NYC Art Shows 2023

Edward Hopper’s Impressions of New York

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*-unless otherwise credited)

Show Seen: Edward Hopper’s New York @ The Whitney Museum
Part 1 of 3 Parts.

Introduction

Smack dab in the heart of Edward Hopper’s New York, the Artist stares out at us in one of hs few Self-Portraits, one he began 98 years ago (1925-30). What would Edward Hopper make of his New York now? Click any picture for full size.

Edward Hopper. What more can I say about his Art? In 2015, I named this site after his masterpiece, Nighthawks, because of that figure with his back to us that no one ever talks about. I relate to him more than I do any other figure I’ve ever seen in a Painting because I’ve been that guy, alone in a bar, cafe or restaurant in Edward Hopper’s New York too many times to count.

The first time I ever saw Edward Hopper’s work was in the late 1970s in a friend’s parent’s copy of this massive 10-pound, 16 by 13 1/2 inch, monograph by Lloyd Goodrich ¹ published by Abrams in 1978, with 306 pages and 246 illustrations, but only 88 in color, unfortunately. One or other of his Paintings has been lingering somewhere on my mind since. My banner has been a continual homage to Nighthawks for the past 7+ years².

Mister Hopper’s Neighborhood

The heart of Edward Hopper’s New York for over 50 years: 3 Washington Square (center). Between them, he & his wife Jo, lived on the top floor from 1913 to 1968³. Beginning in 1947, they had to fight NYU, who took over the building in 1946, to stay. Today, the Hopper Studio has been preserved though the rest of the building is in active use by NYU, as it was when I shot this, November 16, 2022. Nighthawks, among countless other Hoppers, was Painted here⁴.

At this point, I have lived in what was his extended neighborhood for over 3 decades. I have sat in the Park right in front of his long-time home and wondered if he sat on this very spot. I’ve walked by numerous actual sites he Painted, and I spent a night in the Provincetown, Massachusetts rooming house he Painted in Rooms for Tourists, 1945, while I was in Cape Cod fruitlessly trying to find his Truro summer house and drinking in the atmosphere of another area he Painted. Today, any number of times I’m reminded I’m literally walking in his footsteps on streets he is known to have walked. Living in his footsteps is probably more accurate.

Early Sunday Afternoon, March 26, 2023. Does this scream “Edward Hopper Painting?” 93 years later, it’s hard to see Early Sunday Morning, 1930 (which I discuss in Part 2), in this scene in my neighborhood, but this is where it was on 7th Avenue between West 16 & 17th Streets. Only the building partly shown on the right is in the Painting. I had to wait for the sun to go behind the center building (to the west) to take this shot, its glare still bleaches out the wall of the building on the right, proving the direction the Sun shines in the Painting was “Artistic license.”

A bit of my passion for his Art comes from this “shared experience” of this part of Manhattan at different times, but most of it lies in the endless mystery at the heart of his Art. Mystery that no amount of looking seems to solve. Until I saw Edward Hopper’s New York, that is. 300 pieces in here on NighthawkNYC.com since July, 2015, except for a bit at tail end of “My Search for Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks Diner,” this is the first time I’ve written about his Art.

Setting the Stage

Before the crush. Edward Hopper’s New York Member’s Preview Opening Day, October 13, 2022. A wall of early work, including Self-Portrait, Oil on canvas (as all works featured are, unless specified), right, introduces the show. For Hopper, 1906 marks the beginning of his life as an Artist, the year he graduated from Art school, then embarked on his first trip to Paris. He would return twice before 1910, then return to NYC to get his Art career started.

While not a career retrospective (there has not been an Edward Hopper Retrospective in the U.S. since Edward Hopper: The Art & the Artist in 1980-81 ⁵), Edward Hopper’s New York is a career-long look at what is, perhaps, his most famous subject- New York City, where he lived & worked for almost 60 years. I took the chance to see its 58 Oil or Watercolor Paintings⁶ by Hopper, among the 200 works and items of ephemera on view, 14 times between its opening day, above, and its closing day, below.

Now. Or never. This is about as crowded as an NYC Art show gets. 5pm, March 5, 2023. One hour to go on its final day. The final weekend was sold out.

Edward Hopper’s New York was the very first time I’ve seen so many Edward Hopper Paintings in one place. I went 14 times because who knows when I’ll get another chance.

There’s how Hopper Painted, then there’s what he Painted. I’m going to attempt to look at both. In this part, I take a look at how he Painted, i.e. his style, and how, and if, it evolved. In Part 2, I look at what he Painted in a piece that is a personal reaction to what I see when I look at Edward Hopper now. Having the chance to see and study this many Hopper Paintings from early through late in his career Edward Hopper’s New York completely changed how I see his work. This is shocking to me because I’ve been looking at his work almost as long as I have anyone else’s- well over 40 years. To this point, I saw his work as one of the ultimate (and perhaps unsurpassed) expressions of modern loneliness and isolation of the century. Now, I see that as ancillary to other themes, themes that occur even when there are no human subjects. Themes that occur in his work in and outside of NYC.

One great thing about Art is that it’s there for everyone to see and make up their own minds what it says to them. I’m sharing here what it says to me. I hope everyone will look at Edward Hopper, and all Art, for themselves.

In a Restaurant, 1916-25, Charcoal on paper. For those who’ve criticized Hopper’s technique. He came by it honestly. 6 years in Art schools under esteemed Artist teachers. How they felt about his skill is evident in the fact that he was assigned to teach life Drawing, one of the hardest types of Drawing, before he graduated.

“In every artist’s development the germ of the later work is always found in the earlier. The nucleus around which the artist’s intellect builds his work is himself; the central ego, personality, or whatever it may be called. and this changes little from birth to death. What he was once, he always is, with slight modification. Changing fashions in methods or subject matter alter him little or not at all.” Edward Hopper⁷

Edward Hopper was born on July 22, 1882 in Nyack, NY, some 80 miles as the Owl majestically flies from the City. He visited the City as a child with his parents, then came here on a daily basis while attending Art school from 1899-1906⁸. Towards the end of that time, he took up residence on West 14th Street, before taking three trips to Paris from 1906-10. After returning to the City, he lived at 53 East 59th Street⁹ before moving to 3 Washington Square in 1913¹⁰.

Untitled (Study of Man Sketching in Front of a House), c. 1900, Opaque watercolor, fabricated chalk and graphite pencil on paper (recto); Graphite pencil, pen and ink and opaque watercolor (verso). *-Whitney Museum Photo. Not in the show.

Seeing that introductory wall, shown earlier, sent me delving deeper into Edward Hopper’s Artistic beginnings (1895, at about age 15, to 1913, when he moved into 3 Washington Square at about 31) for the first time, looking to see when his themes began, how his style and technique changed over that time, and what they could tell me about his familiar later work. Most of Hopper’s early work is in the Whitney’s Permanent Collection, thanks largely to the 1970 Jo Hopper Bequest. It is, unfortunately, too rarely seen, and in my view, under-considered.

From the beginning, one thing that stands out to me is that Edward Hopper was a “traditional” Painter. That is, he relied on his preliminary Drawings & Studies as the basis of his Paintings, as Painters had been doing for as long as there had been Painters. Though Photography was making steady inroads into all aspects of life, and being used by an ever-increasing number of Artists & Painters during his lifetime, Edward Hopper never used Photographs as the basis of his work¹¹. Untitled (Study of Man Sketching in Front of a House), from the year his Art school studies began, may be of a fellow student or be a de-facto Self-Portrait. In either case, it shows something I imagine Edward Hopper did regularly for the rest of his career. In addition to relying on long-standing traditional methods, Edward Hopper steadfastly remained true to his vision. He not only resisted Abstraction, but he uncharacteristically fought against it in print, in a publication titled Reality, which he contributed to.

Le Pont des Arts, 1907. Edward Hopper Painted this outdoors near where he was staying on his first trip to Paris. So, it’s strange to see early on in a show devoted to his NYC work. Nonethelessless, it’s interesting for its style and for its content (see Part 2).

While in Paris, Edward Hopper saw shows of the work of the so-called “impressionists,” (a box I don’t subscribe to, so I will use “earlier French Painters” instead) but, apparently did not see the work of Picasso. It’s hard not to see their influence in this, but, at least for me, not that of any one Artist in particular stylistically. Under their spell, he seems to be doing his own take on it.

The question for me became- How far did this influence go, and how long did it last?

“It took me ten yers to get over Europe,” he said.¹². Ten years after Europe would be 1920. Looking at the show, a case could be made it lasted much longer.

New York Corner (Corner Saloon), 1913 became a touchstone for me over my 14 visits. If it wasn’t for the familiar lamp post and the smoke stacks in the rear, you might think this is a corner in Paris. A charming and unique early New York work, it was in MoMA’s collection until at least 1981. At some point after, they sold it! A shortsighted mistake in my view.

After returning from Paris, the 28-year-old Artist set about surviving as one. To this end, his work as an Illustrator from 1917 to 1925 provided him with income until his work began to sell. His first show, at the Whitney Studio Club in 1920 (the predecessor to the Whitney Museum), with 16 Oils, produced no sales. In 1923, his Watercolors began to sell after they were shown at the Brooklyn Museum. Then, in 1925, The Met bought 15 Hopper Etchings. Later that year, he sold Apartment Houses to the Pennsylvania Academy, his first museum Painting sale. As his Paintings finally began to sell (mirroring the experience of Winslow Homer, to whom his Watercolors were compared, whose Watercolors also sold before his Oils began to¹³), in September, 1925, he was able to give up illustration¹⁴. Among his early Paintings, the wonderful New York Corner, 1913, caught my eye. It’s interesting to contrast it with this work by John Sloan, one of his teachers, Sixth Avenue and Thirtieth Street, 1907.

John Sloan, Sixth Avenue and Thirtieth Street, 1907. The Sixth Avenue elevated train, which Hopper frequented, runs to the left. The gold sign on the right reads “LION BEWERY,” which was the 6th largest brewery in the US in 1895¹⁵. I believe this view may be looking downtown, if that’s the Jefferson Market Courthouse in the background. *-Photographer unknown.

New York Corner currently resides in the collection of the Canter Center, Stanford University. Upon acquiring it, their press release says, “New York Corner, created when the artist was 31 and considered the first work made in his representational style.” Wait. What?

“representational-noun 1. showing things as they are normally seen” Cambridge Dictionary

What’s “representational” about it?

In December, 1913, Edward Hopper moved into 3 Washington Square on the Park, where he would live for the rest of his life, so this may have been executed based on a scene near his East 59th Street home just before or just after his move (unless this is a scene on East 14th Street. There’s nothing like the background anywhere else in what would be his West Greenwich Village neighborhood.). When I look at New York Corner, I see an Artist who’s in transition. It seems to me Hopper is wrestling with the influence of his teachers Robert Henri & John Sloan, and what he’d seen in Paris. The top half (i.e. the building) is slightly more “representational,” slightly more resolved (especially in comparison to work he did in Pars, like River Boat or Le Pont Royal, both 1909, and American Village, 1912,), while the bottom half is entirely out of focus. The figures are more like shadows, the indistinct but distinctive gold signage is striking, and stands in stark contrast to the sign in the Sloan. It only adds more mystery to the feel of the whole piece. The upper two floors of the building feature windows that are not much different from those seen on the upper floor of Early Sunday Morning (which are more defined) or across the street from the diner in Nighthawks (ditto). He’s starting to get there.

New York Interior, 1921. Seen through a window, this wonderful piece is one of a number of Hoppers that reminds me of Degas. See Night Windows, below. Notice the clutter on the mantel. Then compare this with Room in New York, seen further below.

As I’ve said, I don’t subscribe to most of the “-isms” that proliferate in Art, and the world, and that applies to putting Edward Hopper in anything other than the “Edward Hopper box.” As time goes on, putting him in the “realism” box he’s usually stuck in seems increasingly problematic. To wit- In Gail Levin’s massive 780-page Expanded Edition of her Intimate Biography of the Hoppers I couldn’t find one instance of Edward Hopper referring to his Art as “realism.”

“realism-noun 1: corcern for fact or reality and rejection of the impractical and visionary” Merriam-Webster

Richard Estes, Times Square, 2004, Paintings don’t come much more technically astounding than this. Unless, they’re by Jan van Eyck. Having stood on this spot before, during and after 2004, I can certainly verify the overwhelming visual noise that still is Times Square, something that has never been more faithfully realized than it is here.

I’m sorry, but when I look at his Art, it doesn’t fit that definition. For another thing, “realism” in Art is a term that began seeing heavy use in the 19th century, though I’ve seen the term applied to Artists like Caravaggio, 1571-1610. In all that time, things have changed. In 1966, the year before Edward Hopper died, Richard Estes began Painting New York in ways that redefined what had been called “realism,” making everything stuck in that box previously look, well, “different.” While Edward Hopper often Painted scenes looking through windows, Mr. Estes took the art of rendering their reflections to an entirely new level, while often Painting at the hyperfocal distance, which added new depth to his depictions of the world. Suddenly, the eye was free to go anywhere on the canvas and it was all rendered “democratically” (i.e. with apparent equal weight) and in focus. Others, including Rod Penner, followed, pushing the envelope of what had been done, all the while in the service of Art. There was suddenly more than one kind of “realism!” Since none of them have put their Art in a box in their interviews, I certainly don’t subscribe to the terms others ascribe to their Art. Therefore, Messers Hopper, Estes and Penner reside in only one “box” each: the one with their name on it. “Realism” has been used for over 125 years! it’s past time to retire it. It’s outlived its supposed meaning.

Night Windows, 1928. Among the earlier French Painters, Edgar Degas is someone I see in numerous Edward Hopper compositions. Perhaps more than I see any other Artist. Hopper seemed to share Degas’s voyeuristic streak. Many of both of their Paintings show women being observed apparently without their knowledge.

It’s pretty plain to see that these recent developments are at odds with Edward Hopper’s style. Then again, I don’t think he was ever out to win the realism race. Hopper authority Gail Levin said his work has “the suggestion of reality¹⁶.”

Finally, there’s this for all those who box Hopper as a “realist”-

“I think I’m still an impressionist…” Edward Hopper.

Edward Hopper didn’t say that in 1913 after Painting New York Corner. He said it in 1962, a mere five years before he died! He said it in an interview published in Katherine Kuh’s book The Artist’s Voice: Talks With Seventeen Artists, in 1962¹⁷. That Edward Hopper, who never minced words, or used them without careful consideration (like the careful consideration he gave every detail of his compositions) especially in the very few interviews he did, would say this so late in his life and career HAS to be taken seriously. So far, it hasn’t been. The “realism” noise surrounding his work remains deafening. I came upon the “impressionist” quote after already being convinced by the visual evidence in Edward Hopper’s New York that he took what he learned from the earlier French Artists and used it in his own way. He was one of the Artists who forged what some call an “American style,” an important goal at the time. Yet, his influences remained in his work throughout his life to the extent he chose to use them, in varying degrees, to suit his purposes in each particular work.

GeorgiaO’Keefe quoted on the back cover of the catalog for her 2021 show at Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.

Part of that influence, I believe, was that as time went on, Edward Hopper began removing unnecessary objects from his Paintings. It seems to me his work lives on its mystery. Isn’t too much information an enemy of mystery? He also stopped using “real” settings, creating his own, possibly based on actual places combined with his imagination. In spite of my decades of looking for the “real” Nighthawks diner, this may well be what he really did: he based it on a place he saw then modified it in his imagination to suit his purposes (and he said as much). And that is the key: everything superfluous went out of his Art. That’s one thing that makes Nighthawks such a brilliant, timeless, nebulous work.

The result? For me, many of Edward Hopper’s New York Paintings are “impressions.”

Room in New York, 1932.

I rest my case with Room in New York, from 1932. One of his masterpieces, in my view, it defies every single box Edward Hopper has been put in. It’s one of his many scenes looking into a window. Perhaps something he saw in a fleeting moment while riding the Sixth Avenue elevated train, or in passing as he walked, or maybe it’s a scene he imagined, possibly filtered through his own relationship experience. If, and it’s a huge “if,” this is (at least partially) filtered through his marriage, this may be as frankly as he ever depicted it. Look closer-

Edward Hopper’s “realism?” Bah humbug. A classic example of why I ignore boxes and just look at the work for myself!

Look! The faces have no details! This is by intent, of course. He obviously considered facial details to be unnecessary to what he was trying to express, or distracting from it. Is this what he meant when he said, “I think I’m still an impressionist…?” Isn’t this closer to the work of the earlier French Painters than anything else? No so-called “realist” Painted like this! Only George Seurat, among those earlier French Painters, Painted like this- on occasion (not all the time). In most Paintings that include humans, their faces and expressions carry the weight of the work. Not here in this scene that includes a woman and a man and not much else. How utterly daring! Without them, what’s a viewer to focus on? For me, all that’s left is the body language. And that red dress. “All dressed up with no where to go?” The woman in Nighthawks is also wearing a red dress. Could it be a pendant to Room in New York?

When people talk about the”genius” of Edward Hopper, for me, it’s on view in Room in New York, 1932. He had evolved through his education, his time overseas, his influences & experiences, and had arrived at the place of knowing, then executed it using his time-tested, traditional, methods. He knew what he wanted to say here, and had developed the confidence to leave out the non-essential (perhaps, inspired by seeing the earlier French Painters do it), including “minor details” like facial features! He created an impression of a scene, in my view, real or imagined, that mimics the fleeting moment that may have inspired it and somehow works perfectly, just as it is, without them.

Two on the Aisle, 1927.

In Two on the Aisle, from 1927, five years before Room in New York, the faces are “incomplete,” but more “defined” than the two in Room in New York. Perhaps he became emboldened to go further after works like this.

The Sheridan Theater, 1937.

In Sheridan Theater, nothing is in sharp focus.

Then, in Morning Sun, 1952, the woman’s face (Jo was his model) is Painted so expertly (in my opinion) as to leave her expression ambiguous, making the work open to endless contemplation. These are just a few of the works that have “selective details,” i.e. details the Artist chose to include, or omit. In my view, this is always done to forward what he’s trying to express.

Boxes confine an Artist to one style. If the Artist says my work is in this box? So be it. It’s when other people put an Artist in a box that’s wrong in my view; for the Artist, and for not giving the viewer the chance to see the Art for themselves. Artists, being people, are free to change their minds, evolve, even move into other styles over time. Boxes don’t allow for this. Edward Hopper used his technique and the wide range of his skill as he saw fit in each work. A good number of them (i.e. many) strike me as “impressions,” and it’s their nebulosity that adds so much richness to considering them. There is enough detail in these to ring true with viewers, and enough vagueness to allow them to return to the work again and again. In other works, like Office at Night,1940, he chose to sharpen things up, but still managed to keep the mystery and the drama due to the brilliance of his composition and the realization it.

“Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world,” Edward Hopper¹⁸.

On the surface, these works may be “impressions” to my eyes. They are also transcriptions of the Artist’s “personal vision of the world.” Whatever you call them, they are as close as Edward Hopper got to making his inner world, “reality.”

*-Soundtrack for this piece is “An American in Paris” by George Gershwin, 1898-1937, a contemporary of Edward Hopper. Born 16 years after Hopper, he died, tragically of an undiagnosed brain tumor, 30 years before the Painter would. Hopper’s taste (if any) in Music is unknown to me, however as Edward Hopper’s New York points out in a room dedicated to it, he was an avid theater and movie-goer. As such, the name George Gershwin could not have been unknown to him. Gershwin, like Hopper, helped define what some call an “American style” of Music, as some say Hopper did for Art. Gershwin, who also Painted, was born in the City and spent most of his life here. Here “An American in Paris,” in homage to Hopper’s time there, is performed on a piano roll by George Gershwin, himself-

In Part 2, here, I take a look at what Edward Hopper’s Art says to me now, after immersing myself in Edward Hopper’s New York. Part 3 looks at some current issues surrounding Edward Hopper’s Art.

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The first Hopper authority, outside of his wife, the Artist Josephine Nivison Hopper aka Jo, and curator behind the 1950 Edward Hopper Retrospective and the 1964 Edward Hopper show. ↩
In saying all of the above I am not saying that Edward Hopper is my favorite Artist, or I think he’s “the best.” I don’t believe in qualitatively comparing creative beings or works. ↩
Edward passed in 1967. Jo, the Artist Josephine Nivison Hopper, continued to live there in failing health until she died in 1968. ↩
Hopper worked on Nighthawks during the beginning of World War II for the U.S., having started it around the time of Pearl Harbor. In the Logbook of Hopper’s work, Jo recorded it being completed on January 21, 1942, as I show here. Jo worried German bombs would be falling through their skylight. Edward was too busy working to seem to care, or maybe he was escaping into work (Gail Levin, Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography Expanded Edition, P.348.) ↩
on 2 floors of the old Whitney, who have mounted smaller shows juxtaposing Hopper with other Artists, since, as well as the floor they gave him in their Full House show in 2005, and the Hopper Drawing show, which I saw in 2013, which had over 200 Drawings and some Paintings, including Nighthawks, on loan, as I partially showed in my very first piece in 2015. ↩
which does not include about 30 Illustrations whose media were not listed but many appear to include watercolor. ↩
from a letter from Hopper dated 1935 quoted in Gail Levin, Edward Hopper As Illustrator, P.1. ↩
Twice the length of time his teacher Robert Henri recommended. ↩
Gail Levin, Intimate Biography, P.84 ↩
While spending summers in Maine and then in Truro, MA. ↩
The lone exceptions I’m aware of are his 2 Civil War-related Paintings which may have been based on Photographs he saw in a published collection of Civil War Photographs. ↩
Gail Levin, Edward Hopper: The Art & the Artist, P.126 ↩
Gail Levin, Intimate Biography Expanded, P.171 ↩
https://archive.artic.edu/hopper/chronology/ ↩
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Brewery,_Inc. ↩
Gail Levin, Intimate Biography Expanded, P. 441. ↩
P.135, as quoted in Sheena Wagstaff, “The Elation of Sunlight,” in Edward Hopper Tate Exhibition Catalog, 2005, P.25. ↩
Statement in Reality #1 as seen in the show. ↩

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Artist

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless credited otherwise).

The next lines are- “But my drawing is certainly very much less charming than its model. That, however, is not my fault. The grown-ups discouraged me in my painter’s career when I was six years old, and I never learned to draw anything, except boas from the outside and boas from the inside¹.”

On April 6, 1943, the story broke that an alien being had descended to Earth; not in Roswell, New Mexico, but on the other side of the world from it as the owl flies in the Sahara Desert. This small being appeared to the pilot of a crashed plane, who was suffering from severe dehydration, over what turned out to be the last week of the visitor’s one-year stay on the Earth; just one of the planets he visited on a desperate mission to secure the protection of his beloved rose on his home asteroid (a world so small he once watched 44 sunsets on a single day), and rid it of a baobab infestation.

After a week, he suddenly disappeared.

The pilot lying at the foot of a cliff with his plane in the distance, 1942, Watercolor and ink on tracing paper. Not published in the final book, in which he chose to leave out any representation of the pilot. It’s damaged condition ironically echoes that of the plane.

On or about July 31, 1944, that pilot, the only person to witness & record the event and what transpired during that week, also suddenly disappeared with nary a trace at just 44 years of age. He left behind the story and renderings of their encounter.

The world has never been the same since.

Publishing history. 1943 1st Edition, 1st Printing copies of Le Petit Prince, in the original French it was written in, right, and The Little Prince, in the original English translation by Katherine Woods, left, both published in the USA by Reynal & Hitchcock who had asked Saint-Exupéry for a children’s book. This marked the first time the author had created Art for his books and/or their covers. It wouldn’t be until after the war that the book would be published in France.

April 6, 2023 marks the 80th Anniversary of the publication of The Little Prince by the remarkable Author, aviator, and resolute French patriot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (aka Saint-Ex). Charged with writing a “children’s book” by his publishers, the result is a book that defies categorization that is now 80 years in on its way to timeless.

You’re looking at a remarkable and historic Photograph. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry after his crash in the Sahara desert, 1935. *-per Alexandre Tanase of the Succession Saint Exupéry-d’Agay, Paris; “Saint Exupéry next to his Caudron Simoun C630 F-ANRY. It was not taken right after the accident (and, consequently, not by Saint Exupéry himself or Prévot). This picture and others (there is a full series of them) were taken a few days after Saint Exupéry and Prévot were found, when they came back with others, especially Suzanne and Emile Raccaud, the couple that hosted Saint Exupéry after he was rescued. It is either Emile or Suzanne who took the picture.”

“For I do not want any one to read my book carelessly. I have suffered too much grief in setting down these memories. Six years have already passed since my friend went away from me, with his sheep. If I try to describe him here, it is to make sure that I shall not forget him. To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend²“

The book is apparently set at the scene of Saint-Ex’s 1935 Sahara Desert plane crash which he survived only to almost perish of dehydration in the days after before he and his navigator/mechanic, André Prévot, were rescued by a passing Bedouin. The story was recounted in his memoir, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, before he used it, again, as the setting of The Little Prince, the last book he would finish. Earlier this year, The Morgan Library presented The Little Prince: Taking Flight, which provided a fascinating look at Saint-Exupéry’s original Art for The Little Prince, as well as text and Art that he decided not to include in the final book. As a prior Morgan show, 2014’s The Little Prince: A New York Story, reminded us, he created the book in NYC while he was in exile after the fall of France in World War II.

1st edition/1st printing copy of Wartime Writings, 1982, with a foreword by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, from my collection.

“He was… against the armistice and ‘stole’ a transport plane in Bordeaux to convey forty young pilots to North Africa in a vain attempt to continue the war there. When he discovered that the armistice extended to North Africa as well as France, he was at an impasse…. Without being consulted, Saint-Exupéry found himself nominated for a position on the Vichy National Council, an offer he immediately refused. He did not, however, feel he could join the ‘Free French’ group behind General de Gaulle. (‘I should have followed him with joy against the Germans, but could not follow him against Frenchmen.’) …With enormous difficulty he obtained a passport for the United States…In December, 1940 he sailed from Lisbon to America. Once established in New York, he was depressed by the isolationist reaction of American citizens to war and shocked by the conflicts between exiled French groups (some of who harassed Saint-Ex over the Vichy Council nomination).” Anne Morrow Lindbergh, author and wife of Charles Lindbergh³.

It was in these circumstances that he wrote, and created the Art for, The Little Prince. On April 2nd, 1943, a few days before its publication on April 6,, at the age of 42, he boarded a troop transport with 50,000 soldiers and returned to France to return to combat.

No one or nothing could stop him, though I can’t tell if the soldier on the right is trying to. A die-hard patriot, Saint-Ex is seen piloting a reconnaissance plane in 1944, shortly before his death, in a scene eerily similar to what his departure on his last flight may have looked like. He crashed for the 5th time on one such flight around the time of this Photo. Yet, he managed to get permission to go back up. *-Photo by John Philips, from The New York Times, April 11, 2008.

By July, 1944, at 44, he was overage for a flier (38 was the cutoff), overweight, and suffering from the aftereffects of FIVE crashes⁴. He was unable to put his flight suit on by himself, or to turn his head to the left to spot enemy planes. Still, due to his prestige, contacts, non-stop politicking (he volunteered for every mission), and indomitable desire to fight, nothing would stop him. “I have no taste for war, but I cannot remain behind the lines.” he said⁵. After training in a P-38 Lightning, he flew 8 reconnaissance missions, one ending in his fifth crash.

The Little Prince: Taking Flight, Installation view, February 4, 2023.

Still, the powers that be somehow let him back in the cockpit for his ninth and what was supposed to be his last flight. While flying from Borgo, Corsica, headed for the Grenoble region of southern France, he suddenly disappeared, eerily like his most famous creation. Some facts are known, but there’s still no real evidence as to what happened to him⁶. In 2004, Stacy Schiff, author of a biography of Saint-Ex, wrote in The New York Times, “His was a noble death, made in the name of the greater good to which all of his literature returns. As his widow noted, the exit was custom-made, a meteoric fall at the end of a star-chasing life⁷.”

To date, The Little Prince (or Le Petit Prince, as Saint-Ex wrote it in his native French), has sold TWO HUNDRED MILLION copies⁸ and has appeared in 536 languages & dialects⁹. It continues to sell 1.8 MILLION copies a year¹⁰.

Already, within one month of its U.S. publication there was discussion about just who The Little Prince was for. John Chamberlain wrote a glowing New York Times review of it within days of its publication, calling it “A fascinating fable for grown-ups.” Ad from The New York Times Book Review, May 9, 1943.

200 million copies sold, and I missed it. HOW is that possible? (Not that I am generally a fan of the very popular.) It was never assigned to me as a kid in school, and never found its way to me outside of it in my Art book-obsessed life. It was only after I met my Muse, Lana, who has been under its spell as her favorite book since she was 11, that I read it. Of its effects on her, she told me, “I looked at the sky and imagined the planet where the prince lives…I had many dreams about the little prince.” Coming to it later in life, it seems to me to be a book that one can read at any age (I do wonder how it would have hit me as a child). Saint-Ex was asked to write a children’s book by his publisher, but what he handed in is something that’s not quite a children’s book, nor purely a book for grown-ups. Which ever end of that telescope you look at it through, there are things that feel out of place.

The Little Prince opens with this image, ostensibly a “copy of the drawing” the narrator says he saw in a book. No doubt by Saint-Ex. Seen in my copy.

To wit, the very first image on the very first page of the book does make me wonder about the book’s intended audience. It’s surely something never seen in a “children’s book” before, or probably since, let alone right in the beginning of one. We are shown a Drawing of a boa constrictor wrapped around its prey, baring its teeth with the helpless, captured animal, looking straight into the jaws of death. Terrifying, even for this adult! Saint-Ex doesn’t stop there: the first THREE images in the book are of boa constrictors! “Toto, we’re not in Roswell anymore.” Such is the charm of the book, that I have yet to see anyone talk about this.

Looks harmless enough. The manuscript of the first page of the book showing Saint-Ex’s Drawing Number One, upper center, and Number Two, lower center. The Manuscript is written with graphite on “cheap, dime store tracing paper,” one Morgan staff member told me. Notice how the first image in the book, shown before, is in a different style than his Drawing Numbers One and Two. As I stood looking at this page I was struck by this question- How many billions of pieces of paper contain words and Art work on them? How many of them turned out to be the first page of an immortal book?

Saint-Ex “softens” their impact in Page 1 of his text by discussing his early Artistic life, not snakes. We are shown his Drawing Number One (a boa) and his Drawing Number Two (also a boa) and then are told that the grown-ups he showed them to thought they were Drawings of a hat. Creatively frustrated, we are told that “That is why at the age of six I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter.” (The Little Prince, P.2) At that moment, I was stopped by one question-

Is this true?

10th Avenue, Chelsea, NYC, October, 2018.

In biographies of the Artist I could find no detail about his Artistic beginnings. A wall card in the show says “From a young age, Saint-Ex had a passion for art and literature, composing verse as early as six years old and illustrating his adolescent writings with doodles and caricatures.” In her biography of Saint-Ex, Stacy Schiff says, “His mother vouched for the accuracy of his many reports…¹¹.” Those indirect words are all I’ve found. The earliest Art of his I’ve found is in the terrific complete collection of Saint-Ex’s Art titled Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:Dessins: Aquarelles, plumes, pastels et crayons (English title: Drawings: Watercolors, feathers, pastels and pencils) published in France in 2008.

The Complete Artwork. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:Dessins: Aquarelles, plumes, pastels et crayons, published by Gallimard, France, 2008. Notice how Saint-Ex drew this figure’s head and face, and his unique way with hatching.

It begins with Drawings Saint-Ex did for “skits” accompanying his plots, which the wall card might be referring to, to be put on by he and his siblings for their mother at about 13. Nothing earlier is shown, so I was unable to verify his beginnings from age 6. From then on, he seemed to Draw incessantly evidenced by the fact the book totals 328 pages.

“It is for that purpose, again, that I have bought a box of paints and some pencils. It is hard to take up drawing again at my age, when I have never made any pictures except those of the boa constrictor from the outside and the boa constrictor from the inside, since I was six. I shall certainly try to make my portraits as true to life as possible. But I am not at all sure of success¹²“

Though he had never included his Art in his books before The Little Prince, Drawing was by no means a new endeavor for him. In fact, the Art of The Little Prince shows this. The Drawings are executed with skill, invention and imagination. They show a sublime economy. Not one line is superfluous, and the coloring is done with subtlety and terrific taste.

The little prince on the planet invaded by a baobab, 1942, Watercolor and ink. At the time he Drew this, France had fallen to the Nazis, who had taken over all of Europe except for Great Britain. It’s hard for me not to see the baobabs in The Little Prince, which were taking over the little prince’s entire planet, as symbolizing the Nazis. The little prince struggles daily to rid his planet of baobabs, eventually leaving his planet/asteroid in search of better ways to.

It’s up for discussion how much of The Little Prince is cloaked autobiography and how much is a fairy tale. Certainly the plane crash in the desert and the pilot as the narrator line up on the side of ringing truth. Did he hallucinate the little prince while suffering extreme dehydration in the days after the crash? Saint-Ex was far from home when he wrote The Little Prince, and in need of friends. His little prince is too. When asked by the fox if he is looking for chickens, he replies,”I am looking for friends¹³.” The baobabs standing in for the Nazis, then engulfing his homeland and most of Europe, would be a plausible metaphor.

As published. “Perhaps you will ask me, “Why are there no other drawing in this book as magnificent and impressive as this drawing of the baobabs? The reply is simple. I have tried. But with the others I have not been successful. When I made the drawing of the baobabs I was carried beyond myself by the inspiring force of urgent necessity¹⁴.” It’s easy to see everything that was at stake for him at that moment in those words, and in this Drawing of the baobabs devouring his planet. Things that would cost him his life.

So would the little prince’s beloved rose being a characterization of Saint-Ex’s wife, Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry, according to quite a few.

Unknown Photographer, Portrait of Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry, ca. 1940-43. Consuelo was also an Artist & writer, who wrote a memoir of the couple’s relationship titled The Tale of the Rose.

The Morgan would seem to be one of them, and they included a beautiful portrait of her in the show next to a card reading “CONSUELO, THE ROSE.”

1st Edition/1st Printing copy of Night Flight, 1932, minus the dust jacket. From my collection.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is no one-hit wonder. The Little Prince was not his first rodeo. An early novel, Night Flight, was made into a 1933 Hollywood feature film of the same name starring Clark Gable, John Barrymore, Helen Hayes, Robert Montgomery and Myrna Loy. His memoir, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, won the prestigious (U.S.) National Book Award, and is still #3 on National Geographic’s list of 100 Greatest Adventure Books. Yet, I seriously doubt any of his many readers were prepared for what he gave them when The Little Prince was published here 80 years ago, and posthumously in France after the Liberation. For one thing, its prose is dramatically of a different style than that of Night Flight or Wind, Sand and Stars. It’s stripped down, almost zen-like, which enhances the open-ended nature of his words. This is immeasurably furthered by his Art, which often includes details not to be found in the text.

The entrance foyer for The Little Prince: A New York Story, at the Morgan Library, 2014. Photos were not permitted inside, so the photos of the Art shown here are from the Morgan’s The Little Prince: Taking Flight, 2023.

In 2014, Lana’s passion for the book convinced me to read it for the first time, just in time to see the landmark show, The Little Prince: A New York Story at the Morgan Library, an amazing, and fortuitous, coincidence. The Morgan relates the genesis of their involvement with The Little Prince thus-

“As he prepared to leave the city to rejoin the war effort as a reconnaissance pilot, Saint-Exupéry appeared at his friend Silvia Hamilton’s door wearing his military uniform. “I’d like to give you something splendid,” he said, “but this is all I have.” He tossed a rumpled paper bag onto her entryway table. Inside were the manuscript and drawings for The Little Prince, which the Morgan acquired from her in 1968¹⁵.”

The entrance for the one-gallery The Little Prince: Taking Flight, Morgan Library, February 4, 2023.

I returned to The Morgan in January, 2023, to see the compact The Little Prince: Taking Flight¹⁶. Size didn’t matter; both shows were endlessly intriguing. A New York Story featured more of the manuscript, alongside a new translation of unpublished sections, than Taking Flight does. The latter is more focused on his Art- both published and unpublished. Of course, over both shows it was the Art that struck me, but I didn’t really appreciate it in my initial exposure to it in 2014 until later.

Over my three visits, The Little Prince: Taking Flight was never less crowded than this. January, 13, 2023, with another 3+ weeks left to run.

After seeing both shows, as I began looking into the long history of The Little Prince, I discovered that quite a few others have taken their shot at relating the story visually- in Art, Film, on the stage, in Opera, and you name it. I started exploring this realm, but was stopped almost immediately in each case. Why? For me, in each instance, whatever I looked at only served to send me running back to Saint-Ex’s version- i.e. his Art.

Wait a minute. No one I’ve read has referred to Saint-Ex an “Artist.”

Installation view, The Little Prince: Taking Flight, January 23, 2023.

The “simple” Art he created for The Little Prince has held up against anyone else’s visual interpretation of it thus far. Here, for me, was the first, and the most important, “proof” that indeed he was an Artist, and an under-rated one at that. Then, the more I delved deeper into his Art, the more impressed by it I became. In The Little Prince, his work is beautifully subtle. In his Art (the original Drawings for which were rendered in the delicacy of pencil or ink and watercolor), we get the essence of his words, but often extra details that add even more layers to the text, and in a sense create a dialogue with it, while being essential and an irreplaceable part of the the whole experience that only the author, who was also the Artist, could create.

The little prince standing on the edge of a cliff, c.1942-3, Brown ink on paper. Everything about this is interesting: from the hatching on the lines, to the unique flowers (possibly roses), to the way Saint Ex carries the composition off without a single excess line.

Of course it is beloved by those who love the book, but why hasn’t his Art received more attention and acclaim as “Art?”

For one thing, I believe Saint-Ex purposely set a trap with the way he presents his Art. On the first page (showed earlier), he shows us his Drawings Number One and Two, which appear to be “simple” line drawings colored with watercolor (though he says he used colored pencil as a child). These are the traps. Having lowered our “Artistic expectations” about as low as possible right from the start (which also takes the pressure off of himself as the Illustrator of the book), he then proceeds to present much more finished Art as the book progresses.

Taking flight. The little prince flying over a planet with mountains and a river, 1942, Watercolor and ink.

Herein lies the second phenomenon: Only the Artist who happens to also be the author knows more than he or she’s said in the text. The little prince’s outfit, shown in the first image in this piece above, is a perfect example of what I mean. It is not described in anything near this detail we see in the Painting in the text! It seems to me that this is why the interpretations of others haven’t spoken to me. Saint-Ex has this unfair advantage over them that leaves them guessing.

“The flower that you love is not in danger. I will draw you a muzzle for your sheep. I will draw you a railing to put around your flower. I will–” (The Little Prince, P.28)

A major takeaway from The Little Prince for me, something I continue to think about, and one that I have not heard others address, is that over and over the narrator attempts to use Art to solve the little prince’s problems. First, by repeatedly Drawing him a sheep until he hits on one (that is quite abstract, zen-like, and reminds me of something the great Marcel Duchamp, a fellow French contemporary who was living in Greenwich Village in 1942, would come up with. As far as I know, they never met.) that satisfies him. Then, in the quote, above, and again, during his final encounter with the little prince the narrator feels Art is a key to solving a dilemma. Therein lies the sprit of a true Artist. In fact, more than one renowned Artist has told me they hoped their work “would change the world.”

The little prince looking at a mountain range, 1942, Watercolor and ink.

Over time, much of his Art (as seen in Dessins) shows a propensity for portraits and figures. Most of them are not “finished” to the degree we see in The Little Prince. I particularly find his faces to be unique. They’re drawn economically, with what appears to be quick lines, selectively minimalistic, and some daring details including a rakish lines forming a kind of “unibrow” in a number of them. It’s hard to tell the gender of a number of his Portrait and Figure Drawings, something that continues in some of The Little Prince Drawings. A number of his portraits are striking. Some appear to be quick sketches, others are more finished and more like “traditional” studies or portraits. But it is those that are “sketch-like” that stand out for me. Looking through the book, we see early echoes of what we would see in The Little Prince. Figures stand alone in fields, some sharing body or vague facial similarities to the little prince.

Unknown Photographer(s), Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, (Per Alexandre Tanase of the Succession Saint Exupéry-d’Agay, Paris) “taken in 1937 or 1938, in the apartment he was renting at the time, 15 Place Vauban in Paris.”

There are some who feel his books have, largely, the same “message.” Perhaps, it’s not surprising, then, that, as Dessins shows, was, also, a continual evolution of figures leading up to what stands as his final & ultimate realization. But, he was only 44 when he died. As different as The Little Prince is from Wind, Sand and Stars, which preceded it, all bets were off for where he would have taken his work had he lived. He remains, tragically, another great Artist taken from us all too soon by the war, along with Anne Frank and Charlotte Salomon, among too many others.

Am I saying that no one else should try to visually interpret The Little Prince? That’s up to them. I’m sure there are many who enjoy what has been created based on The Little Prince, and probably will with future interpretations.

For itself, under the scrutiny of 2 museum shows, Saint-Ex’s Art surprises- as the book has countless readers. His Art comes across as ephemeral as its subject. For one thing, he created much of the Art for his timeless book on cheap dime store tracing paper: much of it bearing the visible watermark of Fidelity Onion Skin, a paper that clocks in at all of a 10 pound weight¹⁷!. Some of his pencil lines are fading. There is a cigarette burn hole right in the middle of one Drawing. Another has been crumpled up as if it were thrown out, then rescued. Others show signs of coarse handling. Through it all, his art has held up for 80 years.

I was staggered when I saw this. Saint-Ex’s identity bracelet that he wore on his final flight found in a fishing net in 1998. Seen at the entrance of The Little Prince: A New York Story at the Morgan Library in 2014.

Among the countless other things it is, The Little Prince is a lesson in what really matters in the face of the temporality of all things, the overwhelming noise that surrounds them, and all the things that don’t really matter we waste our lives on. Of invisible connections, of love, loss and longing in the aftermath of the little prince’s sudden disappearance (uncannily mimicked by the sudden, mysterious disappearance of its creator, himself, a year after its publication). One of my reasons for writing this piece was because The Little Prince reminds me of what I learned in my journey through cancer in 2007. In my February, 2017 10th Anniversary of treatment piece, “Cancer Saved My Life,” I wrote that I learned love and being loved were all that mattered in life, echoing the Fox’s lesson in The Little Prince valuing invisible connections over all. This February, as I mark 16 years free of cancer, I would add something I believed at the time but did not say: Art also matters. Art is one way to live on after death.

“All I had was a common rose…,” the wall card for this Drawing was titled. The little prince lying on his stomach, 1942, Watercolor and ink.

Francis Bacon said it took 75 to 100 years for art to be considered Art. I’ve always felt it took longer. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry has been living on for almost 80 years after his death through his work. With almost 2 million copies continuing to be sold each year, The Little Prince shows no sign of passing into obscurity. Will future generations of kids or adults be immune to its charms? It seems to me it will take something radical to happen to human beings to make them immune to it. My bet is by that point Saint-Ex will also have finally received due recognition as an Artist.

…maybe they both did.

-For Lana, who sees with her heart, Happy Birthday!

*- Soundtrack for this piece is “It’s No Good” by Depeche Mode from their album Ultra, 1997.

“Don’t say you’re happy
Out there without me
I know you can’t be
‘Cause it’s no good…”

My sincere thanks to Alexandre Tanase of the Succession Saint Exupéry-d’Agay, Paris for his insights & expertise.

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The Little Prince, P.10-11 ↩
The Little Prince, P.18. ↩
from her Introduction to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wartime Writings 1939-44, P.xiv. ↩
These include a 1923 crash outside of Paris that left him with a fractured skull. The infamous, near-fatal, December, 1935 Sahara desert crash recounted in Wind, Sand and Stars and The Little Prince. A 1938 crash in Guatemala which left him with injuries that never healed, and a crash on a reconaissance mission just prior to his disappearance. ↩
Quoted by Anne Morrow Lindberg, ibid, P.xvi ↩
Sources for this paragraph are here, here, and here. ↩
Per. ↩
Per ↩
Per ↩
Per ↩
Stacy Schiff, Saint-Exupéry, P.101 ↩
The Little Prince, P.19. ↩
The Little Prince, P.66 ↩
The Little Prince, P.24. ↩
https://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/little-prince ↩
From Alexandre Tanase of the Succession Saint Exupéry-d’Agay: “…this second Morgan exhibit was created following A la rencontre du petit prince (Meet the little prince), a unique retrospective presented in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, from February to June 2022, for which the Morgan framed and lent some sheets of the Little Prince manuscript, that was shown in France for the first time. This exhibit had more than 600 items, and was noteworthy especially for the artwork shown: many drawings presented for the first time (notably some Little Prince watercolors from the Consuelo Collection), and many that were discovered after the publication of the Album you mention in your article (which is from 2006, not 2008). For instance, the now famous Lettres à une inconnue. The links to this exhibition website: https://madparis.fr/A-la-rencontre-du-petit-prince-2120 and https://madparis.fr/A-la-rencontre-du-petit-prince). If I mention this, it is because you may then be interested in the catalog that was published for this event (by the same editor, Alban Cerisier, who worked on the 2006 book, Dessins). This second book is a reference concerning Saint Exupéry’s artwork.” ↩
Fidelity Onion Skin is STILL in production! One vendor characterizes it as- “Our best option for onion skin paper is Fidelity Onion Skin. This thin yet surprisingly strong paper is constructed from a true 10 lb. 100 percent wood fiber, giving you all of the most desirable onion skin qualities. This specific line is beloved by crafters in need of paper that offers easy folding, great acceptance of inks and optimal strength. Fidelity’s version is chlorine-free and features a smooth, uncoated finish. Popular choices include 25 x 38 and 8.5 x 11 onion paper.” ↩

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