Isabel Bishop Early Sketchbook c. 1928 - 1936

Curator: This is a page from Isabel Bishop's "Early Sketchbook," created between 1928 and 1936. It's a pen drawing on paper, a whirlwind of fleeting moments captured from city life. What's your immediate sense of it? Editor: Restless energy, definitely. Like a city buzzing just beyond your window, a cacophony distilled into lines. All those hats! And those blurry shapes suggesting bustling crowds—there's a social vibrancy radiating off the page, an echo of modern life. Curator: Absolutely, Bishop's work is steeped in observing ordinary urban life. It is very casual and personal; sketchbooks can capture an honesty of feeling. What do these symbols tell you? Editor: I’m especially drawn to the way the hats and coats render their wearers anonymous, part of the throng, types rather than individuals. You know, hats, especially, carried so much weight back then – social status, aspiration… there is an umbrella form; that reads like pure pathos, that form weeping into a puddle. It is quite poetic. Curator: I completely agree. Even though Bishop zeroes in on ordinary folk—office girls, unemployed men during the Depression—she manages to imbue these images with surprising emotional resonance. The immediacy of the pen work lends it such immediacy; a raw authenticity. I can feel her presence observing a subject. Editor: Yes, the stark, almost clinical pen lines bring it all sharply into focus. I'm struck by how modern the composition is; there are sketches within sketches all inhabiting the same frame of awareness. What at first appears disorganized is actually the record of thoughts flowing to the page in sequence. I read narrative in the chaos. Curator: Definitely. This work encapsulates Bishop’s ethos. These fragments crystallize into a collective portrait. I love how it embodies seeing – a celebration of the beautiful mundane. Editor: Me too. You walk away seeing crowds everywhere anew. What a tribute to modern experience.