New York Nocturne: The City After Dark in Literature, Painting, and Photography, 1850-1950 (Hardcover)

~ William Chapman Sharpe (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Sharpe says that the 'first dark glimmer' for his book came as he was looking at work by the expatriate American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler. . . . Sharpe shows how the aesthetics of [Whistler's] 'nocturnes' abroad shaped paintings and photographs of night in New York, including work by such figures as John Sloan, Arthur Stieglitz, and Edward Steichen. The nocturne form, he says, helped photography claim status as an art. Beyond words, the book offers nearly 150 often haunting and sometimes touching images.
(Nina C. Ayoub The Chronicle of Higher Education )

By now an archetypal image, the New York skyline at night captures the excitement and beauty of a city still humming long after bedtime. . . . William Chapman Sharpe offers an academic tour through a landscape that was transformed by gaslight and the advent of electricity. . . . Artists such as Joseph Stella, Georgia O'Keeffe, Edward Hopper and Faith Ringgold were drawn to the new glow, and writers from Joseph Conrad to Ralph Ellison came to investigate urban life after dark. Sharpe's examination of nocturnal art and storytelling tracks the ways illumination changed city life forever.
(Patrick Huguenin New York Daily News )

New York City claimed the title 'capital of the 20th century' not owing to its magnitude and energy but for its hold on the imagination of people around the world. While we wait to see what will succeed it as capital of the 21st, Columbia University Professor of English William Chapman Sharpe provides a brilliant look back in New York Nocturne. . . . Ranging freely between the literary and visual arts, Sharpe seeks the roots of American modernism in nighttime city life. He has something involving and informative to say about every topic he touches.
(Kenneth Baker San Francisco Chronicle )

Night has long been the frontier of the urban world, a place where crime is an omnipresent danger, where sexual violence or fulfillment hides just around a darkened corner, and where loneliness triumphs over human connectedness. For a society that has grown up taking electricity for granted, New York Nocturne is illuminating. . . If electricity has transformed, if not completely solved the mysteries of the night, Sharpe skillfully interprets how artists have approached the meanings of darkness and, in a Melvillean touch, of light itself.
(D. Schuyler Choice )

In this gorgeous, erudite book, [Sharpe] examines the myriad ways that writers, painters, and photographers have represented New York nightlife, beginning in the mid-19th century, when works by Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Edgar Allan Poe dramatized the moral perils of the artificially lit city. . . . Sharpe, whose own affection for the city is charmingly apparent here, insists throughout that artists and writers haven't simply reacted to the changes in urban existence; rather, they have 'helped turn the unscouted terrain of the urban night into a legible part of contemporary life.'
(Barbara Spindel Barnes and Noble.com )

My favorite book of the year. New York Nocturne is a chronicle in words, photographs and paintings of New York City at night. . . . Although this is a book about New York City, it's also a book about artists, writers and photographers who were drawn to and inspired by the evolution of the illumination of the city and all that it brought about. The social and cultural changes that light brought about are examined here and strung together magnificently by author William Chapman Sharpe. . . . The art and photography are brilliantly reproduced--the color plates are especially handled with great care and one can see that the author has taken pain-staking pride in his research and efforts.
(Norman Maine Soho Journal )

A beautiful volume that would sit proudly on the coffee table of any city dweller and city lover. William Chapman Sharpe details the way in which the city evolved after the Civil War into a world metropolis of leisure, politics, the arts, and commerce.
(The Village Voice )

Treat yourself to an elegantly written, beautifully illustrated, copiously researched sojourn into New York City's night. With William Chapman Sharpe as your guide, you will get a tantalizing new perspective on the city as reflected in art, literature, and history. . . . Set within historical contexts without being mired in historiography, this book balances in-depth analyses of specific works with a broad discussion of patterns over time. It will enlighten any urbanist. . . . Sharpe's study provides a provocative historical perspective on creativity in and about the city. A book of breadth, depth, and grace, it must be savored slowly to fully appreciate 'the relation between the human, the urban, and the dark.'
(Joanne Reitano History News Network )

Review

New York Nocturne is a wonderfully rich plum pudding of a book on the evolution of the modern urban environment and how it has been perceived, especially in New York. Teeming with little-known history and keen critical insight, this study illuminates how artists and writers made imaginative capital of the changing New York nightscape. Their vision helped construct the image of New York as we still see it today: a city that never sleeps, a brilliantly lit stage set that comes alive in dramatic, even thrilling ways after dark.
(Morris Dickstein, CUNY Graduate Center )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 456 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press; illustrated edition edition (October 13, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691133247
• ISBN-13: 978-0691133249
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #727,705 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant look into the history of night imagery, October 29, 2008

By	Craig Barrack - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

New York Nocturne is a brilliant meditation on the imagery of the night. It explores the aesthetic of the night from Whistler to 21st century masters. The main theme of the book reflects on the enormous impact of electricity ,which as the author points out has enabled the colonization of the night. Some of the best writing on Hopper I,ve encountered. A new and original view into American art.