletters, like physical books and physical newspapers, have clear edges. Once you’ve finished reading them, then that’s it. Almost all other forms of digital media (news websites, Youtube, Wikipedia, Netflix, social media) tend to have something else for you to look at or to click. They leave you with the sense that you’re never completely finished. For this reason, the email newsletter is a medium that truly respects the attention of the reader
If you have any thoughts or feelings on the above I’d love to hear them.
I hope you’re finding Curio a welcome break every week. If you are, then feel free to forward this email to a couple of friends and they can sign up below.
Have a great weekend!
Oli
Edward Hopper on Loneliness
“I probably am a lonely one.”
Background
Prominent American realist painter, Edward Hopper, was born in Upper Nyack in upstate New York in 1882. After finishing high school, he studied at the New York School of Art (now known as Parsons School of Design at The New School), where his teachers included William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri. Hopper traveled to Paris in 1906 and went back and forth for the next few years before settling permanently in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, in 1910, where he stayed for the rest of his life.
For the next decade he struggled to make ends meet and scraped a living earning money as an illustrator. Hopper was an introverted figure and lived a life of solitude, without any close friends or significant intimate relationships. However, in 1923, as he was starting to gain recognition and commercial success, he became re-acquainted with a woman he studied with at art school, Josephine Nivison. They got married soon after at the relatively ripe age of forty-one. Edward and Jo were inseparable until Hopper’s death in 1967.
On Loneliness
Olivia Laing, in her book The Lonely City (2016), describes the consistent theme of loneliness in Hopper’s work:
“In painting after painting, [Hopper] shows not just what loneliness looks like but also how it feels...the way it functions to simultaneously entrap and expose.”
Cape Cod Morning (1950)
There is a voyeuristic element to Hopper’s paintings, as the viewer is made to feel like they are looking at what Laing calls “an urban aquarium.”
New York Office (1962)
The subjects he paints are exposed to the viewer but, importantly, they are also separated from each other. Laing explains how Hopper’s “paintings tend to be populated by people alone, or in uneasy, uncommunicative groupings of twos and threes.”
Room In New York (1932)
Carter Foster, curator of the Whitney and author of Hopper’s Drawings, outlines how Hopper focuses on: “certain kinds of spaces and spatial experiences common in New York that result from being physically close to others but separated from them by a variety of factors, including movement, structures, windows, walls and light or darkness.”
Office In A Small City (1953)
There is also an unnerving silence to Hopper’s works.
Early Sunday Morning (1930)
Nighthawks is Hopper’s best known painting. I even have it on the wall of my room. Writer Joyce Carol Oates describes it as “Our most poignant, ceaselessly replicated romantic image of American loneliness.”
Nighthawks (1941)
Olivia Laing notices that:
“The diner [is] a place of refuge, absolutely, but there [is] no visible entrance, no way to get in or out. There [is] a cartoonish, ochre-coloured door at the back of the painting, leading perhaps to a grimy kitchen. But from the street, the room [is] sealed...a glass cell.”
The Most Popular Social Networks 2003 - 2019
I found the below visualization of the most popular social networks from 2003 to 2019 interesting for a few reasons:
Before watching this video, I had never heard of hi5 or Qzone
MySpace’s dramatic rise and fall
The brief cameo and then disappearance of Google+
The explosive growth of Tik Tok in the past two years. If you want to learn more about Tik Tok and its popularity, I recommend Jia Tolentino’s illuminating essay How Tik Tok Holds Our Attention
Peggy Gou
Peggy Gou is a twenty-eight year old South Korean DJ, producer and fashion designer. She spent her teenage years between London and Seoul before settling down after high school to study at the London College of Fashion. While she studied, she performed weekly as a DJ at The Book Club in Shoreditch. Peggy is now based in Berlin and has become one of the world’s most sought after club performers. Her catchy, accessible tracks and unique compositions mean she’s able to straddle the divide between mass appeal and the underground scene. Not many people can say they have over 1 million Instagram followers and regularly perform at Berlin’s famous Berghain club.
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Curio is put together by Oli Duchesne