Edward Hopper's paintings - Essay Example

Edward Hopper’s Paintings Art reflects the sensibility of culture and time. Edward Hopper, one of the realist painters of twentieth-century, is well-known for depicting the American cities and the social life of the common people through his paintings. Hopper’s works sensibly presents the country’s culture in an uncompromising style, deeply filled with emotional content. As his paintings are intended to be realistic, they are portrayed with scenes of normal American life, in a mysterious and beautiful way. Majority of his themes include the common features of American life and its inhabitants as well as the urban and rural landscapes. The city landscape paintings reflected his personal vision towards the American cities, its structure, people and the isolation associated with the modern urban life. The discussion traces on the cityscape paintings of Hopper and how the modern American life is portrayed in these paintings. The contributions of Hopper, as a realist painter, to the discourse of anti-urbanism in American culture are widely viewed as a response to the then emerging urbanization in the American cities during the early twentieth-century. Born in Nyack, New York, Edward Hopper was talented in artwork, making watercolor, charcoal and oil-paintings with varied subjects and self-portraits, as well as political cartoons. After his graduation, he intended for the art career, and studied commercial art at New York Institute of Art and Design, which helped him develop his individualistic philosophy of life and self-image. His early works included landscapes and dozens of portraits in realist art, despite the abstract cubic trend of his contemporaries. Inspired by the French painters’ soft palette, Hopper eventually got settled into the dark color scheme, painting urban scenes of street crowds and cafes, which resemble the reality of the American city. Hopper had little interest in the advancements of Cubism and Fauvism, and he focused much on the depictions of urban life. “With painstaking detachment, Hopper observed the still moments of individual existence, catching people in reflection, even resignation. He accepted the city as a fact of existence, to be neither idealized nor transformed.” (Scott & Rutkoff, 2001, pg.127). Initially, his paintings did not gain any recognition or income, as most of the people during his period were not interested in the realistic style paintings. He struggled to gain identification but was less successful in his attempts of exhibiting his artworks to the people. In 1923, he met Jo Nivison, who was an artist and later his wife, brought a breakthrough into his life. She modeled for nearly all of his paintings, and acted as a strong moral support to him in his career. Soon, he began his second gallery show at New York, a one-person exhibition, where he was far more prosperous and his works became more prominent, making it a commercial success. The reputation of his paintings soared in the coming years and in 1930, his painting, House by the Railroad, was placed among the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art. In his lifetime, he created more than 800 paintings, watercolor prints as well as many drawings and illustrations. Most of his works presented New York City architecture, with stark interpretations of American life. “Hopper sought and explored his chosen themes: the tensions between individuals (particularly men and women), the conflict between tradition and progress in both rural and urban settings, and the moods evoked by various times of day.” (Murphy, 2007). Even though most of Hopper’s works were done with oil painting, he also mastered the technique of etching, which brought him commercial success. His works embodied an eerie mood of stillness and a sense of estrangement, setting the figures departed from the environment. Some of his other works represented the isolationism of the urban society, portraying single or pair of subjects in an isolated scenario, with no communication. “The people in Hopper’s urban paintings are isolated individuals who appear out of place, detached from the city both socially and spatially as it changes around them, and seemingly bewildered by the threat to ‘nature’ posed by the built environment.” (Slater, 2002). His chosen locations were of isolated railroad tracks, diners, bridges or deserted gas stations, which implied the transitory nature of contemporary American life. “Hopper’s city scenes restate the closed-off, pathless inertia so characteristic of his natural scenes featuring roads and railway tracks.” (Renner, 2000, pg.86). Most of his paintings are fraught with mystery and loneliness, with locations being set in theatres, trains, hotel rooms or restaurants, which were common places of interaction among the American life. He brought realistic depictions of scenes, subjects and objects in a perceivable expression that is not alien to the everyday life. His art represented a revealing portrait of the American life in the twentieth-century. Nevertheless, he was not an objective realist; his art deliberately included personal emotions, with a greater sense of attachment to the normal everyday experience, in all its beauty, ugliness and banality. Light was one of the prominent aspects among Hopper’s paintings. He was influenced by the Impressionistic style, by using light as a subject in most of his paintings. “Hopper’s light gave Depression-era Americans, and many others thereafter, a glamorous, even heroic image of themselves as solitary and tragic, persevering, deservedly nostalgic.” (Cotter, 2007). In his iconic painting, Nighthawks (1942), he represents the city diner at night with four figures and a waiter, surrounded with a brightly lit interior. The mood of the painting depicts a sense of weariness and disconnection, echoing the wartime anxiety felt among the society. Since the painting was done soon after the Japanese bomb attacks, it sensed the feelings of fear and unhappiness among the most Americans during that time. It represents the postwar America, where Hopper insists that the individual were suffering isolation within the society. However, this notion of Hopper’s paintings received a critical reception among the contemporaries as they argued that the society was emerging into an era of cultural optimism and national prosperity. However, the painting evokes a sense of nostalgia among the modern-day viewers, subtly stressing on the modern world. “Despite its surface beauty, the world in the painting is one measured in cups of coffee, imbued with an overwhelming sense of loneliness, and a deep desire, but ultimate inability, to connect with those around us.” (Zappella, n. d). According to Hopper, popular culture and hedonism were the joys of the society during the twentieth-century and this became the prominently heightened concept in his paintings. “The Twenties emphasized extroversion, and along with Prohibition boosting random acts of lawlessness and "fling-to-the-wind" careless hedonism, was an era where people care nothing for what really matters, but instead devoted their lives to pleasure.” (Tony, 2008). The city is depicted to be an entity of isolationism, where there exists a disjoined sphere for everyone on the urban society, and thus any meaningful interaction has lessened. In 1930s, during the great economic depression, Hopper’s paintings were marked with everyday subjects in the urban cities that expressed lonely mysterious lives, which was indeed the reality of the then society. Hopper’s paintings of scenes of women and couples in watercolors and etching techniques revealed the Jazz Age scenario, depicting the independent nature of women in the society. His Automat (1927) and Chop Suey (1929) represents the women in 1920s, flaunting over her unconventional conducts and dressing, and thereby intensifying a cosmopolitan milieu. For instance, in Automat, he intends to expose and unveil the loneliness and detachment among the individuals, particularly the women in the American society. In the painting, the silent woman sitting alone in an automated diner, with opaque darkness prevailing behind her, is reflected with diminishing smoky glass and light effects. It peculiarly mentions that the woman is abandoned and trapped within the city’s scenario. The painting emphasizes on the effect of social seclusion and remoteness in the Twenties, through the painting’s color shades, light effects, isolated no-door surrounding. It also portrays a quiet and distant atmosphere, which seems to render a sense of estrangement prevailing in the city life. Similarly, in the Chop Suey, he illustrates the view of two women in a restaurant where they gather, but are looking isolated with one another. The picture captures a poignant characterization of the modern American cities, confined to a solitary living, where even while together, people are desperately alone. Hopper has a powerful urban vision, and his paintings of vernacular buildings were distinctly carved out brick by brick in an extraordinary manner. He often painted unexceptional New York architecture and structures that were not-so-famous but are belonging to the commonplace houses and industrial lofts. His paintings such as the Manhattan Bridge Loop (1928) and Early Sunday Morning (1930) brings the monumental view of New York from its simple yet realistic buildings portrayal. However, his Night Windows (1928) presents the concerns about the city life resulting from the physical closeness of the city’s structure. The painting acknowledges “the strange nonchalance that results from lives lived in such close proximity: even when you think you are alone, you are observed.” (Berman, 2007). Some of his works depict the business domain of the American cities in his contemporary period. The Early Sunday Morning portrays a picture of New York scene, connoting the lifestyle and the ubiquity of small businesses in the United States. “The painting can either be taken as a quiet and peaceful scene of small businesses that are closed or considered a comment on the Depression.” (“Early Sunday Morning”, 2009). Similarly, Office in a Small City (1953) expresses a common scene in the American city in the mid-twentieth century, with a solitary worker, isolated both physically and emotionally. As Hopper states, his “aim was to try to give the sense of an isolated and lonely office interior rather high in the air, with the office furniture which has a very definite meaning.” (Levin, 1998, p.324). He implies on the detachment of the workers through an impersonal working environment, which became predominantly existing in the postwar American cities. It represents a sense of isolation, containment and solitude of a man, showing Hopper’s ambivalence towards modern city life. Overall, Hopper expresses the impression of everyday life through his paintings with a touch of secular sanctity in the cities. His works were not painted to demonstrate optimistic images of the future society, but for depicting the reality of the golden age with a vision of the past. Most of his artworks seem to be less about hope but of fear – fear of the change, fear of the unknown and fear of the future. Though technically, he was a modernist, his paintings lacked the rational view of the utopian society and the existence of hope behind it. However, he didn’t make a dystopian society either; he was blatantly realistic to his era, concentrating on the deep emotions, longings, and anxiety of the common people. References: Berman, A. (2007). Hopper: The Supreme American Realist of the 20th-Century. Retrieved from: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/hopper-156346356/?all Cotter, H. (2007). Hopper’s America, in Shadow and Light. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/arts/design/04hopp.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 “Early Sunday Morning, 1930 by Edward Hopper.” (2009). Edward Hopper. Retrieved from: http://www.edwardhopper.net/early-sunday-morning.jsp Levin, G. (1998). Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography. University of California Press, Murphy, J. (2007). Edward Hopper (1882–1967). Retrieved from: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/hopp/hd_hopp.htm Renner, R. G. (2000). Edward Hopper, 1882-1967: Att Transformera Det Verkliga. Taschen. Scott, W. B. & Peter, M. R. (2001). New York Modern: The Arts and the City. JHU Press. Slater, T. (2002). Fear of the City 1882-1967: Edward Hopper and the Discourse of anti- Urbanism. Social & Cultural Geography 3 (2): 135-154. Tony, L. (2008). The Automat by Edward Hopper: 1920s Context Analysis. Retrieved | from: http://voices.yahoo.com/the-automat-edward-hopper-1920s-context-analysis-1420897.html?cat=38 Zappella, C. (n. d). Hopper, Nighthawks. Retrieved from: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-history/art-history-1907-1960-age-of-global-conflict/American%20Modernism/a/hopper-nighthawks Read More