Edward Hopper, American Artist
lawlecturerluke
all over the internet and found nothing, so I thought I would share my
ideas.
The Tate Gallery in London, UK, is holding a major exhibition of work by
the 20th Century American artist Edward Hopper. You will probably have
seen his paintings; the most famous is “Nighthawks”
(http://americanart.si.edu/collections/exhibits/hopper/p22-hawks.html)
but there are others that have directly or indirectly entered the public
consciousness. For example, the house in Alfred Hitchcock’s film
“Psycho” is widely believed to have been based on Hopper’s painting “The
House by the Railroad”.
There was a programme about the exhibition on Channel 5 last week, which
I happened to watch. The presenter was putting forward explanations
about Hopper, who presents an enigma to art criticism. “The work of
Edward Hopper consistently produces a feeling of loneliness.
Consistently hailed as one of the great American painters, the theme of
loneliness and isolation is common in many of Hopper's pieces.” (from
http://www.csuchico.edu/art/contrapposto/contrapposto01/240/perry.html)
and “His detached attitude toward the human being, and the compensating
intensity of his felling s for the human environment, inevitably produce
an undertone of loneliness”. But while I watched the programme, and
listened to the explanations, I thought I recognised something in
Hopper’s art that was familiar to me, and I wondered, was Hopper autistic?
So I set out to find some evidence. The first thing I found was that he
(like me) only married when he was 42. I looked at the self-portrait he
did around that time
(http://netmadame.free.fr/culture/franck/hopper/portrait-hopper.htm) and
saw how it concentrates on the lower part of the face and has the eyes
in shadow. I found this description from a Time magazine feature in 1956
on the Smithsonian Museum of American Art website called “The Silent
Witness”
(http://americanart.si.edu/collections/exhibits/hopper/p25-news-time.html):–
“At a roadside diner in California one day last week, a green and white
1954 three-hole Buick sedan came to a gentle halt and an elderly couple
got out. They were tourists, just passing by. The birdlike little
woman chattered warmly to the counterman as she ordered weak tea. Her
husband, a tall, stooped, somber man in a sports jacket, remained aloof.
His heavy bald dome wrinkled uneasily; his face drooped; his mouth was
firmly shut. He folded and unfolded his big hands, cracking a knuckle
occasionally and gazing with utter absorption, at the garish,
commonplace surroundings. His blue-grey eyes shone steady and intense
as the crack of dawn.
“The travelers were Edward Hopper, painter extraordinary, and his wife
Jo. Painter Hopper was hard at his usual work: eyewitnessing America.
The American scene is not only Edward Hopper's one subject, but his
obsession as well. He stares with sober passion at the most ordinary
things about the U.S., sights that esthetes turn away from and everyone
else takes for granted.
“Gas stations, hotel lobbies, rooming houses, side streets, Pullman
compartments, lighted windows, underpasses – ;such are the meager
materials Hopper chooses to make immutable and unforgettable on canvas.
Their fascination for him lies in the fact they are man-made, and
common-man-made. He finds them appropriate for the expression of human
striving in all its loneliness and disarray as well as its hints and
spasms of nobility.
“In Hopper's quiet canvases, blemishes and blessings balance. He will
paint an ugly front stoop and the warmth of sunlight on it, or a sooty
curtain stirring with the fragrance of an unexpected breeze. He
presents common denominators, taken from everyday experiences, in a
formal, somehow final, way. The results can have astonishing poignancy,
as if they were familiar scenes solemnly witnessed for the very last
time. "To me," says Hopper, "the important thing is the sense of going
on. You know how beautiful things are when your traveling."
And I found this in The Guardian by Annie Proulx
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1211969,00.html):–
“Torrents of words and phrases fall on Edward Hopper's paintings. Deadly
silence, erotic despair, haunting ambiguity, irony, symbolic decoding,
metaphysical, mysterious. Almost every critic, artist, writer
(especially writers), art savant, book-jacket designer or media hack
sees in his mature paintings solitude, alienation, loneliness and
psychological tension. The general critical observation that Hopper's
paintings depicted loneliness - and that this loneliness was an integral
part of the American character - is a bit puzzling. Hopper himself
didn't see it and once commented: "The loneliness thing is overdone."
More likely than "loneliness" is the sense of self as different and
apart, feelings not limited to Americans.”
and
“When asked what he was after in one of his last pictures, the 1963 Sun
in an Empty Room, he snapped: "I'm after ME."”
Now I know that there are people who say that we can’t or shouldn’t out
the dead as autistic, whether because it might be disrespectful, or
upset relatives, or damage the cause, and I know that there are learned
art critics who have devoted large parts of their careers to him, but I
have to ask, as I have to ask about myself, was Edward Hopper autistic?
Is it that that explains the engima of his art?
lawlecturerluke
The autist formerly known as
several candidates in the Movie industry for possible autistic status,
Kubrick is another.
The painted arts have always borne a relationship to the Cinema from the
erliest days.
Artists like John Martin with his apocalyptic visions, influenced the sets
of Griffith and De Mille.
Indeed much of what we saw in the epics of the pre digital period was of
course painting. Mattes and scenery.
I tried to urge my college to by an excellent book which I saw which
included these as examples of forgotten and insufficiently appreciated art.
--
þT
L'artisme c'est moi
"Space folds, and folded space bends, and bent folded space contracts and
expands unevenly in every way unconcievable except to someone who does not
believe in the laws of mathematics"
"lawlecturerluke" <lawlect...@bvconline.org.uk> wrote in message
news:410e9620$0$97864$ed2e...@ptn-nntp-reader04.plus.net...
Sojourner
> The Tate Gallery in London, UK, is holding a major exhibition of work by
> the 20th Century American artist Edward Hopper. You will probably have
> seen his paintings; the most famous is “Nighthawks”
My exposure to the painting was through the Autrian fellow who made
'Boulevard of Broken Dreams' depicting James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis
and Bogart in a spoof of Hopper's Nighthawks. A lot of the feeling I get
in the original is still from that.
I can identify with 'nighhawks'.
Some of the most melancholy, yet 'wonderful in its own way' experiences
were walking a city street on some brisk evening with not much more than
a jean jacket or something to fend off the chill.
Seeing from the outside...that diner, or a place similar to it.
Thre is a quiet cheeriness about it yet, a sense that such things do not
extend beyong the warmth of the place,..a square bubble, insulated from
the rest of the world.
And yet I ...seeing that sight, across the street, the night air nipping
at my ears,......hands in jeans pockets.= seeing another world,
just a short step and a pane of glass away,....a woman. a
companion...and waiter wrapped up in the moment.
The touches of irony, sadness, and wishfullness...yet, the night air
nips my nose once more and I find myself drug back out of my nightdreams,,
watching waiter work quietly through the glass.. feeling yet though a
sense of
purity and freedom in myself...sensing that is something so priceless
'out here' that 'they'
could never know, feel, or understand.
Such is how such things move me.
Hopper's 'Gas Station' to many is one of terrible loneliness, but to me
it's serenity. I would love to grab about an hour's worth of being in
the paintings depiction.
That time of day...that transition from late afternoon and on into early
evening is magical to me.
>
> “When asked what he was after in one of his last pictures, the 1963 Sun
> in an Empty Room, he snapped: "I'm after ME."”
He was, I belive and he knew how to put it on canvas.
Whether he was autistic or not. I don't know.
Sojo