The Book of Matsuyama

Tomokazu Matsuyama
Matsuyama borrows an Old Master device of signalling emotions by using pictures within his pictures, littering his work with art-historical quotes. Photo: Luc Castel/Getty Images
Marion Maneker
June 24, 2025

Edward Hopper’s Morning Sun—the one in which a woman sits upright in her bed, her arms crossed over her shins, facing the open window with the sun streaming in—has often been read as a commentary on the isolation and loneliness of modern urban life. Whatever sense of dislocation Hopper was trying to convey in 1952, though, is nothing compared to the atomization and anomie so many feel in today’s smartphone-fueled culture of FOMO and consumption. That’s the vibe that Tomokazu Matsuyama is getting at in a new painting, Morning Sun Dance, which was inspired by the Hopper work and debuted Friday at the Edward Hopper House in Nyack, about 45 minutes up the Hudson from Manhattan.