As early as the 1850s, gaslight tempted New Yorkers out into a burgeoning nightlife filled with shopping, dining, and dancing. Electricity later turned the city at night into an even more stunning spectacle of brilliantly lit streets and glittering skyscrapers. The advent of artificial lighting revolutionized the urban night, creating not only new forms of life and leisure, but also new ways of perceiving the nocturnal experience. New York Nocturne is the first book to examine how the art of the gaslit and electrified city evolved, and how representations of nighttime New York expanded the boundaries of modern painting, literature, and photography. Exploring the myriad images of Manhattan after dark, New York Nocturne shows how writers and artists took on the city's nocturnal blaze and transformed the scintillating landscape into an icon of modernity.
The book traces key metaphors of the nighttime city: a seductive Babylon in the mid-1850s, a misty fairyland colonized by an empire of light in the early twentieth century, and a skyscraper-studded land of desire that became a stage for the voyeurism and violence of the 1940s and 1950s. The epilogue suggests how these themes have continued to shape our vision of nighttime New York ever since. Abundantly illustrated, New York Nocturne includes original readings of works by Whitman, Poe, Whistler, Riis, Stieglitz, Abbott, O'Keeffe, Stella, Hopper, Weegee, Ellison, Jacquette, and many others. Collectively, they tell a fascinating story about the relationship between night, art, and modern urban life.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
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 Village Voice
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.
Reviews in American History
The challenge and accomplishment of the book is the way it cuts a swathe across New York's modernisms. . . . Sharpe covers a remarkable range of territory here.
— Andrea L. Volpe
New York Daily News
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
San Francisco Chronicle
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
Choice
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
Soho Journal
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
History News Network
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
ABC Journal
[A] monograph as electrifying as its theme that illuminates from within the making of New York City, a reference work in absence of which, invaluable aspects in New York culture history would be left in the dark.
— Adriana Neagu
American Studies
For anyone interested in the art and writing of modern New York . . . Sharpe provides a rich, encompassing, and informed story.
— William B. Scott
Barnes and Noble.com
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
The Chronicle of Higher Education
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.
New York Daily News
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.
San Francisco Chronicle
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.
Choice
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.
Barnes and Noble.com
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.'
Soho Journal
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.
History News Network
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.'
Reviews in American History
The challenge and accomplishment of the book is the way it cuts a swathe across New York's modernisms. . . . Sharpe covers a remarkable range of territory here.
ABC Journal
[A] monograph as electrifying as its theme that illuminates from within the making of New York City, a reference work in absence of which, invaluable aspects in New York culture history would be left in the dark.
American Studies
For anyone interested in the art and writing of modern New York . . . Sharpe provides a rich, encompassing, and informed story.
Choice
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
San Francisco Chronicle
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
Soho Journal
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
The Barnes & Noble Review
The blackout of 2003 offered New Yorkers their most recent opportunity to experience something exceedingly rare: the city enveloped in darkness. William Chapman Sharpe begins New York Nocturne at a time when nighttime darkness was the norm and light -- first in the form of gas, then of electricity -- was radically disorienting, eventually transforming patterns of commerce and leisure. In this gorgeous, erudite book, the Barnard College professor 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's journey takes him to the middle of the 20th century, by which time artists like Edward Hopper and Weegee exploit the nighttime's theatrical, voyeuristic potential. In between he covers James McNeill Whistler, Stephen Crane, John Sloan, Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Joseph Stella, and many others, with close readings of the literature and black-and-white and color reproductions of the art. 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
