HopperEdward

EDWARD HOPPER

Throughout his adolescence, he was often mocked by his classmates because of his tall, skinny frame, reaching over six feet tall by age 12. The awkward adolescent withdrew from society and began to focus on refining his artistic talent. During this time of seclusion, he developed his expressive form of art and soon began to speak more with art than he did with words. Even though he painted the American scene, he insisted that he was only trying to paint himself. In fact, it is the loneliness and isolation of his adolescence that emerged to become the common threads shared among many of his subjects, both alive and inanimate.

Let me take you on a quick tour of some of my favorite Hoppers:

House by the Railroad:

is one of the best examples of an inanimate object displaying emotion. The house's loneliness and almost eerie solitude was achieved by the subtraction, rather than addition, of details. He removed a large portion of the actual house and left out all of the surroundings, except for the train tracks, which add a sense of abandonment to the painting. To enhance the emotion of the work, Hopper uses shadows to mask nearly all of the front entrance of the house, giving it a dark and ominous presence. Upon further inspection, the house does look more like a place to die than a place to live. Its viewers can easily relate to the house's situation, as everyone has been in a similar state of solitude and abandonment.

Room in New York:

This painting shows a couple through a very large window with part of the building shown on the bottom and on the left side. The man is focusing on his newspaper, while the woman casually plays a note with her right index finger. Even though she is playing the piano, the lower half of her body and, thus, her attention appear to be directed toward the man who sits unresponsive and impassive in his chair.. This situation creates a feeling of a kind of awkward silence, penetrated only by the sound of the soft notes sadly being played on the piano. Unfortunately, nearly every couple can identify with this familiar, yet uncomfortable, situation.

Morning Sun:

Another brilliant aspect of Hopper's work, is his ability to produce natural-looking sunlight. Contrasting with the darkness of Nighthawks and Room in New York, he produce many works which celebrated light and its effects on his subjects. But even though these are celebrations of the sun, they still retain the common theme of loneliness and solitude.

Two on the Aisle:

Hopper's pictures have about them the rather unreal aspect of scenes watched onstage. Scenes of human action - or inaction. His people perform mute dramas. Frequently under artificial lighting.

As in "Two on the Aisle," Hopper's characters are often psychologically isolated from one another. This is so even in places like a theater or a cafe (favorite Hopper subjects), where lots of people congregate. With unforgettable originality, he conveys the separateness of individuals.
In one sense, a play's audience is a large responsive unit. But it is quite usual for people to sit next to total strangers without any contact passing between them. A play can be an experience shared by the mutually ignored.

Hopper is a master of the waiting moment. In this theater painting, he does not show the play starting, or in full dramatic swing. Instead, he recalls, in his economical style, the feeling of people who arrive early.

The woman in the box reads her program. The woman in the front row arranges her coat over the seat. The man slowly removes his coat. It will be 20 minutes before the rest of the audience crowds in. Yet this frozen - even boring - moment is instilled with strange, premature drama.

Nighthawks:

One of Hopper's most popular paintings.

As you will have noticed, Hopper painted hotels, motels, lighthouses, trains, and highways, but also places where people gathered: restaurants, theatres, cinemas, and offices. His subjects are often illuminated by light to make them seem even more alone, despite being surrounded by people. They do not make eye contact, and the light draws the viewer's eye to the edges of the painting and to the dark and vast spaces, making their solitude more complete.

Chair Car

Hopper was drawn to the atmosphere inside half-empty carriages making their way across a landscape; the silence that reigns inside while the wheels beat in rhythm against the rails outside, the dreaminess fostered by the noise and the view from the windows, a dreaminess in which we seem to stand outside our normal selves and have access to thoughts and memories that may not arise in more settled circumstances.

The woman in Compartment C, Car 293 seems in such a frame of mind, reading her book and shifting her gaze between the carriage and the view.