Some viewers who might feel too much at sea in the bumptious exhibition might cling to a few straightforward, representational drawings.
The sketchbook starts with straightforward figure drawings: an image of straphangers on a subway, New York City street portraits of Socialist Realist solidity.
He also began making straightforward etchings, drawings and paintings of New York City buildings, like the Flatiron Building at 23rd Street and Fifth Avenue and the cast-iron Haughwout Building at Broadway and Broome Street.
It was a straightforward presentation of drawings, maquettes and other preparatory materials, mostly stemming from his commission to design the Jersey City Medical Center Station on the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail System.
In straightforward black-and-white drawings, they've been at it ever since, this unageing Scots everyfamily with their straightforward black-and-white values: loyalty, decency, affection and amused self-deprecation, with a healthy dose of hi-jinks.
Initially, Emerson's drawings seem like straightforward blocks of black and white.
These drawings are more straightforward and conventional than some in the exhibition, but they are also evidence of a mind always trying to get the most out of his materials, always inventing, and at the same time keeping a hold on what the building is actually for.
Draw several gesture drawings.
But these problems were resolved when Hopper finally produced, after careful preliminary drawings, a painting that is direct, straightforward and almost ecstatic in its rendering of the Hayes house.
One of his most potent drawings is "The Babykiller (German Airman)," a straightforward portrait of a skinny, slouching, vacant-eyed Wehrmacht soldier in an oversize uniform, hands demurely guarding his crotch.
