The artist Edward Hopper (1882-1967) is hard to classify. We think of Hopper as a modern painter. However, he continues a trend in American painting going back to William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri. In fact, Hopper was a student of both these artists and followed their influence in depicting American life with realism. (Perhaps we should go back even further and include Eakins and Homer.) In spite of the impact of the media, academia and critics, the American public had never accepted abstracted art in large numbers until recently. Realist art, such as Impressionism, was most admired and had most sway. There are typical American connections to this sort of modern art in the Regionalists, in Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood, for example. Hopper differs from, say, Norman Rockwell, in that he presents us with unique views and cuts off pictures in unusual ways. An admirer of Edward Degas, who did pretty much the same thing, Hopper depicted life by constructing images from atypical angles and lighting and with figures that seem disconnected from each other which results in a sense of loneliness, eeriness or alienation. His subjects were modern even though his techniques were not.

Artwork that has a “voice”, that advances a world constructed of the artist’s guile and skill, interests a viewer to a much larger degree than any other conception. Some works garner intrigue by combinations of color or an overt suggestion, but a work that tempts us to imagine a cosmos uncannily different than our present mental model, ignites a delightful and useful spark. This is not to say that Hopper dabbles in Surrealism. He attempts to represent reality by painting a mood or awareness. This mood or feeling is expressed by his iconic work, Night Hawks:

Alot of silliness surrounds Night Hawks. Investigating this picture will result in thesis such as the anxiety of war, The Great Depression, the change from a production society to a consumer one, so forth and so on. Some of these arguments might make sense except that Hopper’s pictures carried similar emotional portrayals long before the Night Hawks. This is a personal statement, not the depiction of great societal forces. Nor should we be surprised by the division between the darkness of night and the stark light inside the diner, the abrupt distinction between inside and out. This is a common element of Hopper’s pictures. Nonetheless, the remarkable allusion to sanctuary, alienation and seclusion, emphasize the patterns of urban existence and invokes a feeling in an inimitable way, effective beyond many other images, even by so called great artists in the modern era.

Hopper was obviously not obsessed with the interactions of humans in an urban environment. He painted many landscapes and was skilled in watercolor. The heady estimation of Hopper was the result of carefully constructed interior scenes that provoked many of the impressions people have about the Night Hawks and other pictures. Hopper was more than just these select pictures and has an abundant body of work with similar techniques, but different approaches.

 

 

HBosler

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