Edward Hopper, a presentation

Edward Hopper 1882-1967

Born on July 22, 1882 in New York, Edward Hopper is considered to be one of America’s greatest realist painters of the twentieth century.

Hopper studied illustration at the New York School of Art, between 1900 and 1906.

In 1906 he travelled to Paris, London, Amsterdam, Berlin and Brussels to study works by European artists. Returning to New York in 1907, he painted and worked part-time as an illustrator for fiction and trade magazines.

- everyday American life such as restaurants, cafés, gas stations, theaters, and street scenes;

- images of loneliness and detachment where he often depicted solitary figures (mostly women) occupied with their own thoughts, bathed by the sun light.

- and third, seascapes and rural landscapes.

From 1910, Hopper spent his summers painting in rural New England, in Gloucester and Cape Anne, Massachusetts, and in Maine.

In 1913 he moved to Washington Square, in the Greenwich Village area of New York, which remained his permanent base.

Hopper’s subjects were derived from three main sources:

In 1923, with the encouragement of his wife artist Josephine Niviso, Hopper began painting in watercolour. In 1924, he had his first exhibition to reach critical and commercial success.

From 1930, Edward and Josephine (Jo) used to spend summer painting in Truro on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where they built a home in 1934.

Many artists have cited him as influential, including Mark Rothko. His cinematic compositions and use of light and dark made him popular with filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho , 39 Steps, Rear Window), Ridley Scott (Blade Runner), Wim Wenders (American friend).

Hopper made several extended trips abroad and came under the influence of French and European literature and culture.

The painting that apparently impressed him the most during his travels was Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch,” which he viewed in Amsterdam.

But he would be strongly influenced by many flemish works, his painted women revealing frequently a Vermeer touch – static figures with light coming down from a window as if from some heavenly source.

The window is in fact a recurring theme in Hopper’s paintings. It is this hint of voyeurism linked to an acute sense of ‘being alone’ that so captures Hopper’s twentieth century America.

Edward Hopper peered through windows into the soul of the US.

Hopper avoided sentimentality to the point of verging on detachment. He painted mundane places and ordinary people doing ordinary things, and

powerfully revealed an essential disquiet in that existence.

NighthawksThe characters in Nighthawks are not going anywhere; loneliness and desolation is expressed by the presence of anonymous, non-communicating figures.

We feel the emptiness created by the massive dark window,

The famous work might be a manifesto of the film noir aesthetic.

“Room in New York” (1932)

A couple in their living room observed through the open window of a city apartment. The pair are separated by space both physical and psychological. Disquietness shows in the angle of the woman’s starkly lit shoulder as she turns away to plunk a solitary note on a piano.

Compartment C, Car 2931938

Hopper would make the crossed legs of a female subject the brightest spot on an otherwise dark canvas in a number of later paintings.

Hitchcock, a great admirer of Hopper, was influenced by this picture in a scene of 39 Steps.

Reading is also a frequent theme in Hopper: many of his women have a book in hands. Maybe they don’t really read.

39 StepsHitchcock inspired in Hopper: Madeleine Carroll reads, her legs crossed

The female subject of his 1931 painting Barber Shop is also in a similar pose:

The coulours, the shades, the angled light bathing the woman, all remind of Vermeer famous paintings.

Hotel room, 1931

Nothing left, but to read?

Morning Sun (1952): solitude

Edward Hopper's wife, Josephine Hopper, served as his model for Morning Sun.

Hopper’s work conveys a psychological uneasiness pervasive in modern society

“Night Windows” (1928)

“Night Windows” caused controversy: it shows the rounded corner of an apartment as if seen from a passing elevated train. The illuminated interior is seen through three windows.

A rounded woman in a translucent red slip, her back to the observer and half-obscured by the central window, is captured slightly bent over as if putting something on an unseen chair.

Automat, 1927

Hopper's wife, Jo, served as model for the woman.

The restaurant appears to be empty, no signs of any life on the street outside.

This sense of loneliness was associated with the concept of urban alienation.

The woman’s reflection is absent from the window. Is she real?

Chop Suey,1929

Close attention to the effects of light

“Hopper is always on the verge of telling a story." John Updike.

Thw work is figurative, but many geometric elements surround the human figures, like the light and blue surface from outside through the window.

Tables for ladies, 1930

This time we look from the street into a restaurant’s front window – more like in Nighthawks.

Some influence of dutch painters can be found in the two females , one in white, one in black.

A message of sensuality mixed with melancholy.

Sunday1926

Sunday, the owner or the employee of a small store is waiting for customers. The street is empty and indifferent. He is looking to nowhere. He is inside his working time but he is not working.Hopper, it seems, calls our attention to that: when we are not working we are left empty. We feel empty of ourselves.

‘Pennsylvania Coal Town’, 1947

He is outside of his life, his home, but still nearby – he is in a similar situation as the man in Sunday. He is in between what his life is and himself. He is here, near his house, and he is not – he is looking somewhere else. What is he looking at? The gaze of the man, it seems, like in the Sunday painting, is directed at somewhere that is nowhere: he sees something without being interested in what he sees.

Office in a small city, 1953

Straight geometry adds to the impersonal atmosphere of the office, and further helps to create a feeling of containment and solitude.Bare windows, frames, a solitary person with an undefinite look, empty streets and façades shining in early morning sunlight.

High Noon, 1949

Blazing with all the brightness of summer, a solitary woman stands framed in the doorway of a lonely house somewhere on the American prairie. She has just opened her robe, and she looks up into the sunlight that falls on her bare breasts, trapped on the threshold, neither outside nor in.

We have a sense that this isn’t a real house at all; it’s as artificial as a movie set. This place is truly in the middle of nowhere.

Summertime, 1943

Cape cod evening, 1939

Cape Cod Evening should be idyllic: the couple enjoy the evening sunshine outside their home. But the door is firmly shut and the windows covered, the thick, sinister trees tap on the window panes.

Landscapes

House by the Railroad, 1925

Hitchcock’s Psycho

Captain Upton’s House, 1927

Gas, 1940

The last car seems to have passed long ago, the gas station has the appearance of a last outpost.

The bright, almost pure white fluorescent light in the gas station, in contrast, is almost painful to look at.

‘Vermeer was my biggest hero, then later on it was definitely Hopper’.Wim Wenders

Wim Wenders

Street Corner (Butte, Montana), 2003

Photography

Later works

Hopper’s later work became less sensuous, more geometric and deliberately surreal.

Sea Watchers ,1952

Study for Sea watchers

Sunlight on Brownstones , 1956

Study for Sunlight on Brownstones

Western Motel, 1957

Sunlight in a cafeteria, 1958 A window again, shadows and light, lonesome people‘Her eyes, unsettled, investigate the skin on her arm as her coffee grows cold’

Sun in an empty room, 1963

Rooms by the sea, 1951 – a study of light, a surrealistic approach.

Edward Hopper died on May 15, 1967 in his studio in New York City.

Jo, who died 10 months later, left their collection of over three thousand works to the Whitney Museum of American Art.

This presentation ©Mário Ricca, 2012