https://hyperallergic.com/718667/a-rehang-of-edward-hopper-iconic-nighthawks-changes-the-game/

A response to Hyperallergic article titled:

The painting, the physical art will not disappear as digital copies project images far more efficiently than any simple wall. This has to do with the power relations between the image and the audience. The painting brings us to it, while images on the net fly across the world at the mere request of the poorest surfer, who could easily murder the image, since he is hidden or since he would act wreckless right in front of the poorly hidden, spying official. The painting has moved audiences to it. Then when arrived, they found themselves surrounded by security that paces around them and seems to invade and interrupt every interaction with unreasonable suspicion.

Every big fish has a still bigger fish hunting it. The painting’s natural predator is the curator, who has gathered together his prizes and forces them to share him. Oppressive language in long passages ties the paintings together as hostages for their cause, for their tract, which is really a hussle unlike any other.

In this particular design, we have Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, a work about isolation but also about life continuing somehow at the expense of the pursuit of money. The curator ties this image, which shows money, a white cash register, in a dark corner in contrast to the bright life of the communal table, the shared bar, to two other white symbols in other paintings, the white flag and cape in Hughie Lee-Smith’s “Desert Forms” and the white chalice in Gertrude Abercrombie’s “The Past and Present.” Both of these mark the desolation produced by class oppression, the inability to rebel, and an extreme boredom. The combination of progressive themes, however, have found themselves reversed, torn from their artists and trapped for display, an exposure, in a sense, of their progressivism as a means of shaming the artists. They have all tried and failed in their own way, to escape cooptation by the system. The symbol makers that drew crowds have turned into symbols themselves who must repeat the tired lie that capitalism and democracy can co-exist.

“The Past and Present” flirts with surrealism as a way of supplanting it with Figurative Art, the new movement rising against the establishment. It shows the boring, standard room which Surrealism has become, in contrast with the limitless dreams or the provocative psychological symbols it promised. At the same time, the dreariness of the existence still shows signs of life, of a gathering place around the centerpiece. This represents the life of the movement, the agenda that the new art seeks to set into motion. The curator has ignored the intention of the artist and eliminated this conflict by making the white centerpiece simply the center of an oppressive whole, white hegemony, rather than a humanistic, central cause uniting society.

The same process also applies to “Desert Forms.” The artist has depicted stakes in the ground and made them symbols for unchanging social relations. The people are like stakes in the ground, unable to make changes, unable to introduce life into the desert. The white flag symbolizes the resignation of the rebellion and the white cape the power and status of the establishment. At the same time, the man by the flag seems to search for a solution to bring down that flag. The caped lady does not actually stay still, like a stake in the ground, but moves, a movement that shows she has not quite resigned even if she sees resignation in her future. That represents a goodness in authority that translates into hidden support for authoritatively necessary revolutionary change. In the pseudo-triptych, however, the curator turns these into symbols of white power asserting its power everywhere, even the deserts, while the tower, the academy now appears like an oil pump. They assimilate the art into their collection as a triumphant symbol of conquest for the empire.

In order to break the cycle of cooptation of their heroes, the working class will need to use paintings and other images to attract audiences for another purpose besides the profit motive or the intellectual defense of the class divide. They will need an art movement that sets revolutionaries apart and allows them to fight in a united way for the attention of the audience and also for public gathering places so the revolution can reach a wider audience.