Appreciating an award

The portrait is Edward Hopper’s evocative New York Movie. I post it as a thank you to Matthew Coniam for awarding the Creative Blogger Award to Laszlo’s on Lex. If you are a regular reader of Movietone News you will see Hopper’s masterwork prominently placed, and a recurring presence. Matthew has written to me about the artist sayng: “Everything that draws me to cinema, and to the culture of the twenties and thirties, is there, in perfection, in his work.”

New York Movie reminds me of a time when films were movies, when theatres looked as Hopper depicted them, and when young women, dressed in attractive uniforms, guided us across dark slanting slopes to far away regions. Afterward, one might lean her face against a hand perhaps, reflecting pensively on the world outside of her world within.

The original painting is housed in The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The usherette was created into full womanhood in 1939, a year the world went to war. She has remained ageless through seventy years. In a way, she might be some reverse version of Jennie Appleton, remaining the same while we change each time we see her.

New York Movie. Long ago and far away. A thank you to Matthew becomes a remembrance of Hopper. I suspect Matthew would not object. And I appreciate his award and his guidance through waters I had not previously traveled.