Silent spaces

Different strokes

Known as the painter of loneliness, Edward Hopper (1882-1967) was, according to many, the supreme American realist of the 20th century. A prolific artist, he is said to have created during his lifetime more than 800 paintings, watercolours and prints, besides numerous drawings and illustrations.

Hopper’s work was characterised by stark but intimate interpretations of American life. His scenes which looked mysterious and monumentally silent actually presented ordinary settings like a roadside gas pump, a simple hotel room or a derelict house across a deserted road.

An intensely thoughtful painter, Hopper would meditate on ideas for months, before the first drop of paint touched his canvas. “The man’s the work,” he would say. “Something doesn’t come out of nothing. The painter paints to reveal himself through what he sees in his subject.”

Late success

Hopper was born on July 22, 1882, in Nyack, New York. He sold one painting in 1913 but did not make another major sale for a decade. He struggled for years, surviving as an illustrator before success came in the form of a sell-out show in New York in 1924. In the following years, many distinguished paintings came out of his stable; his reputation soared and critical acclaim followed. In 1929, he was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition, ‘Paintings by Nineteen Living Americans’.

In January 1930, ‘The House by the Railroad’ became the first painting by any artist to enter MoMA’s permanent collection. Later that year, ‘Early Sunday Morning’ was bought by the Whitney Museum of American Art, and in 1931, ‘Tables for Ladies’ was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In November 1933, the MoMA gave 51-year old Hopper a retrospective exhibition, an honour rarely bestowed on living American artists.

Hopper continued to be active in his artistic journey and one of his most famous works, ‘Nighthawks’, showing three ‘lonely’ diners and a waiter in an open, all-night restaurant, was painted in 1942. As he aged, he slowed down and by late 1940s his output had started dwindling considerably. By the time he died in 1967, aged 84, he was almost isolated and nearly forgotten. However, his true importance was to resurface once again, posthumously.

Almost three decades after the artist’s death, noted critic Robert Hughes recalled that “Hopper remains one of those artists whose work — no matter how familiar and often reproduced it has become — comes up fresh whenever you see it… He saw an America no one else had got right; and now you can’t see it without seeing him…Moreover, no American painter has influenced popular culture more deeply.”

More recently, on December 5, 2013, one of Hopper’s famous paintings, ‘East Wind Over Weehawken,’ (oil on canvas / 34 x 50 inch) hit the headlines when it was auctioned for $40.5 million by Christie’s in New York. The iconic 1934 streetscape showing a poignant scene from the Depression-era America, was lapped up by an anonymous bidder who had obviously disregarded the upper estimate of $28 million set for the painting. (Hopper’s earlier bestseller was ‘Hotel Window’ which had sold for $26.9 million.)

Evocative canvases

Today, Hopper’s evocative canvases are remembered for the silent spaces, uneasy encounters and incredible play of light and shade. The painter, who never liked to explain his works, was clearly disinterested in painting the hustle and bustle of the city, its tourist attractions or famous landmarks. Instead, he preferred to look at common places, industrial lofts and unexceptional, antiquated structures. While he painted empty or semi-deserted rooms, hotels, trains, highways, gas pumps, restaurants, cinemas and offices, they were not presented as exciting locales but arenas of overpowering stillness and sterility.

Hopper’s human figures were ambivalent and seemed to engage in uncertain relationships. As Mike Gonzalez (Socialist Review /June 2004) points out: “These people, these ordinary, unremarkable people, clearly do have inner lives... They neither look at one another nor acknowledge in face or gesture any relationship with one another… Here then are these lonely figures caught in a moment of ‘not belonging’, of displacement.”

Classical view

Gail Levin, author of Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography, provides vital clues into the artist’s personality. He explains that while his art was not depressing, Hopper himself was a depressed person. “In many ways he was a Victorian man, born in 1882, who lived most of his life in the 20th century, and really never adjusted to a lot of the major societal and technological changes that took place. The changing role of women was difficult for him.
He expected women to behave like his mother had in the 19th century. He was afraid to fly on airplanes. He did it once; he hated to fly. He didn’t like skyscrapers. When you see them in his paintings, they’re always cropped, as opposed to Georgia O’Keeffe, who celebrates them, or Charles Sheeler, with his soaring skyscrapers.”

Hopper married Josephine Nivinson, an artist in her own right, in 1924. They had a complicated relationship; nevertheless, she not only posed for nearly every female figure in his canvases, but also remained committed to him, till his death. She survived him by just 10 months, dying 12 days before her 85th birthday.
Hopper believed that great art was the outward expression of an inner life in the artist; and that this inner life would result in a personal vision of the world. He had many admirers and his paintings not only inspired other artists, but also poets and writers. Alfred Hitchcock confessed that his later films Rear Window and Psycho were, to some extent, inspired by Hopper’s work.

“What I think that is most appealing about Edward Hopper’s art is how it operates on so many levels, how complex it is,” says Levin. “You can get deeper and deeper into the meaning of his work. His art is rich in significance. Much of it is so much more than just a recording of what he saw; and I think that’s what makes his art so important to so many people.”