What it means to be lonely in New York City

16th May 2017

The Lonely City by Olivia Laing, what it means to be lonely in New York City.

Adventures in the art of being alone.

I happened to spot this book when it was mentioned on Twitter and was more than intrigued by the premise of the examination of loneliness in the big city. That big city being New York. Many of us live “cheek by jowl” with others, and yet can still experience an intense aloneness when nevertheless surrounded by a milling mass of people. A fascinating premise. In order to explore the notion of feeling alone in a crowd, the author has focussed on individuals from New York’s artist community from the 1960s onwards.

A section of the book is devoted in turn to her chosen artists, exploring their backgrounds and how they individually tackled the sense of disconnect.

First up is Edward Hopper, who says “Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city” and she goes on to examine his paintings with this thought in mind. In his paintings one can see figures, often within rooms within buildings, contemplative, lost in their own thoughts, somehow locked in, both physically and emotionally. Even if other people appear in his paintings, there is an invisible fence around each character. Being alone was a theme to which he returned time and again.

Andy Warhol and his life is also up for consideration. A man quite possibly disadvantaged in childhood: rheumatic fever left his complexion pale and pitted, and he was an immigrant, so English was his second language, all factors that marred his integration into New York society. Yet he became extremely successful through the expression of his art and eventually through the circles in which he moved. An icon to many, he in turn chose icons of society to represent in his art, yet never really sought to engage the viewer. He came to be surrounded by acolytes and people on the edge, and one such, Valerie Solanas, in fact shot him. His was a very dramatic life.

The author also draws parallels with loneliness and mental health, how the one impacts on the other and vice versa, and when Laing goes on to explore the darker psyches of David Wojnarowicz and Henry Joseph Darger, she explores several psychological theories that might lie behind the essential disconnect of her chosen artists.

She cites Melanie Klein’s attachment theory, whereby an individual suffering unhealthy attachments in early childhood will go on to struggle with mature attachments in later adult life, often causing a crisis of intimacy – this can often result in encounters of a dark and dissonant nature that can take their toll at many levels.

Overall this is an interesting treatise on loneliness in any large city where people live in close proximity. The author herself was motivated to write this book because her own experience of moving around in the city proved at times excruciatingly lonely.

Rather than being a book that enables #literarywanderlust this is a book that offers up a sense of New York, essentially in the second half of the 20th Century – a time when “the smell of dogshit and rotting garbage” pervaded the city (how different to now!). This is all part of the legacy that any visitor to the city will imbibe at an unconscious level on a visit today, so the book adds significant understanding of the cultural strata on which much of the city is built.

I am not altogether sure at whom this book would be aimed. I enjoyed it because I love New York, I have knowledge of  art and psychology, and thus it appealed to me. But I still struggled to connect some of the theorising with the pictures mentioned – essentially an eclectic treatise on art, loneliness and New York.

As an aside, check out this lovely post whereby the work of the first artist cited in the book – Edward Hopper – has been animated – Mesmerizing Animated Edward Hopper’s Masterpieces via Fubiz

Tina for the TripFiction Team

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