On Seeing, Waking, and Being Woke

Caravaggio, Narcissus, ca. 1595, oil on canvas, 43″ x 36″. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

I saw Edward Hopper’s Pennsylvania Coal Town for the first time in a gallery on Madison Avenue in 1994. I was a freshman in college; I had come into New York on the train for the day, alone. It was February. I had never been in a New York art gallery before, but I had seen reproductions of Nighthawks, and I wanted to know more. The room where the paintings were displayed was not large—the size of an ordinary living room. Apart from the gallery attendant behind her desk, I was the only one there.

I loved all the paintings, but when I stopped in front of , it seemed to me, in that moment, that I was looking at a perfect work of art. The man, who has been stooped over, raking leaves, raises his head to look in the direction of the setting sun. The curvature of his back is a little exaggerated, giving him a feeling of intense, though perhaps accidental, humility. He’s raised his head almost in surprise, without expectation, but his gaze is fixed on whatever lies on the other side of the house: on the source of light, of course. You’re not supposed to think about he’s seeing; his head, his chin, is lifted, looking toward the horizon. The little alley, the side yard between these no-nonsense, matter-of-fact clapboard coal-town houses, is flooded with light. It’s an image of transfiguration. The accidental quotidian life, illuminated from another angle.