Between solitude and fascination
Moments of discovering myself

“The perspective on life and art, the basis of its growth,
“There were things I learned and practiced in ‘Hopper’s City.’”

Kwak A-ram, who says that he gains the strength to sustain life by training himself and studying various subjects, is a typical example of homo academicus.
After 14 years of working, he was given the opportunity to study abroad.
For him, who had never been on a typical language study abroad program before and had never lived abroad outside of his travels, the unroutine life he would face after leaving his job and entering a foreign city where everything was unfamiliar must have been both exciting and scary.
Having to let go of familiarity, embrace new things, and stand on her own feet once again, Kwak A-ram ponders deeply how to build her life in the Seoul and New York of the world.
And we come to one conclusion.
It is a decision to 'educate' oneself.


“I came to the conclusion that I must dedicate myself to improving my abilities, broadening my perspective on the world, and strengthening my relationship with myself.
I wanted to live differently than before.
I wanted to break free from the mold of being someone's daughter or an employee of a certain company, and live as myself, as a natural person, and confront the world.
“I believed that in the process, I would get to know myself better.” (pp. 8-9)

During his time in New York, which was almost like a short-term immigration, the author encountered a new society and culture with a curious eye, which provided him with an opportunity to broaden his perspective on life and art.
Sometimes I felt like I was being tossed around by the rough and sometimes overly fast waves of the city, but at those times, the paintings that suddenly came to mind and the artworks I encountered in art galleries and on the streets gave me comfort.
The author, who defines his book as “a story of deciding to live like Goethe, leaving for New York, and living like Hopper,” unfolds his various experiences and thoughts in “My New York Class” including the art classes he took while staying in New York, the vibrant world of the art business, and even the temperament of a “professional playboy” that he himself did not know about, along with works that contain traces of the big city, such as Edward Hopper, Robert Indiana, Alex Katz, and Georgia O’Keeffe.


"My New York Class" is a revised edition of "I Never Became a New Yorker," which was first published in 2018. As the influence of Edward Hopper on the author's life in New York became more evident over time, it was newly published with additional stories related to his work.

I watched the movie "The Jungle Book" on the plane to the United States.
Shere Khan the tiger speaks to Mowgli, who thinks of himself as a wolf rather than a human.
“Do not run away from who you are.” I came to New York not to live like myself, but here I was living like myself.
Coming to an unfamiliar place, it seemed like I could see who I was much better than in Korea.
--- pp.27~28

Talking about this painting (Nighthawks), Hopper said:
“Perhaps unconsciously, I was depicting the loneliness of a big city.” I drew out a lonely space from my subconscious and reproduced it on the screen, and placed lonely figures from my unconscious in that space.
Like a poet reciting his thoughts, Hopper transferred the images in his mind onto the canvas.
So the restaurant in the picture is everywhere, but nowhere.
It may seem like an illusion, but it is also real.
We all have images of lonely spaces buried in our subconscious, and Hopper's diner is one of them.
--- p.56

I walked quite a bit following the boy's footsteps.
His father's general store, where he worked as a teenager, had become a thrift store.
The church he attended, the houses he painted, the docks along the river where he crouched and painted, watching the boats go by.
And the cemetery where he was buried.
Among the countless graves, I could not find his grave, but from the top of the hill where he was buried, I could see the Hudson River, as wide as the sea, and the white sailboats sailing on it.
Thinking it was a fitting graveyard for an artist, I walked down the hill and took the bus back to New York.
The name of the artist who was born and raised in that small, pretty town, Nyack, New York, is Edward Hopper.
--- p.59

If I encountered Hopper on the streets of New York, I met Dürer at school in New York.
My Albrecht.
I called him that in my heart.
I audited several art history courses at NYU IFA, where I was a visiting scholar.
The most memorable of these was a class on Albrecht Dürer that I took in the spring semester.
German painter Dürer is a leading figure of the Northern European Renaissance.
--- p.81

There are many memorable moments during my internship, but the happiest, most fulfilling moments were those Friday morning classes at the Met, at the Morgan Library, and in the lecture hall, when we traveled back to 15th and 16th century Germany and discussed Dürer.
It was a precious time that I would remember for a long time, so to make sure I didn't forget, I recorded each class in a diary titled 'Dürer Today'.
I thought that being able to take classes I wanted to take without having to earn credits or earn a degree was the ultimate luxury I enjoyed in New York.
--- p.98

The painting I bought was a postcard with a portrait print on it.
Charlotte has large, sharp eyes and a prominent nose. Her piercing gaze is both intelligent and sensitive.
(……) To avoid getting lost in the labyrinthine New York life, I taped the portrait to the wall with scotch tape.
Lying in bed, I turned my head to the left and saw Charlotte's face on the wall.
The woman who died at a similar age to me seemed to be encouraging me to live freely as I wished.
--- p.174

Although it is far from the grand task of predicting a child's painful life, reading has a kind of ritualistic quality to me.
Reading books has long been for me an encounter with another world, a kind of contact with the divine.
But during my year in New York, I hardly read any books.
That place was already a ‘different world’ to me, so there was no reason to dream of another world through reading books.
Instead, I explored the nooks and crannies of New York, bookstores, and used bookstores filled with old books, meeting my old friend, books, who became a strong support as I built my inner fortress.
--- p.204

Sloan, who had set himself the task of being "New York's chronicler," took many photographs of Washington Square Park.
"Wet Night, Washington Square" is also believed to have been painted after seeing a photograph.
The Washington Square Arch, modeled after the Arc de Triomphe in Paris to commemorate George Washington's inauguration as president, the fountain in front of it, and the Art Deco building One Fifth Avenue standing proudly behind the arch...
On a rainy night, the sight of a wet street illuminated by streetlights evokes an elegant and classy urban sentiment.
The scenery in the picture is from about 90 years ago, but it is not much different from the current Washington Square Park. So, during my short time as a New Yorker, whenever I went to Washington Square Park, I would take a picture and post it on Instagram with the title, “Today’s Washington Square Park.”
And I felt a kinship with Sloan, who wanted to capture the beautiful moments of the park in his paintings.
--- p.239

The day I left New York, I took my first and last photo in that room.
I too was alone, but my neck was far from the sorrowful woman of Hopper.
There was a plump, sun-tanned woman in the photo.
The person who took the picture was Yena, who had been growling and fighting so much.
(……) The next day, Yena helped me carry my luggage downstairs, even though she was limping, and at the end, they hugged each other warmly and parted ways.
Although I was tormented in many ways because of Yena, I finally came to understand that it was a survival strategy chosen by a foreign student in his early 20s to survive alone in the harsh environment of New York.
When I arrived at Incheon Airport and turned on my phone, there was a message from Yena with a picture.
“Thank you for cooking, Sister.
“My sister’s room, empty of all her luggage.” The bed and table were gone, leaving it a completely empty, ‘New York interior.’
--- pp.295~296

I've often thought about what travel is.
As I came to study without any particular plan, choosing only the country and city, the person I thought about most often was Goethe.
He left Weimar for Italy at the age of 37.
It was to see a bigger world.
His travelogue of his stay in Italy, "Italian Journey," is considered a world-famous work.
Since I also came abroad at a similar age, whenever I thought, 'What on earth am I doing here?', I would think of Goethe and calm my mind.
For artists, travel is a stimulus.
Charlotte Brontë visited Belgium.
William Merritt Chase, the American painter whom I first encountered through an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, stayed in Munich.
Is experiencing another world opening another door to the world within oneself?

--- p.308