Edward Hopper - Transformation of The Real

3 1111 01756 6322
BEL-TIB
759. 13 HOPPER 1990
Renner, Rolf Gunter

Edward Hopper, 1882-1967
transformation of the rea.
31111017566322
k
DATE DUE
DEC
1 2
N2q
H-3
AUG
BrodartCo.
m
2003
Cat. #
55 137 001
Printed in
USA
EDWAAft HOPPER.
Rolf
Gunter Renner
Edward Hopper
1882-1967
Transformation of the Real
Benedikt Taschen
FRONT COVER:
Detail from:
Summer
Evening, 1947
Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 106.7
cm
Private collection. Washington, D.C.
FRONTISPIECE:
Self Portrait, 1925-30

Oil on canvas, 63.8 x 5
Collection of Whitney
Museum
.4
cm
of American Art,
New
Josephine N. Hopper Bequest 70.1 165
1990 Benedikt Taschen Verlag
GmbH
Hohenzollernring 53, D-5000 Koln
English translation: Michael Hulse

Edited and produced by Sally Bald
Typesetting: Utesch Satztechnik
GmbH. Hamburg
Picture research: Frigga Finkentey
Cover design: Peter Feierabend

Printed in Germans
ISBN 3-8228-0543-2
GB
York,
Contents
6
European Beginnings
20
Pictures of the
New
World
30
The
Frontier of Civilization
44
Man and Nature
Self
64
and Other
84
Transformations of the Real

Hopper as Modernist
94
Edward Hopper 1882-1967:
A Chronology
96
Notes
European Beginnings
For most Europeans, Edward Hopper's
image of America. Responses
to
the late 1970s suggested that this
What
proach.
so American
is
can qualities are
art
confirms a preconceived
Hopper exhibitions seen
encoded twofold: Hopper's use of motifs
that
And
seem
those scenes are
typically
can, and his love of realistic detail, are alike defamiliarized.

familiarization
Hopper
Ameri-
the subject matter. Hopper's
is
in
not due to the painter's style or ap-
is
scenes he chose to paint.
in the
Europe
in
subjects his scenes to
fractures beneath the painted skin of
modern
is
Ameri-
The de-
intended to reveal the
life.
This twofold, ambiguous quality has a dimension of aesthetic openness to
it.
And
it
explains Hopper's special significance during the
heyday of American Modernism. Often enough, the Abstract Expressionism of Jackson Pollock and the
New
are interpreted as the twin poles "of
American individualism and
Realism of Edward Hopper

artis-
tic integrity!''
At times Hopper's realism can be so overdrawn

gap
that
that
it
opens wide a
admits things not actually visible in the work. Or
the real with an air of the fantastic. Hopper's
it
endows
view of landscape, for
Standing Female Model

Collection
Art,
instance, calls to
meeting of
tity
Man
and which
mind
the archetypal experience of the Frontier, that
New
1900-03
cm
of Whitney Museum of American
1
York. Josephine N. Hopper Bequest
70.1560.90
was so crucial to the American idenmark not only on the pre-eminent 19th century
and Nature
left its
in Studio, c.
Charcoal on paper. 30.8 x 24.
that
writers (Hawthorne, Melville, Poe) but also
And just
Cole and of the Hudson River School.

natural opportunity
became an
Melville, so too the
image of Nature
curious metamorphosis. Either
on the pictures of Thomas

as the
myth of endless
ossified loss of bearings in
it
is
in
Hopper's
art
Poe and
often undergoes
scored by civilization's
many
blemishes, by streets and railroad crossings and lighthouses, or those
very tokens of civilization appear lost and even endangered in an unspoilt natural setting
tures of houses
- an impression conveyed by most of the
Hopper
to offer us extensive
pic-
painted. For this reason, his paintings tend not
panoramas:
rather, they limit the
view - and Hop-
per often substitutes an interior seen through a window, or
window
prospects limited by houses or other icons of the civilized world, for
an unrestricted view of Nature.
Hopper froze archetypal dynamism

scenes. But of course
we must remember
exclusively American
ern
art.
sights
into rigidity in his
Given the time
phenomenon;
lag that lay
American
that this reversal
rather,
it
was
was not an
a hallmark of
between European aesthetic
mod-
Painter and Model,
c.
in-
and American, we might compare Hopper's window views and
1902-04
cm
Museum
Oil on cardboard. 26 x 20.5
Art.
New
70.1420
of American
York, Josephine N. Hopper Bequest
Summer
Interior.
natural scenes with similar images
1909
cm
of Whitney Museum
Oil on canvas. 61 x 73.7
Collection
Art,
New
70.1197
of American
European Romantic
ready produced, in an attempt to register stasis

lization,
in the
art
had
al-
progress of civi-
and the alienation of humankind from the natural environ-
ment. Hopper adapted those images to the needs of fully-developed

modernity. The
window scenes of European Romanticism had of
course not only registered loss but had also provided a visual transcript of scrutiny of the inner
examine ourselves
in turn as
self- a scrutiny which induces us to
we
consider Romantic paintings. But the
transformation of the outer view into an inner, psychological scrutiny

also establishes a
is
blocked,
is
iconography. The view of the exterior, once
replaced by a realistic
scape beyond the
and
new
window
is
art
of the
interior,
and the land-
replaced by an interieur paysage as air
light enter the interior. In twentieth century art, the
ward Hopper displays
of visual interest to the
it
work of Ed-
comparable transformation, a similar transfer

interior.
The
transfer can already be seen in
work he painted in Paris, and it unfolds richly in his late work.

Hopper too has his eye on psychological factors rather than on the
early
merely
visible: representational realism is
coded signs
that
communicate
used as a system of en-
the subconscious basis of conscious
perception.
The
writer Peter
Handke described
this effect
of realism in his
novel Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire. For Handke, what was striking
about Hopper's landscapes was not their "dreamlike menace" but a

quality of the "desolately real".
and likened them
effect,
to
Still,
he also
felt
they had a "magical"
"de Chirico's deserted metaphysical
Max
squares," to the "desolate moonlit jungle cities of
Ernst" and to
Rene Magritte's L' Empire des Lumieres II (p. 90). We might add
other comparisons. Edvard Munch's The Storm (p. 42), with its facegrouped
less figures
in the
foreground, uses effects of the light to de-
familiarize the house and setting, and might reasonably be related to
Hopper's Rooms for Tourists
(p. 43).
And
Giorgio de Chirico's city-
scapes and pictures of towers remind us not only of Hopper's landscapes but specifically of his lighthouses.
To
recapitulate: the
metamorphosis of
work has psychological and
realistic
mimesis
in
Hopper's
aesthetic reasons. In a letter written in
1939 to Charles H. Sawyer, then Director of the Addison Gallery of
American
Art,
Hopper explained:
"To me, form, color and design are merely a means

tools
work
sake.
am
sation
My
project
Reclining Nude,
c.
1924-27
Watercolour on paper. 35.2 x 50.5

Art.
New
70.1089
Museum
cm
of American
and they do not
interest
me
greatly for their
interested primarily in the vast field of experience
which neither
aim
pears
with,
to an end, the
literature
in painting is
upon canvas
when
like
it
nor a purely plastic
art
own
and sen-
deals with.
[.
.]
always, using nature as the medium, to try to
my
most intimate reaction
most;
when
to the subject as
the facts are given unity
by
my
it
ap-
inter-
est
and prejudices.
Why
select certain subjects rather than others,
do not exactly know, unless
diums for a synthesis of
my
that
it is
believe them to be the best

3
inner experience." This
is
me-
the source of a
certain continuity in Hopper's art, a continuity that informs the very
and techniques of his early and
different sketches
underpinning that aesthetic continuity there

nuity
- which was
Hopper's
life
is
late periods.
a biographical conti-
plainly the precondition for his
was
strikingly quiet
And
art.
and orderly, without abrupt about-
turns or upheavals, neither of a psychological nor even of a merely
geographical kind. In a sense there
two sojourns
very
little
Europe, Edward Hopper lived
in
1908 on. For over

the top floor of 3
way from
is
fifty years,
till
to say.
in
New
York from
the day he died, his studio
Washington Square North. The fame
the Twenties
Apart from
onwards never went
that
to his head,
was on
came
his
and he lived
a quiet life there with his wife Jo (nee Josephine Verstille Nivison),
whom
he had married
trips, the
in July 1924.
With the exception of one or two
only changes of scene were afforded by summers
Truro on Cape Cod, where they bought land

built a
in
New
South
1930 and subsequently
house and studio. Hopper's development as an
equally unsensational. After the
in
artist
York School of Art
was
(the
Chase
School) he did commercial illustrative work and plainly negotiated

the transition to
more ambitious
art
without any difficulty. His estab-
lishment of a preferred technique, and his increasing concentration on
work
in oil, similarly
mindedness.
If
occurred with a strikingly unproblematic single-
Hopper had
private or aesthetic crises in his
kept them well under control.
It
was only on
life,
he
rare occasions that cari-
catures and drawings suggested psychological tension that the artist
was
trying to resolve.
Some
of his pictures point to a fixation on his
Reginald Marsh
George C. Tilyou's Steeplechase Park.

Egg tempera on fibreboard. 9 .4 x 21
1
Hirshhorn
Museum
Smithsonian
936
.9
cm
and Sculpture Garden.
Institution.
Gift of the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Foundation.
1966
'
which appeared thoroughly symbiotic

outside, seems to have had its competitive side - his
wife: the relationship with Jo,
Drawing
seen from the
Conte on paper, 33.7 x 38.1 cm

Collection of Whitney Museum of American
wife was not only Hopper's manager and
critic,
she was also herself a
New
70.295
painter.
Continuity and discipline were naturally Hopper's watchwords
whenever he expressed views on
aesthetics.
He himself saw
his ap-
proach to reality as dictated by biographical continuity, and he

that that line
of continuity established constants
work. In midcareer he wrote: "In every

of the later
which the
Art,
work
is
always found
artist's intellect
may be
whatever
birth to death.
What he was
it
in the earlier.
builds his
personality, or
artist's
work
called,
is
most various of
development the germ
The nucleus around
himself; the central ego,
and
once, he always
in the
felt
this
is,
changes
little
from
with slight modifica-
for Girlie Slum; 1941
^^Mte*.
Le Pont des
Arts,
1907
.3 cm
Museum
Art,
New
of American
70.1181
The Louvre
in
a Thunderstorm, 1909
cm
Museum
Art,
New
70.1223
of American
he Pont Roval, 1909
cm
Museum
Art,
New
of American
70.1175
Lc Qnai des Grands Augustins, 1909
cm
Museum
Art,
New
70.1173
of American
Night Windows, 1928

Oil on canvas. 73.7 x 86.4
The Museum of Modern

of John Hay Whitney
Collection.
York. Gift
tion.
cm
Art.
New
Changing fashion
or not at all."
methods or subject matter
in
Hopper's development as an
case) in
two
respects.
structural polarity
main throughout
On
the
artist
work.
On
to be in
Not
to
do was
that
this
view
(in his
own
evolved a
his early pictures
show how important
"Maybe
to paint sunlight
Hopper was
to re-
the other hand, in terms of technique
Hopper's
baldly told Lloyd Goodrich:
wanted
little
between Nature and Civilization which was
his
were
confirms
one hand,
those same early paintings already

fects of light
him
alters
after the
art, to
I
am
the very end.
light
The
not very human.
on the side of a house.
and
ef-
artist
What
merely constructed. He often made
thorough and systematic preliminary studies for his paintings: but his
was not
a cool, calculating art
harmonized with
14
- he believed there were subjects
feeling. His attempt to
make an
that
intuitive record of
correspondences between inner experience and the painter's ways of

seeing, to create
harmony between what was seen and what was
painted, proceeded
from a deep-seated need
Modernism: Hopper was out
that clearly ran counter to
to regain the capacity for authentic ex-
perience that had been lost during the course of progress and civilization.
Again we might think of Peter Handke, whose writings are based
not on construction and interpretation but on the attempt to locate and

see something
beyond himself, something which some
secret desire
had long yearned to transform into an inner image.
The psychological component, which became of ever greater significance in Hopper's late work, was occasionally obscured by artistic
Evening Wind, 1921
convention in his early paintings. The American
He was
lay in France.
beginnings
artist's
nurtured by European tradition. His approach
Art,
to his art
was influenced by Impressionism; and up
to about
1910 he
of the
artist,
and the
studio. Standing
Female Model
painted in 1900-03, the picture of his
(p. 7),
and above
his early oils Painter
all
male Nude Getting
into
in
own Bedroom
and Model (1902-04;
Bed (1904-05)
are
examples of
Hopper's early paintings used dark colours:
warm
Studio
in
Nyack,
p. 6)
and Fe-
this tendency.
browns, dark
grey and black predominated. His technique was partly derived from
the
Dutch baroque masters Rembrandt and Frans Hals, and also owed
something
to
On
Edouard Manet.
first
acquaintance
we might
sup-
pose that the work of Hopper's French period has no real connection
look more closely
we
will dis-
cover features that were to remain characteristic of his
art
throughout,
with the rest of his output; but
features that
ter part
were
if
to acquire an
we
almost obsessive character in the
of his career. Three major strands in his
be identified.
artistic
lat-
evolution can
Though Hopper was
a painter of landscapes and townscapes, he
also painted female nudes throughout his
working
life.
These nudes
begin with early studies influenced by Impressionism, include psychologically suggestive
and seemingly narrative pictures such as the 1909
Summer Interior (p. 8), and culminate in much later works such as
Girlie Show (1941; compare the study on p.
1) or the 1961/4 Woman
1
in the
Sun
These
(p. 77).
vivid portrayals of
women
tively early in his career.
from a
characteristic,
(1924-27;
the
naked
last
that
are typical of the ambivalent yet
we
find in Hopper's late work. Rela-
Hopper was already approaching
his
nudes
unmistakably voyeurish stance. Reclining Nude
p. 9), for instance,
woman
two
implies a situation in which this view of
has been stolen: she supposes herself unobserved,
and has snuggled into a
New
70.1022
repeatedly used subjects connected with the business of painting, the

life
cm
Museum
Etching on paper. 17.5 x 21

pile of pillows in a spirit of pleasurable,
dreamy abandon.
This voyeurish view subsequently became Hopper's preferred per-
women. In this he was anticipating an approach that Andrew Wyeth and Eric Fischl (among other American artists) were to
spective on
15
of American
adopt
in similar fashion.
The
line initiated
by Hopper, a psychologi-
cal technique that projected unconscious sexual wishes
coded idiom of visual realism, was continued by the younger
into the
And we
artists.
and insights
reminded of Hopper when we consider
are inevitably
Wyeth's Helga pictures: for almost
fifteen years,
from 1971
same woman, over and over again - a
Wyeth painted
the
sion which the
famous painter
effectively kept
to 1985.
secret obses-
from the public for sev-
eral years.
more manifestly than Hopper, arcombine the psychological and his-
Eric Fischl, on the other hand, far

ticulates his fantasies in terms that
The voyeurism
torical.
in his paintings is not
merely the product of
private compulsion, not only an analysis of desires repressed by civilization.
He
is
also trying to express the unconscious character of
American middle
mon
class society. This
is
something his
art
has in com-
with Hopper's, of course: Hopper's accounts of the individual
psyche were always accounts of society as well.

sive in Fischl tends to derive
realistically in
fect at
once defamiliarizing and emphatic. Even when an interior
in
Hopper we have only
23) or the 1928 Night
Windows
as a screen onto
which
we
(cf. p. 89).
is
are left with a sense
To see
this effect at
Moonlight Interior (1921-
to look at his
(p. 14).
Both Fischl and Hopper show
that the
to project
demonstrate that the male eye sees

social
subver-
circumscribed settings are seen in light which has an ef-
of intimacy - even in outdoor scenes
body
is
from Hopper. Figures presented almost
not specifically marked off from an exterior
work
And what
in
male eye
treats the
female
unconscious desires. They also
ways
that
have been coded by
and gender norms. But Hopper's pictures of
women
are ob-
sessive in a different sense as well. Quite plainly he soon reached a
point where he
was painting only one
single
woman:
his
own
wife. Jo
Queensborough Bridge, 1913

Oil on can\ as. 64. N \ 95.3 cm
Art. New York. Josephine N. Hopper Bequest
70.1184
Hopper appears over the decades

ations, in all kinds of roles
miliarization:
what
ground. (And
we must
is
and
The
at all ages.
emphasized
is
effect of this
separateness, not
is
SoirBleu, 1914
situ-
Oil
defa-
two
artists,
toons on the subject of married
The second major strand
in
on canvas. 9
.4
common
Art,
New
82.9 cm
Museum
of American
70.1208
bear in mind the competitiveness that entered
into the marriage of the
itiated
wide variety of poses and
in a
a spirit visible in Hopper's car-
life.)
Hopper's evolution as an
by the landscapes characteristic of
pressionist (French) period to an early
his transition
American
artist
was
in-
from an Im-
period.
At a very
early stage in his career, in addition to pure landscapes (the
Monhe-
gan pictures are of particular note) he was also painting compositions

in
which Nature and Civilization meet -
if
a confrontation
a strict delimitation of spheres can be called a meeting.

again,
As
Hopper painted
early as 1909,
ture
middle and
The Louvre
in
are not only defined
all
meet
- they
civilization, is seen at a
cally hidden
a Thunderstorm
way
that
late periods: the natural
and technology,
Time and
bridges, canals, landing stages and lighthouses.
per marshalling his material in a

in his
(p. 12)
showed Hop-
became more important
in the picture,
are transformed.
and the different spheres
The Louvre, emblem of
moment of natural menace, and
tain stylistic instability strikes us here,
become of increasing importance

done
in the
still
and manmade worlds, cul-
is
by tokens of the technological: the bridge and
coastline oils
marked by
also practiboat.
A cer-
an instability that was to
in the
work
that lay ahead.
The
decade from 1910 to 1920 use strong colour
contrasts and thick paint, but the pictures that juxtapose Nature and
Civilization undergo a gradual transition

to
Hopper's more characteristic use of
from an Impressionist
style
"The light was different from anything 1 had

ever known. The shadows were luminous -
more
reflected light.
there
was
Even under
the bridges
a certain luminosity."
EDWARD HOPPER
realistic detail.
17
There are nuances and gradations along the

needless to say.
We
gustins
Le Pont des Arts (1907;
(p. 13).
line of this transition,
might compare the 1909 Le Quai des Grands Aup. 12)
and the somewhat
later
Queensborough Bridge (1913; p. 16). The comparison confirms that

Hopper was constantly attempting to re-apply earlier ways of seeing
and aesthetic approaches
ly
apparent
if
to
we compare
subsequent compositions. This
the 1909 painting
with the famous House by the Railroad
Le Pont Royal
(p. 30),
done
is
striking-
(p. 13)
in 1925.
Other
paintings very clearly anticipate later work; Bridge in Paris (1906;

p. 18), a relatively
red signal, and
dark painting with the single colour highlight of a
Road
in
Maine (1914;
p. 19).
and define a sense of civilization which was

tral
third
major strand
that looks
70.1305
is
become Hopper's cen-
forward to the
seen in Hopper's 1914 painting Soir Bleu

in Paris, 1906
Oil on wood. 24.4 x 33 cm
Art. New York. Josephine N. Hopper Bequest
to
concern.
The
Bridge
Both paintings establish
the artist's
own
late
work can be
(p. 17). In part, this
retrospective on his French, Impressionist-in-
fluenced phase. But in addition
its
work
and with hindsight we can see
that
still lies
picture
in the future,
psychological coding anticipates

it
as
being linked unconsciously to Hopper's final painting, Two Come-
Road
in
Maine. 1914
cm
Museum
Oil on canvas. 61 x 73.7
Art.
New
of American
70.1201
dians (1965;
p. 93). In his last
work, Hopper was not only portraying
Jo and himself: he was also looking back with melancholy and irony
on
his
It
own
life.
was no coincidence
that Soir
Bleu was painted the year after the
Armory Show, that landmark exhibition that introduced European

Modernism and abstract art to North America. In the years that followed the Armory Show. Hopper arguably began to emphasize both
his identity as an
his art. If
we
American
artist
and the psychological dimension of
take Soir Bleu as initiating a retrospective, then Queens-
borough Bridge unmistakably defines a

to the
American
in his art.
And we
transition
from the European
are in a position to grasp the sig-
nificance of Hopper's critical interest in thoroughly

ters
such as John Sloan. Reginald Marsh and
the 1920s:
American pain-
Thomas Hart Benton
in
New
Pictures of the
World
We
have already established that certain motifs of Edward Hopper's
late
work
nuity
can
is
art
are anticipated in his early paintings,
one reason why the transition from
was a gradual one. There was an
motifs, followed
The end of Hopper's

Blackhead,
Monhegan
new
early phase
(p. 25).
expressive
to his
initial
change
in the choice of
in the artist's
technique; but
was marked by paintings such
His technique in such works was
American
dynamism
the colours are strong
as
still
natural subject matter in-
into his approach.
The
and shadow, water and land, are drawn more
tions of light
Ameri-
French
hiatus.
Impressionist-influenced, but the
troduced a
that this conti-
his
by a profounder change
was no obvious, abrupt
there
and
M<
distinc-
clearly,
and
and contrastive, the paint thickly applied. The
choice of perspective reinforces this impression of dynamism: our
gaze
is
drawn
the crashing
in at
waves
an angle from above, focussed on a coastline, with

in the
bay only partly
visible.
The image
that re* -
sults is
unusual too. The contrast

in the
ft
jiiL&.u&*
8l~t*
''*:.
: t-c/,JlL *J
The colours are

of black shadows and reddish brown earth
one of natural forces
at
odds with each
other.
foreground echoes related contrasts based on blue in the upper,
skyline portion of the picture.
Hopper was
Record Book, volume
later to perfect the
over-emphasis of
full
means of toned-down
Truro
(p. 39),
technique of contrast contouring, of
colour values, and of slight defamiliarization by

values. In pictures such as Cobb's Barns, South
where Nature and Civilization
Hopper's definition of zones

our. Later, this
is
in fact
II.
page 83, entry for
painting Gas, October 1940
Ink and pencil on paper, 30.2 x 18.4
Whitney Museum of American
Art,
cm
New
York,
Special Collections. Gift of Lloyd Goodrich
are crassly juxtaposed,
determined by his use of col-
process was to acquire a quality of autonomy in his
work.
On
the other hand, the
Hopper's
New World
1912 American Village
scenes,
is
muted
True, like Bridge in Paris (1906;
tour.
in
(p. 22), the first
colour and blurred in con-
p. 18)
it
shows Hopper
Sunday. 1926
in the
process of abandoning his Impressionist-influenced technique.

fects
of
Two
ef-
breach the overall colour haze: the dark and clearly-defined bal-
ustrade in the immediate foreground, and the various bright highlights

that
puncture the prevailing pastel (the yellow house
low streetcar
right
and
left
in the
and
upper centre, and the strikingly red chimneys
in the
background). These breaches
overall impression are a carefully calculated effect.

total
at left, the yelat
in the initial
They prevent
view of the scene, and equally prevent us from receiving a uni-
fied visual impression.
21
The
Phillips Collection.
cm
Washington, D.C.
American
1912
66 x 96.5 cm
Art,
New
Hopper was already evolving
Village,
Oil on canvas,
into a
his
method of fragmenting
his
views
patchwork of differing optical impressions, by perspective and
contour means and by striking juxtaposition of colours.
70.1185
At
first sight,
the 1914
Road
impression. But this appearance

turing the landscape
Maine
in
is
by means of
makes a more unified

deceptive. Again Hopper is struc-
light
(p. 19)
and dark contrasts and by
using idiosyncratic colour values; the perspective he has adopted also

contributes to the painting's dynamics. Viewing the scene at an angle,
from a
is
slight elevation,
following the
lie
we
see only a small section of the road (which
of the land) and cannot see where
Since there are no telegraph wires to be
made
it
continues.
out between the poles,
and the next pole (which must presumably be somewhere

ground)
is
not in our line of vision, the perspective
verted. This picture of a country road

ture
and Civilization impose on each
might compare the
same theme
is
later
22
more
subtly sub-
plainly "about" the limits Na-
other. In terms of perspective
(1941) painting Route
treated even
In fact, the use of
is
is
in the fore-
6,
we
Eastham, where the
directly.
images from modern technology becomes a
strik-
New World
ing constant in Hopper's
of prime significance in his work.
Route
6,
parking
we
as
Eastham
car,
his perspective
whereas
in
New
York,
pictures. Cars
Of course he
is
and railroads are
Drug
Oil
rings the changes. In
the calm, steady
Courtesy of
view from a
New Haven and Hartford (p.
Hopper
see
when we look
24)
out of a train window. In this picture,
destabilizes perspective
same work. Although
and introduces movement within the
the track in the foreground
is
almost parallel to
bottom edge of the painting, and although we are looking
the
at the
houses
(at
what
is
nearly a right angle),
we
mine the direction of the movement from which
ment has been

tion
still
this
It is
on
cannot deter-
landscape seg-
registered. In this fleeting glimpse, Nature
have been conflated.
full
and Civiliza-
a viewpoint that acquires increasing
significance in Hopper's later work.
The compositional arrangements were supposedly
dictated by
chance. But Hopper was evolving a system of signs designed to characterize the nature of individual experience in the
New
World.
It
1927
Museum
cm
of Fine Arts, Boston,
Bequest of John T. Spaulding
are afforded only a fleeting glimpse of a railroad landscape, such
we might
Store,
on canvas, 73.7 x 101.6
was
a system that produced pictures very different in compositional char23
New
New Haven and Hartford, 1931

cm
Indianapolis Museum of Art. Emma Harter
York,
acter,
of course: Hopper did not restrict himself to a set iconography,
but instead applied his method to different kinds of situation.
Sunday (1926;
Sweetser Collection
20)
p.
is
an early example of
this. It is
that quite
unmistakably redeploys the iconography
the
In
artist.
duced
in
it,
Man
a painting
in other
works by
(representing the natural order) appears small, re-
importance, a chance feature of a suburban scene. The
in the picture is not

lost in his
own
gazing out
at
man
a busy street scene; rather, he seems
thoughts, excluded from the realm of Civilization and
without access to Nature. His unseeing stare eerily echoes the sightless
gaze of the apparently empty store windows. The town makes a
deserted, dead impression and

is
it
is
hard to say whether anything
at all
actually sold in the store.
However symbolic Civilization's icons may appear in Hopper's

paintings, however much they may be part of a system of signs, we
must add
that they are
still
plainly there because the artist took a
simple, even naive pleasure in

ure
we
see in
Drug
them
Store (1927;
as everyday things.
p. 23),
and
later in
It is
a pleas-
The Circle
Theater (1936), Gas (1940; pp. 26-27) and El Palacio (1946; p. 29).
All four pictures make conspicuous use of lettering. We see brand
names such
in a little
24
as
irony
Mobilgas or Ford. And occasionally Hopper indulges
when he
highlights this lettering. For instance: in the
painting of the venerable corner drug store, Silber's Pharmacy, the

crass advertisement for
tion's
(a laxative to ease
endemic ailments) contrasts not only with the
terms of
the
"Ex-Lax"
its
one of Civilizastore
name
in
lettering style but also with the old-fashioned dignity of
window
display of jars, drapes and gift sets. In The Circle
Theater, the theatre ads are almost hidden by the
subway entrance,
and advertisements for ice cream, candy, drugs and soda dominate the
foreground.
This series also provides a record of Hopper's characteristic ambivalence.
On
the one hand, his love of detail
seems a throwback
to
verism and an anticipation of the photo-realism of painters such as

Richard Estes.
his subjects.
street
and
the other hand, even here
The drug
lights
emptiness of
In
On
store, brightly
up only a portion of
this
is
defamiliarizing
up from within,
The window
is
no one
figure, small
and
is
in a
dark
points up the
to read the
lost, is
message.
almost com-
swallowed up by the colour contrasts of the buildings. The
rol station in
tion as
it.
system of signs: there
The Circle Theater a human
pletely
lit
Hopper
it
Gas
takes
its
is like
an outpost marking the frontier of Civiliza-
stand against Nature. Both the colour contrasts and
the compositional structure serve to emphasize this tension; and
we
look
pet-
at the picture
we
find that our gaze probably
when
moves from
the
roadside to the petrol station and the lettering, Mobilgas. El Palacio

uses perspective shifts to similar effect.
logo
we
is
On
merely one sign among many; on the other hand, of course,
are seeing
it
not from the street (from which access to the hotel
would presumably be possible) but across

cornices of a town
PAGE
26/27:
Gas. 1940
cm
The Museum of Modern Art.

York, Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund
Collection.
New
Blackhead, Monhegan, 1916-19

Oil on
wood.
24.
x 33
Art,
New
70.1317
cm
Museum
of American
the one hand, the hotel
the rooftops and housefront
whose barred windows and balcony ironwork sug-
gest a location in Mexico.
and the
flat roofs,
The
between the name
contrast
"'Palacio"
dreary facades and (apparently) a water tower
palpably ironic. In the tangle of urban
is
the only points that pro-
life,
vide any orientation are advertising logos.
These paintings do not aim
at
psychological effects, and are not es-
pecially accessible to symbolic interpretation either. Rather, they
focus steadily on the signs themselves. In these works. Hopper
re-
is
constructing an uncomplicated and unprejudiced pleasure in the signs
of Civilization.
It is
we
a pleasure
Americans who
find equally in
set
own country (Raymond CarEuropeans who discover the fascina-
out to record the everyday facts of their

ver,
Thomas McGuane) and
tion of the continent (Peter
signs his subject.
in
Handke,
Wim Wenders).
Hopper was adopting a technique
him beyond Modernism.
making these
In
First the principle of classical,
mimetic repre-
sentation had reigned supreme; then, in the Modernist heyday,
been superseded by the triumph of abstraction. Hopper's

covered what lay on the surface.
And
indeed,
surface: the signs
mean nothing beyond
an
had
it
art redis-
art that often re-
A surface is
psychological or symbolic decoding.
sists
it is
took
that partially
a surface
is
themselves.
This was a development that occurred only gradually in Hopper's
work. Behind
tion of Nature
1928
article
American
it
lay the archetypes of the
New World,
and Civilization. Hopper discussed
on the
art
of Charles Burchfield. In
line in painting to
European
it,
aesthetics.
of the confronta-
this subject in a
he related the
Hopper took
his
bearings from the 19th century American philosopher-poet Ralph
Waldo Emerson and

ning and end of
that surrounds
also
to
- and
also
from
a quotation
all literary activity is
me by means
the reproduction of the world
of the world that
in this respect, in spite
be Burchfield's kindred
from Goethe: "The begin-
spirit
of their
is in
many
felt that this
differences, he proves
reproduction must pro-
ceed from transformation. What he admired
in
however complex
still
ods of painting.
He found
in
Burchfield was
that,
adopted simple meth-
I0
Burchfield's technique astonishing, so simple and natural
those highly sophisticated times, and urged that an intelligent and
aware
artist
should not go along with the intellectual deviations of his
contemporaries
gedness.
to
the experiential world, he
me. But Hopper
aim
He
if
he possessed a sure sense, an original view and dog-
considered the task of
art to
be to reflect upon
itself
and
for independence in the future."
In the
same
essay,
Hopper made observations which explain
his
subsequent preoccupation with elementary denominators of Civilization, particularly architecture,
houses, and the position of houses in re-
lation to natural environments.
sign system inhabited
He drew
by American architecture, which combined a
wide, heterogeneous variety of styles
postmodern
28
attention to the distinctive
in
plurality in architecture. In
an early, naive anticipation of
Hopper's eyes, American
architecture
made demands on
realist painting that
ly
contemporary nature; he wrote
of
human
nature had induced
how
artists,
the natural lethargy and vanity
from primitive painters
post-impressionists, to use that material
brought to
were of a thorough-
which the original
article
from a mimetic
art
on Burchfield not only provides an explana-
(supposedly no more than
and tending towards the narrative)
the self-reflexive sign
codes
realistic
system established
be put into words and
is
him
there
makes
all
painting
was no
now
realistic, repre-
symbolic
art.
in his paintings not

it
transi-
spiritually
For
only
also creates a
re-
new
for an impression that cannot
was
To
subject to this law of trans-
clear distance in this context; the ob-
had been seen, time had stood
excitement
smooth
scarcely accessible to graphic art either.
Hopper's way of thinking,

formation. For
to a
elements and symbolic relations;
context - a second surface. This
ject
had
life.
tion of his choice of subjects but also accounts for his
sentational
artist
still
and one experienced again the
processed into parallels of
13
art.
Watercolour on paper, 52.7 x 72.7

Art,
12
Thus Hopper's
tion
to the
ElPalacio, 1946
New
Museum
York, Exchange 50.2
cm
of American
The
Frontier of Civilization
Edward Hopper's work became increasingly ambivalent, indeed ambiguous in tone. This ambiguity derived from an attempt (inspired by
Emerson)
and.
to express
on the
tem of
other,
signs.
presented a
first
his paintings; but
coming
of
Modern Art
in
New
major retrospective of Hopper's work
Charles Burchfield wrote:

I
"Some have
believe this
to the fore at a time
1925
cm

York. Given anonymously
Collection,
Art.
New
development of a self-reflexive sys-
artist's
Museum
the
the Railroad,
Oil on canvas, 61 x 73.7
an inner truth of perception, on the one hand;
from the
When
House by
York
in 1933,
read an ironic bias in
some of
caused by the coincidence of his
is
when,
small towns and cities were being
our
in
literature, the
lampooned so
American
viciously; so that al-
most any straightforward and honest representation of the American

scene was thought of necessity to be
sist
upon what
satirical.
the beholder shall feel.
sionate outlook, with
its
It is
time."
unbiased and dispas-
work
the chance of being re-
14
Night Shadows, 1921
was
Hopper condichotomy of mind and nature (which Emerson had
In this view, Burchfield
sidered the
this
in-
complete freedom from sentimental interest
or contemporary foible, that will give his
membered beyond our
But Hopper does not
implicitly recognising that
sought to reconcile) as a permanent conflict. In drawing upon the epis-
temology of Emerson and H. D. Thoreau, the American Transcendentalists.
Hopper was not closing off the scope of perception; he was
cluding a sense of fundamental fracture in his work.

created in the middle and late periods, that sense
And
in the art
in-
he
was not only psycho-
logically encoded, but also frequently rendered in perfectly literal visual terms.
'^
Railroad Crossing (1922/23;

with other Hopper landscapes,
repertoire of
tists
p.
it
33)
is
shows
good example. Together
the artist adopting the formal
Modernism. Unlike 19th century American landscape
such as Frederic Edwin Church or
panoramic
in his
Cole's The
Oxbow were
Thomas
Cole,
Hopper was not
approach. Vast natural prospects such as that

not for him.
ar-
in
The Hudson River School had
painted in a style derived from the European classical landscape tradition (while often adapting
landscapes, by contrast,
it
to their
made
own
expressive ends); Hopper's
idiosyncratic use of perspective, and
allowed natural features or signs of Civilization to mark his boundaries.

It
was
way
of seeing that later became typical of the perception of
things technological. For Hopper,

stage in his career. If
we
it
look again
became fundamental
at the early
at
an early
(1913) Queensbo31
Etching. 17.6x20.8
cm
Museum
Art,
New
70.1048
of American
rough Bridge
cifically
(p. 16),
French
we
see that
tradition.
It is
it is
not only a continuation of a spe-
also conceived as an alternative to Fu-
turism. There
was a
Jeune gallery
in Paris that year;
large-scale Futurist exhibition at the
Bernheim
and 1913 was also the year when the
famous Futurist-influenced Nude Descending a Staircase, by the

French Dadaist Marcel Duchamp, alarmed
Show
life,
in
New
York. Futurism aimed
visitors to the
at a revitalization
by means of technology. Hopper
of
about
felt sceptical
Armory
art,
this,
and of
and
in
place of Futurist hubris he offered his perspectival scenes including

cars, trains
and roads - a straightforward record of technical progress.
For the Futurists, there was no limit

plish; for
to
what mankind could accom-
Hopper, the imposition of limits became the characteristic
strategy of a realistic
art.
Here once again we can take Railroad Crossing as an example. The
woodland and
fields
on the one hand, and the house,
signals, tele-
graph poles and railway track on the other, show two opposed sys-
tems (the natural and the technological) meeting and establishing a

mutual demarcation.
Hopper's
art.
We
Sometimes
see this process at

it
appears in
work time and again
trivial,
anecdotal form, as in the
1923 etched version of Railroad Crossing, which shows a

ing with a
cow
at a
in
man
wait-
closed crossing, the two figures framed by a tele-
graph pole and a large stop sign. Another etching, American Landscape
(p. 32), treats
the
same motif
in
emblematic
style: in this
view
the track cuts across the picture horizontally, and a herd of cattle are
about to cross
it,
moving from
the pasture (Nature's territory) to the
realm of Civilization (denoted by the house).
These etchings use emblematic, narrative elements

ticular statements.
road Crossing
There
is
to highlight par-
a 1926 watercolour version of the Rail-
that curiously understates the
same
insights,
though
American Landscape, 1920

Etching. 20 x 25.1 cm
Philadelphia
Museum
of Art.
Purchased: Harrison Fund
they are
tion
still
clearly articulated.
It
too confronts Nature and Civiliza-
by showing the incursions of the
latter into the natural
world:
Railroad Crossing,
we
see a railway crossing once again, and the path that leads into Civiliza-
domain
tion's
the
rises
house from
the oil
up an incline beyond the
sight.
Hopper had of course
Railroad Crossing
(p. 33),
anticipated this effect in
by using an unusual perspective and
by making the track and signs demark the boundary separating domesticated
the
its
dark and untamed equivalent,
brooding pathless woods beyond.
At
in
Nature (near the house) from
this point
Hopper's
it
art.
was already
pends upon the laying

often, his
mankind
clear that houses had central importance
Like the railroad signs, they are of course emblems of
Civilization; but at the
same time they remind
down
of boundaries.
us that Civilization de-
And Hopper goes
houses show that the resulting separation

is
now
is
Art.
New
70.1189
track, hiding the base of
further:
permanent, and
debarred from Nature.
House by the Railroad (1925; p. 30) exemplifies this in various respects. The house was most probably built earlier than the railway; at
33
c.
1922-23
cm
Museum
Oil on canvas. 73.7 x 101
of American
Railroad Sunset, 1929
least, its architecture is
cm
Collection of Whitney Museum
American Art. New York,
Oil on canvas. 7
.8
.3
of
Josephine N. Hopper Bequest 70.1170
also
seems
lost,
reminiscent of a pre-industrial age. The house
and out of place,
in the location
tached house in an open, treeless area - the sole

forgotten by history, as
it
were. The
turret,
we
see
relic
it
in. It is
a de-
of a ghost town
eaved frontage and veran-
dah were doubtless originally conceived for leisurely contemplation

of Nature: but
The
now
the railway runs right past the front of the house.
track itself contributes to the forlorn impression:
it
not only cuts
horizontally across the picture again, concealing the base of the house
from our view, but also seems
browns of the rusty track and
itself a part
the
of ravaged Nature. The
permanent way contrast robustly
with the pallid bluish-grey of the house (though

russet
it
does have the
chimneys we repeatedly see on Hopper's houses).
going too far to see

the life that once
pression
is
in the
warmed
warm
It
may
not be
brick-red of the chimneys a token of
the house,
now
of course heightened by the
Some
The desolate imblind windows, some of them

so forlorn.
windows reflect the light, and

(characteristically for Hopper) none of them permit us to see inside.
To emphasize the prevailing melancholy. Hopper has also painted the
open, most of them closed.
of the
sky (which covers a large proportion of the canvas)

sionless whitish-grey.
quite high, there

tions.
It is
Though
is little
shadows suggest
that the sun
is
blue in the sky; there are also no cloud forma-
a striking proof of Hopper's ability to establish total empti-
ness in heaven and earth alike.

34
the
in a pale, expres-
The
contrast with the 1929 Railroad Sunset (p. 34)
later picture,
New
an eloquent sunset scene in
is
England,
dramatic.
is in
Now we
House
are not looking at Civilization, but out of
still
marks the divide. But the natural scene beyond
be promising
new
life,
seems
is
of the setting sun, and the dusk has produced a
to
glistening in the
wavy green con-
tour along the crest of the hills. In this painting. Hopper's use of col-
our and light show

natural
phenomena
that,
however much he was
realistically, his
trying to reproduce
method was
influenced by Modernist approaches to
art: his
depend on representational functions, and
in fact
the subject, structure
fundamentally
colour effects do not
his colour values acquire
autonomous character within a patterned scheme.
In
an
Railroad Sunset
and colour values establish a twofold aesthetic
system: representational and semi-abstracted.
Something similar can be seen

ing year. Early
relation
to
Sunday Morning
between
this picture
in a painting
(p. 35).
Not
Hopper did
that there
is
the follow-
any obvious
and Railroad Sunset. Yet Hopper seems
be trying to apply the colour system of the natural scene to a city
street; the
two works seem
in motifs.
Early Sunday Morning uses a divide once again; here the
to
correspond
in palette,
and furthermore
35
New
of American
York, Purchase with funds from Ger-
trude Vanderbilt
it
and makes a welcoming impression. Hopper's
use of light effects emphasizes this sense: the track

light
it
Art,
cm
Museum
on canvas. 88.9 x 152.4
and towards a realm of apparently unspoilt Nature. True, the railway

track
Early Sunday Morning, 1930

Oil
ex-
pressive colours, and the composition reverses the approach in
by the Railroad.
The
Whitney 31.426
street is the
boundary, and
the other side.
are looking across
The facades pick up
Railroad Sunset: and, as

the
we
to the
houses on
the reds, greens and yellows of
establish a kind of
if to
it
two paintings, Hopper has introduced a
symmetry between
striking vertical (the bar-
ber-shop candy-stripe pole) into the right-hand side of the later work,
to
match the signal and signal-box
Whereas
the earlier picture
in the left of the railway scene.
emphasized flowing landscape contours,
though, the dominant shapes in Early Sunday Morning are
manmade
and geometrical.
The 1930 work
highlights a tendency that
was already apparent
in
Railroad Sunset: to render the dichotomy of the animate and the inani-
mate
in a play of light
or geometrical.
Hopper has
telltale sign that this
by the
are
and shadow, using forms essentially
ironically included within the picture a
construction
artist: at right,
rectilinear
is
a purely artificial affair devised
dominate the picture
the colourful facades that
dwarfed by a towering dark building, thus reminding us
view presented by the painter
is
a deliberately selected and cropped
sub-part of the available architectural scene. This
curs in other pictures
that the
Hopper painted of houses,
is
a reminder that re-
level crossings
towers. Again and again he signals that the chosen view
is
and
merely part
of a larger whole.
The technique was
Giorgio de Chirico
La nostalgia
dell' infinite
1913-14*
Collection.
Art.
cm
New York
example
will show. In
Hill (p. 37),
the first
it
a thoroughly deliberate strategy, as another
and
1927 Hopper painted the famous Lighthouse
parallel to
it
did two watercolours in the same year,
showing only the base of the lighthouse, the second showing
almost entire but cropped of
views
is
This concentration on partial
its tip.
related to the oil Lighthouse Hill
yond which we can see nothing. The

torical turning-point: the
station (near Portland,
spatial
offers a
boundary expressed a
Maine) was due for dismantling,
memory
boundary behis-
west tower of the Cape Elizabeth lighthouse
seamen's protests. In painting

also keeping the
which
this
symbol of a
frontier,
in spite
of
Hopper was
of 19th century seafaring fresh. The picture
shares the ambivalent quality of Early
Sunday Morning
in that
it
not
only presents a tranquil scene but also provides a commentary on the
Depression of the 1930s.'
Despite Hopper's later assertion that Early Sunday Morning was
"almost a
literal translation
of Seventh Avenue"
17
,
the picture has
quite obviously been subjected to his characteristic twofold encoding

PAGE
(and, in any case, the facades
37 TOP:
Lighthouse
Hill,
1927
Oil on canvas. 71.8 x HX).3
Dallas
Museum
cm
of An. Gift of Mr.
and Mrs. Maurice Purnell

37
Collection
Museum.
New
have been modelled on some
re-
membered theatre set). The fact that Hopper originally intended to

paint a human figure at a first floor window and then decided against
having any human presence in the painting points up the importance
ings plainly highlight a social conflict: the conflict between the Ameri-
cm
The Montclair Art
Montclair.
to
he attached to architecture. These 19th century shopfronts and build-
BOTTOM
Coast Guard Station, 1927
PAGE
seem
Jerse)
can individualist
ideal,
an ideal typically expressed
in financial self-
sufficiency and independence, and the encroachments of corporate

36
industry.
What Hopper was adumbrating

works - but
stereotyped view in later

focus:
Hopper increasingly tended
also acquired a
it
became a
more precise
in this painting
to portray people in specific social
milieux.
For
all their affinities in
the late 1920s social background, the city
scene and the lighthouse painting

though. Lighthouse Hill
is
make
a radically different impact,
an infinitely more expressive accomplish-
ment, thanks to the angle Hopper chooses, his colours, and his use of
light
and shadow.
We
see the lighthouse from below, and the hilly
landscape in the fore and middle ground
waves
at sea.
The
crests of these
waves
is
undulating and not unlike
are sunlit, but the depressions
are so dark that the proportions and depths are not immediately apparent.
but
It
seems possible
we know
that
walk
to
to the lighthouse across these
where the picture
is
cropped
downs;
at right the cliffs fall
sheer to the sea.
Hopper's use of
light
and shadow on the architecture and natural
landscape not only establishes distinct contours and demarcations. His
what we
effects also defamiliarize
glance so realistic with the qualities

cal art of painters such as Giorgio
divides the lighthouse vertically

light
and dark (also on a tower)
is
in
view as
we
at first
associate with the metaphysi-
de Chirico. The shadow that

reminiscent of a similar play of
de Chirico's Nostalgia dell 'infinite
(p. 36). In the Italian's painting, too,
front us with a sectional
endowing what looks
see,
if
the chosen angle
seems
to con-
by chance. De Chirico too uses a
foreground line to mark the ground.
And where
the top of de Chiri-
co's tower stands out in bright red against the sky, Hopper's light-
house
his
tip
Maine
In
its
seems curiously
to
shed a pink pallor into the rich blue of
sky.
structure, colour
scheme, and use of
light
and shadow, Light-
Solitude,
1944
Oil on canvas, S
Private collection
.3 x
27
cm
house Hill
is
clearly a transitional work.
greater use of the interplay of light

lights, in
Hopper subsequently made
and shadow, and of colour high-
The
Coast Guard Station (1927;
picture uses the
37)
p.
same compositional
is
is if
strategy as Lighthouse HilL

light
and
anything even greater. The coast guard station also shares
the forlorn character of the
House by
the Railroad
rounded by intractable, indifferent Nature.

tion
them-
good example of this.
and the defamiliarization effected by the deployment of
shadow
order to present his houses and other buildings not merely as
the frontier signs of Civilization but as essentially ambivalent in

selves.
Cobb's Bams, South Truro, 1930-33
from what
is
We
it
too
is
sur-
are looking at the sta-
apparently the seaward side (marked by the tower).
There are no paths
in this terrain,
itself is difficult to
make
out.
and even the approach
The building seems
at the
to the station
mercy of
in-
visible forces, in the grasp of a stark chiaroscuro.
The tension we sense
in the painting as a
the twin verticals of the white lookout
whole
is
summed up
in
tower and red chimney, placed
almost exactly in the centre of the picture. The textural light and shad-
ow
contribute an expressive
the impression too;
and
trasting whites, reds
dynamism
to the
work and defamiliarize
this effect is reinforced
and blacks. The
by the strongly con-
result is that the coast
guard
cm
Museum
sta-
39
Art,
New
70.1207
of American
The
City,
1927
University
Gift of C.
tion
cm
of Arizona Museum
Oil on canvas.
70 x 94
Leonard
Pfeiffer
of Art, Tucson,
the
seems as
somewhat
alien in
later
its
natural setting as (say)
Cobb's Barns do
rendering of a rather different building
in
in the
South Truro landscape of Cape Cod.

In the early 1930s,
Hopper rented Burly Cobb's house
at
South
Truro, and subsequently built himself a house there.

In Cobb's
shadow
to
Bams, South Truro
(p.
39) he uses the play of light and
such effect that the divide that marks off the grassland
from the buildings
is
almost erased. This impression
by the colour consonances
is
that link the buildings with Nature: the cop-
per and russet tones of the barns recur in the fields and
basic to the painting
effect
is
is
not unlike that in Coast
in fact different.
Hopper
is
is
instead
the process of returning to Nature. In fact
sion on farming,
40
moment:
The
idea
Station, but the
showing Civilization
in
Hopper was again respond-
in this case, the
which resulted
Guard
hills.
not tracing the demarcation line
between Civilization and Nature but
ing to the historical
strengthened
impact of the Depres-
in colossal rural
depopulation
in the
Vast tracts of arable land were reclaimed by Nature. Bear-
late 1920s.
ing this in mind,
we
added, poignantly
critical point.
we may
ditions in mind,
picture,
see that Hopper's painting of the barns has an
But although he had actual social con-
encounter problems in interpreting the
still
because Cobb's Barns too has been processed through Hop-
per's dual coding: the detailed registration of the actual, with
ar-
its
guably implied social critique, has been overlaid with an expressive

texture of shapes and colours.
By
and
the
end of the 1920s, Hopper's pictures of houses, landscapes
city scenes
had already acquired an emblematic function, stand-
ing for the conditions of

City (p. 40).
is
human
life.
A painting done
characteristic in this respect.
To an
1927, The
in
extent
it is
a self-
quotation, alluding to earlier drawings such as the 1921 Night Shad-
ows
(p. 31). in
which Hopper had used dramatic perspective and diag-
onals to establish an unusual compositional structure that reminds us
of his debt to Edgar Degas. The dramatic impact of Night Shadows

derives from the angle at which
we
ow, and the
last is
tree's
shadow. This
see the nighttime walker, his shad-
not only outsize;
it
also inter-
sects the right angle of the street corner almost precisely in the
the composition
middle, as
if
spective
subverted.
is
area at the
left
The
were a geometrical exercise. Central per-
tree's
of the picture.
shadow
It is
cuts across an almost white
dynamic composition, and
generates an unmistakable sense of menace, as

route (which
beyond
is
taking
a divide
and
him
if
the man's walking
were taking him
into the brightly-lit area)
into a
danger zone.
We
it
might compare
New
York
Pavements (1924), which shows a nun pushing a pram, her wimple

blown back by the breeze.
The City
ly
is
similarly expressive.
The facades and
geometrical in layout. The path intersects the lawn
fashion (like the
shadow
The
cant.
There
windows of
more
to
by
appear to be leaning
we
tranquillity
is
presence.
Calm
see that they
as the
composi-
ruffled in an unsettling
way
curious inconsistency.
The two
pictures
sent, or present as
houses and
show
that,
even where human figures were ab-
mere ciphers. Hopper was using
cities to
line in his art
was continued
as late as 1942 in
deserted but indeed seems positively hostile.

1940s. Solitude (1944:
in the
are related.
The wayside house
the horizon,
his
views of
suggest the forces that govern modern
Dawn
where we see an area (divided by railway tracks)

done
we
look again,
in different directions.
seems as a whole, the
this
human
be said about them, except that they seem to be
leaning into the wind as they walk. If
tion
from a
the houses are blind and va-
figures in the street constitute a vestigial
is little
at left in similar
intersecting the pool of light). Apart
single striped awning, the
all
streets are similar-
seems an
in
p.
38) and
Two
that
in
is
life.
This
Pennsylvania.
not only
other paintings
Two Puritans
(1945).
Solitude by a road that disappears to
alien intrusion in the landscape, thanks to the
41
'
<
strong colours and the position. There
no track from the house
is
to
the road: indeed, the house appears to have opted deliberately for se-
clusion
among
The right-hand
the trees.
side of the composition offers
a natural environment encompassing the house, while the left

ferent in character that
is
so dif-
could almost be part of an entirely different
it
work.
Two Puritans adopts
the
same
strategy.
by the Railroad (where the divide
is
Both
dictated
pictures, unlike
House
by chance), conjure up a
The house in Solitude is marked off

woods it is set in, and in Two Puritans we
sense of deliberate exclusion.

1
oa-m5
[<
%6
'
iwiUi'i'
vrW^ii-
s> ("* *w. Sft-
^f.^
*oW
from Civilization by the

see
two houses
that are not only divided off
by tree-trunks
in the fore-
ground but are also separated from each other by white fencing. With
ample
irony, these verticals function as phallic symbols,
counterpoint the implications of the
and so
title.
Both paintings introduce a psychologizing and dramatic element

CU^?
CW;
3w)-,W
/&j^
d"
the demarcation of interiors and exteriors; and the tendency
even more pronounced

(p. 43). It is
in
have the same

Record Book, volume
painting
Rooms for
III.
page
Tourists,
13. entry for
(in
in
which
the things that
shown
find unsettling are implicitly
to
defies the night, offering comfort
every sense) accommodation. The lighted rooms and the sign
September 1945
Ink and pencil on paper. 30.2 x 18.4

Special Collection.
and
we
The house
origins.
becomes
Hopper's 1945 painting Rooms for Tourists
an ambivalent, Freudian world
comfort us and the things
to
Art.
cm
New
by the hedge promise

York.
mark over
The Museum of Modern Art

to
if
be seen
it
all
security. Nonetheless,
Hopper places a question
the comfort and the security, so to speak: there
and the very
in the house,
light has a
realism.
strangely lit-up house in
Munch's Stormy Night
noticing that the house
mysterious quality, as
is
The house perhaps
and without, meet
42).
It is
worth
the only thing in Hopper's painting that
at the front
izing effect of the light might be
L'Empire des Lumieres
The double
recalls the
(cf. p.
from some (unidentified) source beyond. The two
gritte's
nobody
derived from a single source that irradiated through the house.
The painting transcends
in
is
light source,
is lit
light sources, with-
of the house. The quirky, defamiliar-
compared with
that in
Rene Ma-
II (p. 90).
which gives
this painting its distinctive
overall impact, encodes the content of the picture in a twofold way. In

his use of this device,
Hopper strayed ever
further
from the fold of
re-
alism. His pictures articulate unconscious fantasies, and resist interpretation purely in terms of
symbolism or iconography.
rative or representation they use
a descriptive account of
referential
Ed vard Munch
Stormy Night, 1H93
Stormen
Oil on canvas. 9
Collection.
New
.5
x 131
cm
Art,
York
42
some
In place of nar-
images which do not merely convey
external reality but in fact
by closing the gap between image and
become
referent.
self-
Rooms
for Tourists, 1945
Yale University Art Gallery.
cm
New
Haven.
Connecticut. Bequest of Stephen Carlton Clark.
B.A. 1903
Man and
Nature
pictures of the 1940s that can be traced to earlier sketches and
The
show
ideas
Hopper's cityscapes, and the paintings
that
pressed the conflict of Nature and
human
"In Hopper's
which he ex-
in
Civilization, always in-
work
the
window
escape)
is
common denominator
kens of the two realms that appear in his work are interchangeable;
witness, which,
be understood.
trality that
but, more than that, the effect of the two sets of signs taken together
is
I
[.
made
believe, have hardly

.
.]
This being the case, the paintings
the ob-
brian odoherty
in
realm of Civilization could often just as well be reversed: the two

realms are finally the two halves of a symmetrical design.
(p.
can see
44),
which the
artist
Through
landscape the features of which (a
dichotomy.
state the familiar
The
owing
Compartment
the train
window we
see a
bridge and dark woods) re-
the picture also has
its
own
distinc-
which we view the scene.
on one corner of the compartment produces a
The compartment where
dual effect.
seems oddly bigger than

in a
And
river,
to the slant angle at
picture's focus
in
painted in 1938. The picture both uses and de-
familiarizes earlier approaches.
tive energy,
work
this interchangeability at
it
the solitary traveller sits reading
actually can be:
plush armchair in a spacious home.
it is
And
as if she
were
sitting
seems
the train chassis
to
be warping away from us - as a result of which, the landscape seen

through the
landscape:
dow
window has
it
a two-dimensional look, like a picture of a
might as well be inside as
The view through
the win-
suggests both a divorce from the natural world and a metamor-
phic process affecting the
woman
self,
out.
is
reading
is
immediacy of perception. The
symbolic of isolation; she
is
fact that the
closed off within her-
her attention on a system of signs different from that of direct
representation.
It is
true that the isolation in
stated. This, if anything,
Compartment
is
under-
heightens the ambiguity of the mood. The
use of colour, rather than creating a caesura to separate interior from

exterior, has the effect of establishing points of reference.
The
woman's absorption is relaxed, though she is concentrating too.

The 1939 New York Movie (p. 48) offers a parallel to this picture.
This time a cinema screen occupies the place of the view from the
train
window;
glimpse
it
seems the film
we have
is
set in
an Alpine landscape. The
of the movie only accounts for a small part of the
picture, though. In fact, that portion of the
monumentality of the
interior,
with
its
canvas
is
proscenium,
dwarfed by the
its
and lighting, the columns and drapes, the passage and
Compartment
Car
193,
ornate ceiling
stairs. It is
C.
Collection
New
an
45
York
IBM
to
his pictures available to
numerous readings, depending on
which Hopper guides our view from the realm of Nature into the
We
and
begun
Instead, he achieved a neu-
server's capacities."
set.
to the illu-
sive transaction of the pursuer, pursued,
cluded experience that can be analyzed in psychological terms. The to-
often of a single, unified
(as eye, as va-
cancy, as threshold, as silence, as labyrinth, as
1938
cm
Corporation. Armonk.
dynamism of its design is a stark contrast

the torpor of the usherette at right. The usherette seems as absorbed
a world of her own as the woman reading in Compartment C. Her
energized interior; the very

to
in
isolation
is
reinforced by the perspective of the composition, which di-
rects our attention firstly to the wall that divides the
rium from the
and then
exit,
to the fact that
ing the usherette cannot see the screen: this,
who
cinema
that
we
conclude,
stand-
is
is
woman
affords.
Hopper developed
Intermission
C and New
women
curity
the idea in a
But the
(p. 61).
much
later picture is
in Intermission
The woman
out.
is
emergency
proscenium.
who conveys
It is
she herself
The dominant colour
warmth comes from
is
it is
as
if
the motif has
alone in the auditorium, a bare
setting consisting of seating,
exit,
and a fragment of the
the desolate sense of deser-
the arctic blue of the wall, and the only
the seats, floor and stage.
size the
absence of pleasure -
woman
is
after
it is,
all,
The
empha-
effect is to
the intermission, and the
not watching anything.
The 1957 Western Motel
(p.
47)
is
comparable
in its
choice of
Again Hopper uses a defamiliarized view outside: through the
outsize motel
movie
suggest a certain se-
in isolated situations, situations that also
and snug protection; but
motif.
work painted in 1963:

different. In Compartment
later
York Movie his subject was the solitary absorption of
been turned inside
setting.
view; she
sitter
from where she
(judging by her indifference) has no need of the illusions and es-
capism
tion.
cinema audito-
is
windows we
But the
see what looks like the archetypal Western
woman
on the bed
sitting
is
not gazing
turned towards us, and the overall effect
at the
of a portrait
is
seen against a landscape frozen into a mere background. Once
we have
noticed
this,
we
should not overlook the sense of movement
that counterbalances the inertia.
It is
true that the car
and the
street
somehow seem
woman. However,
(and the suitcase, suggestive of departure or arrival)
robbed of their dynamics by the frozen look of the

the light
seems
to restore
the exterior into the
semblance of a movie
through the windows

side the train in
energy to the situation - even as

set.
The
it
freezes
effect of the
view
not unlike that of the landscape glimpsed out-
is
Compartment
C or the
cinema screen
in
New
York
Movie.
The energy and
inertia that conflict so fraughtly in this painting are
of course psychological
nature too.
in
The hood of
the automobile
parked outside makes a phallic impression (the scene

all). It is
method
that
Hopper was
the view of dream-factory

the past, of frontier days
way
America
The motifs
trail
Civilization
work.
And
images of
met head-on
New
in
World.
between Hopper's different works
of psychological clues. They are signs of
tent or repressed physical desires that are a part of
46
a motel, after
recalls half- forgotten
symbolic importance for the
that establish links
leave (so to speak) a
to perfect in his late
when Nature and
that acquired central
is
American
la-
society's
experience and perception. The pictures that present the confrontation

of Nature and Civilization or invoke earlier forms of
environment are eloquent of the ways
in
life in
a natural
which the physical has been
necticut,
Hopper's Girlie Show was by no means an isolated
case in his work. This frank celebration of sex, painted in 1941,
shows a middle-aged
stripper in a G-string, her
spotlight, her nipples
and
lips
body picked out
in the
painted red and her red hair flowing.
Other pictures that approach the same sexual territory do so more

cently, with
Hopper's characteristic wariness. What makes Girlie
Show important
though,
is
in
terms of the painter's biography and psychology,
the fact that the
preliminary study
woman
on the one hand the
desire. This
it
is
it
the artist's wife, Jo
is
as a
makes clear. In the study, the woman's feaJo's. To all the other types of ambiguity in Hop-
per's work, in other words,
on the other he
in
(p. 11)
tures are identifiably
guity:
reti-
we must add
a specifically sexual ambi-
artist is plainly
projecting sexual fantasies,
channelling them into the
ambivalence
is
latent
elsewhere
licit
in
confines of marital
Hopper's
art too.
And
appears not only in Hopper's interpretations of the Nature/Man di-
chotomy but
also,
paintings of city
more straightforwardly
life
yet obliquely too, in his
and the world of work.
Take South Carolina Morning (1955; pp. 50/51), for instance.
In
47
cm
New
Haven. Con-
Bequest of Stephen Carlton Clark.
B.A. 1903
repressed in the process of Civilization.

In this sense,
Western Motel, 1957

New
York Movie. 1939
101.9cm
The Museum of
York, Given anonymously
Oil on canvas, 81.9 x
Collection,
Modern
Art,
New
Office at Night,
1940
cm
Collection Walker Art Center.
Minneapolis, Gift of the T. B. Walker

Foundation. Gilbert M. Walker Fund. 1948
^^^r
Office in a Small City, 1953
Hopper dichotomy
this painting the
cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

New York, George A. Hearn Fund,
1953(53.183)
expressed as a tension open to
is
psychological interpretation. The house by the beach

concrete or stone dais, like a
painting's true centre
is in
and black shoes. The dress
manmade
on a raised
island in a natural setting.
the figure of the

is
is
woman,
in
The
her red dress
almost see-through, and the cut and
fall
woman's physical presence. In this almost geometrical composition, the woman's body is dominant, and
the effect Hopper achieves is an ambiguous one: the stance of the
of the fabric emphasizes the
woman, who
is
dressed as
lessness, yet at the

in the sexual
same time
go
out,
there
is
seems the epitome of motion-
a latent, smouldering
(p.
to this subject in
53) shows a young
two of
woman
his city scenes.
and her stance has a
open front door

PAGE
50/5
Oil on canvas, 76.2 x
01 .6 cm
Museum
American Art, New York,

Given in memory of Otto
by
his family 67.13
slightly provocative quality.
life
L. Spaeth
it
her, the
As Hop-
were not added
till
the
of the picture. The possible sexual innuendo seems clear.
The emphasis on
52
Behind
again in darkness).
per's preliminary studies show, these curtains

final version
facing into the
by showing curtains blowing back from an
open window (with the room beyond

of
is
darkness. Into the geometry of the architecture
Hopper has introduced
South Carolina Morning, 1955

is in
The 1943
in a revealingly transpar-
ent dress on the steps of a building in the city. She

sun,
dynamism
challenge she offers.
Hopper returned
Summertime
if to
interiors that
draw us
in,
and the phallic columns,
make of this
desires
In
We
streetside
composition a complex of subconscious
Summertime, 1943
Oil on canvas, 74 x
and projected wish-fulfilment.
New
York Office (1962; pp. 54/55)
we
see a
woman
in
an
see her through a large window, and the light entering by
phasizes her figure. She
is
1 1
.8
cm
Delaware Art Museum. Wilmington.
like a film star: the
window
is
the
office.
it
Gift of
Dora Sexton Brown
em-
cinema
screen onto which our (the viewer's) secret wishes are projected.
Hop-
per used this approach with remarkable frequency. In the 1940 Office
at Night (p. 49), for instance, the
vided by the
show
that
anchor of the visual focus
woman; and Hopper's preliminary
is
pro-
studies for that
work
he chose the most provocative and sensual female stance
and figure from various
possibilities.
Comparison of New York Office and Office at Night highlights a significant change in Hopper's work over the twenty-odd years that separate the
two
paintings. In the earlier picture, the sexual tension
pressed explicitly and unambiguously.

scene, by contrast,
The
later
shows Hopper successfully
We
in
ex-
nighttime office
articulating latent psy-
chological and sexual fantasies (such as are implicit in
works)
is
many of his
terms of a secret, unseen dominant.
can consider Office
example of
this.
merely looking
in
a Small City (1953;
The man looking out of

at the
p.
the office
52) another
window
is
PAGE
54/55:
New
York Office, 1962
Collection of
not
Arts. The Blount

Alabama
horizon, or (say) at the facade and rooftop of

53
cm
Montgomery Museum of Fine

Collection.
Montgomery.
Morning
in
City;
Oil on canvas,
1 1
Williams College
1944
cm
Museum of Art,
2 x 153
Williamstown, Massachusetts
form of
the building opposite. Rather, the rectilinear
windowless block seen
in the
background
at left
his office
seem
and the
to suggest that
a realm of experience has been closed off to him. The house opposite
dates from another age: a 19th century building,
strong colours. But
block the
man
we
is in. it
cannot see
it
presented in
windows. As
appears from a detail
a false frontage intended to give

fied buildings in the
in at the
it is
at
bottom
for the office
right that
a resemblance to older,
town - a resemblance
it
more
essentially lacks.
painting presents an image of alienation and loss.
It
it
has
digni-
The
also (not too ob-
viously) expresses longing.

In
some of Hopper's psychologically recoded compositions,
male body not only points up longing,
desire,
the fe-
and sexual challenge
but also intimacy of a kind that prompts protective instincts. In fact,

is
Hopper's paintings of
work
in
jects.
Morning
woman
woman,
56
women
that
show
wider contexts and not merely
at
in
a City
a window.
(p. 56),
Beyond
the necessity of seeing his
terms of the immediate sub-
painted in 1944, shows a naked
the
rather than looking out,
in
window
is
it
is
a city scene; but the
looking into a corner of the room
we cannot
that
woman makes
the
we
see from our point of view; as
from the side and
look
a particularly defenceless impression.
which showed her
unaware way she
ing the towel, gives her a quality of vulnerability.
entering the room, and the relative
gloom makes
Not much
it
"His compositions arise from a synthesis of observations, impressions and thoughts, are care-
see her
fully
full-length; cf. p. 57);
the effect of this, together with the natural,
day
We
an unposed position, her legs cropped
rear, in
contrast to the studies
how
at the painting,
is
(in
and intellectually planned, and take form
within a preconceived pictorial language."
WILLIAM
and
C.
SEITZ
hold-
light is
cavernous, some-
sealed off from the outside world where a clear and cloudless
beginning.
is
The woman
herself
is
contoured by light and shad-
ow, and the effect emphasizes her figure, yet
at the
same time we
are
given to understand that she simply happens to be standing in the
by chance.
light,
woman
free of intention
is
cizing highlights.
cipher.
And
Compare
in a
the 1952
lighting
upon
the
is
merely a thing
eroti-
in the light, a
without importance.
Morning Sun
light of the
is sitting
The
and the use of colour dispenses with
Her naked body
this is not
room, the
woman
the
not a study in glamour.
It is
(p. 59).
Again
morning sun upon
shows a
it
woman
This time, though,
her.
on the bed and deliberately facing the sun. Her
vermilion shift looks pale against the pallor of the room, and the only
colour contrast of any
visible
power
provided by the top of a building
is
through the window. This
Her
pression.
woman
too
makes a defenceless im-
arms are clasped
legs are bare, her
at
her shins, and the
made up) is rigid, that of a mask.

While the woman in Morning in a City is poised between light and
shadow, unconsciously defending herself against she knows not what,
expression on her face (already
holding the towel not only in front of her body but also in such a position as to
ward
mercy of -light
at
the
is
like that
rilateral
grip.
off the sun, the

that
woman
Morning Light
is
altogether
makes an object of her. Though her position
of someone on a beach, the light that casts the bright quad-
on the wall behind her seems
The
in
to
have her
in
an intimidating
interplay of projection and counter-projection (which
per repeatedly
structure) has
employs both
been reduced
as a subject
to
its
A preliminary
study
(p.
Art,
mercy of the
light.
58) suggests that the picture was originally in-
tended as an exercise in the effects of light on the body; and in fact

this
work shows Hopper's leaning
to abstraction acquiring a transfor-
mational ascendancy over the idea and perspective of the painting,

shifting the representational
and narrative aspects into a subordinate
position.
This element of abstraction, which introduced a further ambivalence into Hopper's work, can also be seen in the 1949 High
(p.
in
Noon
Cape Cod Morning (p. 63), painted in 1950. The situation

High Noon seems clear enough at first glance. A woman, not fully
62) and
her front door with an expectant
dressed,
is
standing
painting
is
complex both
at
in
psychological and
air.
In fact the
in aesthetic terms.
New
70.294
simplest components in this canvas.

at the
for
Collection
Hop-
and as a psychological sub-
The room and the woman's body are equally
Drawing
Morning
in
City,
cm
of Whitney Museum
1944
Conte on paper, 56.2 x 38.1
On
57
of American
Hopper is using the woman for an aesthetic study in

and shadow (the shadows on her body are continuations of the
the one hand,

light
geometrical shadows on the house).
On
the other hand, the light
makes a defamiliarized impression, with
the white walls contrasting
sharply with the blue sky and the red shades of the chimney and foundations - and in that light the
been focussed on
gown
is
her.
The
woman
exposed as
and
its
a spotlight had
if
effect is almost obscene.
open and affords an almost
the verticals of the robe
is
Her dressing
view of her nakedness, and
total
parting correspond to the verticals of
the doorframe and door and of the gap in the curtains at the upstairs
(bedroom?) window. In
The
subtle innuendo.
this
emphasis on openings there
light that floods the scene
a rich, un-
is
and the male fantasies
woman's body match. The title. High Noon, carries

associations of a showdown - a meeting of male and female
that flood the
ironic
desires in passionate conflict, perhaps?
The consonance of woman and house reappears

Morning,
woman
albeit in a distinctly different form. In
and the house are doubly exposed,
viewer's gaze and fantasies. In Cape
where we see
the
woman
in
Cape Cod
High Noon
to the light
Cod Morning
and
the
to the
the bay
window
has a protective look. The trees that mark
the natural environment are leaning towards the bay. perhaps in a
breeze.
The woman seems
to
be staring out of the window, and her
body, expressive of longing and desire,

yet
it is
is
emphatically modelled.
And
an unavailable body: the woman, supporting herself by both
hands, seems well in control of her
own
physical domain, as
it
were.
we compare this painting with Morning Sun and other similar pictures, we see that in it Hopper has achieved a degree of abstraction
If
that in fact has the effect of underlining the psychological
of the work.
He
City and even
component
has largely put the narrative elements of Morning
Morning Sun
aside
- elements
that linked
up
in
to the ar-
Draw
ing for
Morning Sun. 1952
Conte and pencil on paper. 30.5

Collection of Whittle)
Art.
New
Museum
x 48.1
cm
of American
70.291
..
tistic
own
tradition of
life.
window scenes
as well as to aspects of the painter's
Both the natural exterior and the view of the
been defamiliarized. Nature and Civilization,

houses, are used by
Hopper
as signs in a
human
Morning Sun. 1952

Oil
have
interior
bodies and
system to convey subcon-
scious images and fantasies in compositions that only have a representational function at first glance;
that the divide
on closer consideration we
realise
between (painted) image and (psychological) imago
has long since ceased to apply.
Only
p.
if
we
bear this in mind can
60) correctly.
The
picture
is
we understand Seven A.M.
(1948;
divided into two sections by the white-
ness of the building and the darkness of the woods. In part
it is
"about" the frontier of Nature and Civilization; the tension draws
upon the untamed remoteness of the forest and the domestication rep-
Even without any human figures, the message

cannot communicate with each other) is obvious
resented by the house.

(that the
two areas
enough. Yet the mutual exclusiveness of the two parts of the painting
is
also subverted
by the
fact that exclusion is already a constituent of
each part. Unlike most of Hopper's dark, foreboding forests, this one
has perspectival depth that
makes
it
on canvas. 7
.4 x
.9
cm
Columbus Museum of Art. Ohio.

Museum Purchase: Howald Fund
appear accessible; while the

59
house, though
so.
we can
All
seems so open
it
actually see
is
to our inspection, in fact only
and a cash
part of the store, with a clock
window
register; the right-hand
is
seems
darkened by a drawn blind, and the
cropping of the picture removes the private, dwelling part of the building from our view, the available depth of the forest and the inaccessibility
of the house counteract any supposedly clear distinction be-
tween what
Nature.
is
accessible and what
And mankind
The conceptual
expressed in
Sea
(p. 84).
not,
between Civilization and
excluded from both areas.
line represented in these pictures is extended,
tauter,
Again
is
is
denser form, in the 1951 painting
it is
Rooms by
and
the
a partial view involving geometrical structures.
But here the boundary of
light
and shadow
is
echoed
in the
boundary
of the door and the water. This effect gives the work a somewhat unreal
dimension. As in a Magritte, the sea appears to be a painting with-
in a painting,
with the doorframe as a picture frame.
lines to the exterior
inner
dynamism on
And
the sight-
confuse the perspective productively, conferring
The view
the spartan space in the foreground.
through the door creates an impression of height, and an illusion of

depth.
The diagonal angle of the threshhold induces an
sion: the horizon
seems
In this painting,
it is
to
be (very slightly) arched, and
the very detail in Hopper's
the unreal warps in perception.

reality,
which
is
optical illu-
The
distinction
method
real,
that creates
between a picture and
normally the basis of any act of viewing a painting,
questioned within the painting: the sea, painted in such a
seem
distant.
way
is
as to
looks like a picture, and the room, realistically painted,
looks like a product of the imagination.
Our processes of perception
are disoriented in direct proportion to our willingness to take these im-
hA
ages
at
face value.
The
picture does not
aim
at
unambiguous
sentation of the real, or at distinguishing the real
Intermission, 1963
repre-
from the imagined;
it
Mr. und Mrs. R. Crosby
cm
Kemper
merely reflects or mirrors.

If
ing,
we relate the painting to the tradition Hopper is using and quotwe see his subversiveness fully. He is not only questioning the re-
lationship of
made
to
image and imago. The very process of representation
appear a fraud, a deceitful
the pretence of
fiction. It is
an orderly reality that
is
an attempt to maintain
capable of representation, a
ality
such as the individual has long since ceased to experience. To
look
at
Hopper's
late paintings is to
is
re-
be continually confronted with
subversion of the merely realistic.

PAGE
60 LEFT:
Journal
Edward Hopper. His Works, volume
III.
Seven A.M., page 27

Ink on paper, 30.2 x 18.4 cm
Art.
New
York.
Special Collection. Library. Gift of Lloyd
Goodrich
PAGE
60 RIGHT:
Seven AM., 1948
cm
Museum
Art.
61
New
of American
York. Purchase and exchange 50.8
High Noon, 1949

The Dayton Art
cm
Institute.
Ohio. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Has well
Cape Cod Morning, 1950

National
Museum
cm
of American Art.
Washington, D.C.. Gift of the Sara Robv Foundation
Self
and Other
Time and
again.
Hopper provided
cesses by which things are

flections
his
own commentaries on
metamorphosed
on Emerson and Goethe
memory, and
the artist directly related the act of painting to
so found a statement
by Degas well suited
well to copy what one sees.

tained in one's
memory.
It's
It is
better to
funds of the
doing
draw what one has

which
that
exerts."
Museum
Hopper, writing for the 1933
re-
is
striking,
of
Detail from: Chair Car,
18
Private collection,
retro-
(see
19
,
sonal element in
He
strikingly described the decisive trans-
formational process, the metamorphic process of transfer from conception to canvas, as one of "decay"
This touches upon a point that
Hopper
see
as a painter of the
20
.
we cannot
grasp clearly
American scene:
tures are "about" is that death or
decay which
sense represent, since they destroy the
part of
all
if
what
we merely
his pic-
paintings in
some
immediacy of perception
through the transformation into an image.

This
the root not only of Hopper's distinctive
is at
of his critique of
modern
art: "I
in
it
is
false.
It
at all.
That's
why
has no intimacy."
Doubtless
also
from your original idea)
cerebral invention. Inventions not conceived by the
at all. It's all
imagination
method but
think a great deal of contemporary
painting doesn't have that element (decaying
this attack
think so
much contemporary
painting
21
on abstract
art is overstated.
between the "invention" which Hopper concedes
own
The
distinction
and
to abstract art
22
the "imagination"
which he claims for
truth is rather that
Hopper's psychological version of realism, by
his
art is
untenable.
The
using various techniques of defamiliarization, proves (ironically
enough)
to
have a great deal
in
common
de Kooning and other American abstract

ate fracture in their
selves,
works
with the methods of Willem

artists.
These
artists
in order to force us to close the
incorpor-
gaps our-
through close and careful viewing. Similarly, Hopper's work
uses distance and detachment to create an openness to plural interpretations.
Whereas
their pictures as
the painters of the
ill.
p.
New
cm
York
67)
most intimate
he was not only drawing attention to the per-
his work.
1965
Modern Art
spective, described his art as a "transcription [of his]
impressions of nature"
Edmundson
Art Foundation Inc.
recollections and invention
from the tyranny which nature
are liberated
cm
a transformation in which imagination
Thus one's
that is to say, the necessary.
.4
Des Moines Art Center. Iowa. Purchased with
referred,
in
1927
Oil on canvas. 7 1 .4 x 9 1
to his purpose: "It is very
memory. One reproduces only
collaborates with
When
much
Autotnat,
in imagination. In the re-
which we have already
to
the pro-
American scene tend
to present
closed systems. Hopper's views provoke our reac65
tions, establishing
an intertextual exchange the meaning of which
becomes apparent only
The
subtlety of Hopper's late paintings consists in the seamless con-
tinuity of construction
and elementary representation.
seamlessness as early as the 1927 Automat
from the
arises both
title
woman
silence, are intensified
unoccupied
chair.
The
We
can see
title
quently appropriate movie and theater conven-
plainly relates
and foremost
first
this
The ambiguity
BRIAN ODOHERTY
tions."
to the
Her almost unseeing pose, her
in the painting herself.
and
(p. 64).
and from the content. The
not only to automatic food dispensing but
tion
frustrate attention,
of perception.
in the act
in ways that stimulate and

sometimes suggesting
movement and change while fixing the subject
so firmly that his best works appear like
freezed frames from a lifelong movie. Hoppers viewpoints, framing, and lighting fre-
"His framing crops
aliena-
by the geometry of the picture and the
straight rectangularity of the
window
is
com-
pensated by the line of lights reflected in the pane, receding into the
distance.
Of course
more than a
that distance is deceptive, since
reflection of an interior.
fords no view of anything outside;

cal regularity of the restaurant
house
It is
(as
this
painting.
in this
it
truth
is
really
is
that the
no
window
af-
merely emphasizes the geometri-
and confines the
woman
in a glass-
were).
use of reflection that provides the richest ambiguity in the
The
title
highlights the
woman's
situation: her very reactions
circumscribed space are pre-determined, and furthermore the
fixedness of her gaze

right
it
The
it
hand
is
is
repeated in the stiffness of her position. Her
bare, the left
still
gloved, and the darkness of that gloved
hand contrasts with the pale skin of her
face, throat, right
hand and
And so the rigid artificiality of her surroundings extends to the

woman herself and establishes the tension we detect in her body. Her
legs.
physical presence
is still
sensuous and
integrated into the order of
life in
real, yet
she has already been
a technological society.
Even
the
Hotel Lobby. 1943

Oil
on canvas.
Indianapolis
.9 x
Museum
Adams Memorial
103.5
cm
of Art, William Ray
Collection
bowl of
fruit, its
seductive red anchoring the visual centre and
echoing the woman's
lipstick, is
reminiscent of a lost natural
Chair Car. 1965

Oil on canvas.
life.
Private collection.
The 1929 Chop Suey

closely to the interior.
Through
geometrical shapes, and

a
it
window
the
impossible to
is
back
at
tell
all
the
we
left
27
cm
York
The windows
(pp. 68/69) is obviously related.
have the effect of boundaries, and direct our attention
.6
New
more
see only
whether they represent
house wall beyond or the distorted reflection of the sky. The win-
dow
at right affords
only a sectional view out anyway;
facade, a fire escape, a

taurant's
neon
hats, the face
sign.
of the
segment of
The two
woman
sky.
we can
see a
and part of the chop suey
res-
flappers, wearing typical 1920s cloche
gazing towards us heavily made up. make
a rigid, puppet-like impression. This applies particularly to the
woman
in green,
the picture
more
in a
rigid:
who
at us.
we
is
not so
The woman
much
looking
at
her vis-a-vis as out of
in the red hat at the rear
see only her profile.
looks even
Her dinner companion seems
world of his own, and his features are
lost too, in
PAGE
68/69:
Chop
lost
shadow.
Suey, 1929
Oil on canvas. 8
A. Ebsworth
67
.3 x
96.5
cm
Collection of Mr. und Mrs. Barney
But of course the women's brash make-up signals seduction. The
chop suey sign may suggest
an entertainment
that the restaurant is in
lipstick;
and the
glance.
lettering of the
word on
70 TOP:
of town: the red of the sign matches the red of the flapper's
district
first
PAGE
Hotel by a Railroad, 1952
Hirshhorn
Museum and
Smithsonian
the sign suggests "sex" at
cm
Sculpture Garden.
Institution, Gift
of Joseph H.
Hirshhorn Foundation. 1966
a composition in which motifs of inertia, desertion
It is
and seduction are intertwined. Like so many of Hopper's paintings,
Chop Suey needs

Hotel
Room
a similarly
be read
to
(1931;
at
various levels.
82) and Hotel
p.
Lobby (1943;
p.
66) operate in
ambiguous manner. The half-dressed woman
sitting
on the
bed reading expresses physicality and vulnerability, and her absorption in the
book prompts thoughts of a
may have
that
Lobby
the
up
led
still
sitting
reading in front of the reception desk
been a male figure
in
Hopper's preliminary
She makes an energetic impression, and her blonde hair and
studies.
Hopper presents her body
outstretched legs send a signal.

terms; yet she
tension.
as
room. In Hotel
to her sitting alone in the hotel
young woman
replaces what had
narrative context, of events
is
concentrating on her reading, and the result
The old-aged couple
dead as
in sensual
in the
an odd
is
background, ready to go out, look
dummies by comparison.
tailor's
In Hotel by a Railroad (p. 70),
which he painted
in
Hopper
1952,
The man and woman are not looking at

very absorption of the two people in their own in-
again encodes his content.
each other, and the

terests establishes
both
demarcation. This
is
we can
at
ics,
sightlines
end
The woman's
in walls,
closed
windows and
see
attention
on something we cannot see
is
outside,
and
blind mirrors
words, the picture creates a sophisticated interplay of dynam-
boundaries and surfaces.
And
tween projected wishes and what
The 1956 Hotel Window

be sure whether the
the
we
the heart of the composition)
is
fixed on her book, the man's
in other
looking
is
see a wall and a closed window. In the mirror (which,
nothing but unclear reflections of colours.
own
man
an angle to the direction the
together with the window,
our
the customary sense of
emphasized by the curtailed perspective.
Through the window,

in.
common ground and
window
or
is
woman
simply
(p.
is
it
is
also highlights the shortfall bereally seen.
72) uses a similar approach.
We
cannot
actually looking at something outside
lost in thought. Either
way, everything
we
window is as inert as a stage set. The street lighting is

poor and we cannot make out any of the detail on the house fronts opposite. The inertia of the scene has infected the woman, it seems; her
see through the
pose
is
tense,
and her coat seems unnaturally draped, as
if
PAGE
frozen or
billowed out by wind. The composition uses the colour and light effects to focus
and
this
our attention on a corner of the room,
gives the
woman
marked a boundary
and contrast, what
in the picture.
lies
outside the
Thanks
to this use
window seems
cm
National Gallery of Art. Washington. John
Hay
Whitney Collection
if
they
of perspective
in fact
BOTTOM:
initially at least;
and window a de-centred look, as
70
Cape Cod Evening, 1939
"It is
no exact transcription of a place, but
pieced together from sketches and mental im-
outside the
pressions of things in the vicinity."
picture.
EDWARD HOPPER
71
The
Here
late
Chair Car (1965;
at last the
p.
67)
is
a continuation of the
windows (two rows, converging on
same
line.
a perspective
meeting point) coincide with the boundary of the picture
in the fore-
ground. Like the picture as a whole, they constitute a demarcation
from the outside world:
all
we can
see of that world
is
the light that
enters the car.
At
first
glance
it
seems
1956 Four Lane Road
we have
fined interior
(p.
dominant
is
compositional conception of the
83) runs counter to
a wide-open exterior.
are not entirely dissimilar.
Chair Car,
that the
in
Instead of a con-
this.
Still,
the
two approaches
The motif of movement, merely implicit in

Four Lane Road - again implicitly, through
the emblematic presence of the road and gas station.
And
the area
around the gas station has very much the function of an interior as
far
window of which
we can see a further stretch of the woods and a second pump) meets
the road at an angle which establishes a secluded corner. The man
as the
man
is
concerned. The house (through one
looks thoughtful, unbending; and behind him. disrupting the static

unity of the compositional space, a
is
leaning out of the right-
The man seems unconcerned and unresponsive,

he could not hear her at all - though he is obviously near to her.
hand window,
as if
woman
The shadow,
calling.
his curious
and equally
silent double,
has the effect of
confirming him in his unyielding pose.
movement contrasts with the essential

tranquillity of the colours. The near-horizontals of the clouds, woods,
grass, road, and a shadow cast by some object or building we cannot
see, counteract the dynamic situation involving the two people. The
fraught human scene is offset by the quiet of Nature and the static
This polarity of arrest and
Hotel Window. 1956

Oil on canvas, 101.6 \ 139.7
The Forbes Magazine
New
York
cm
Collection.
presence of the two pumps, done in strong colours, which
make an
al-
most decorative rather than technological impression.
Many
Conference at Night, 1949

cm
Courtesy of Wichita Art Museum. Wichita.
of Hopper's pictures are dominated by comparable contrasts
between a human scene and the space or environment.
An
Kansas. Collection Roland
P.
Murdock
obvious
Road is Cape Cod Evening (p. 70), painted

Hopper's own comment (cf. p. 71, margin) reminds
antecedent of Four Lane

as early as 1939.
us that what seems so unique and distinctive in the painting

fact
assembled by the
artist
was
in
from various impressions and sketches.
23
The tension and silence prevailing between the two people, who do
not make a mutually communicative impression and seem not to
No
share hopes any more, are intensified by the setting.

the house,
which
is
path leads to
a lonely outpost of Civilization in the process of
being reclaimed by Nature.
Our sense
that
end of domestic
Cape Cod Evening
rule,
picture with the 1947
randah
at night.
ing in the
but
it is
wan
Two
is
a scene of alienation, of the
we compare
without a future, grows on us
if
Summer Evening
The scene
(pp. 74/75).
youngsters dressed
light. It is not, surely,
in post-
War
is
the
a vePAGE
style are stand-
a sad scene of disappointed love;
certainly a richly ambivalent scene.
The two people
are
lit
as
74/75:
Slimmer Evening, 1947

cm
Private collection. Washinaton. D.C.
73
wtmmm^mmBmmggm
'
mt***
mm**
if
they were on a stage, almost defenceless and yet with a manifest
self-confidence.
territory,
and the
quest of the
They
are meeting
final frontier in
in
Hopper's
to identifiable
method
Man's onward progress involves con-
woman's body.
The composition and colours

ment
on a clearly defined, circumscribed
24
art.
both works suggest a symbolist ele-
not that specific meanings can be attached
It is
symbols
in
in these paintings: but
allusively implies narrative contexts
Hopper's evocative
and experiential frame-
works.
Conference at Night
pictures that
(p. 73).
show people
done
one of Hopper's
in 1949. is
actually talking.
The
few-
faces of the three
people are wholly impassive, though, and they seem to be communicating through gestures and
time exchange
and
side,
is in
movements
room without
this idiosyncratic
rather than words. This night-
lighting, curiously
lit
from out-
approach to the lighting of the scene
establishes divides that are of importance to the
way
the three people
The man in the hat standing beside the woman is entirely in the
shadow cast by the wall (between the window we can see and the sec-
relate.
ond we cannot): he
more
is
a third man.
marked off from two others and
We
the observer than the involved participant.
Hopper any more unambiguously than we can
this
his other works, but the
cannot interpret
interpret
many
of
composition and painting style give the nar-
rative implications of the scene a large suggestiveness.
This
is
true of
Second Story Sunlight (1960:
Hopper himself described
81
p.
too.
Though
the picture as merely "an attempt to paint

25
sunlight as white, with almost or no yellow pigment in the white"

his next statement
("Any psychological idea
by the viewer.") need not

mulation does
still
expressed by an
Flexner in a
26
in the picture.
American
title
spelling) the
letter, to
the effect that
might add
that (in the
can have two meanings: not only the sec[hijstory. If the elder
woman in Conference
Summer Evening. The jux-
on the balcony has the features of the
younger
taposition
not merely a
its
We
house but also a second
at Night, the
with
be supplied
and architecture paralleled the co-presence of
crabbed age and youth
woman
to
Hopper approved of views
possibility.
art critic called
stor[e]y of the
have
rule out psychological interpretation: the for-
admit the
the contrast of Nature
ond
will
is
is
like the
woman
Two Ages
of
in
Woman,
though. The painting,
twin gables topping two wings of the house, also alludes to
Hopper's earlier Two Puritans. The parallel presentation of human

beings and houses gives a certain duality to the work's texture.
Such
dualities
and tensions, forcing a re-assessment of a work's
statement, are frequent in Hopper's late
proach towards the end of his

(p.
77) confirms
this.
life.
work and
typical of his ap-
The 1961 A Woman
The naked woman standing
sunlight arouses conflicting feelings.
On
the
in a
in the
narrow
strip
one hand she seems
confident and has a perfectly natural sense of her body.

76
Sun
On
of
self-
the other
hand she looks defenceless; and the shadows of her legs are long and
thin,
The
contributing a sense of fragility.
relatively dark
A Woman
room admit-
tedly has a snug, secure atmosphere, but the frontiers are uncertain.
Outside the
window
in the
background are two
hills,
in the Sun,
1961
cm
Museum of American
Art,
New
York, 50th Anniversary
und Mrs. Albert Hackett
with a powerful
in
gift
of Mr.
honour of
Edith and Lloyd Goodrich 84.3
waves
swell like deep
its
in a
Together with the bright, intrusive
an impression of Nature invading the sanctuary of the
light they give
room:
in the sea.
conventional interior, of
all
places, Nature
is
going about
business of re-conquest. Hopper was of course perfectly capable of
human figures when he wanted to convey this idea,

in Rooms by the Sea (p. 85) or the late Sun in an Empty
dispensing with
we can see
Room (1963),
as
approach the
All in
all,
might be
way
a painting
whose very
title
indicates the experimental
artist is taking.
Hopper's
set in
later
work suggests
that the scenes
he presents
Nature's realm or Civilization's without any loss one
or the other. Nighthawks (pp. 78/79), a city scene painted in
1942, proves the point.
It is
Hopper's only painting showing a curved
pane of glass, the only one to make the glass

bubble of glass
people from the
separated
is
an enclosure
city.
in space,
The approach
is
itself visible.
The
bar's
PAGE
hermetically sealing off the
much
the
them from Nature. The bar provides
same
78/79:
Nighthawks, 1942
Oil on canvas. 76.2 x 144
as if a divide
cm
Chicago. The Art Institute of Chicago. Friends
the only light in the
of American Art Collection
77
nighttime city; and the
Sunlight in a Cafeteria, 1958

cm
New
dynamics
Haven.
wedge
structure of the composition establishes
come loaded with implications and are quite unlike

earlier Night Shadows (p. 31), where the major role is
that
Connecticut, Bequest of Stephen Carlton
those of the
Clark, B.A. 1903
played not by light but by shadow. Hopper agreed that he was probably "painting the loneliness of a large city," unconsciously, but also
stressed the casualness of the composition, saying
but "a restaurant on Greenwich
Of course
It is
this
Avenue where two
does not account for the
not, or not solely,
an account of
full
it
showed nothing
streets meet".
impact of the painting.
lost illusions a la
Humphrey Bo-
James Dean. The psychological tension goes deep. Against
gart or
the desertedness of the city
the bar,
Hopper has placed
and the
solitariness of the third drinker at
the togetherness of the couple. This
source of the psychological effect: though the picture derives

cial
27
the
is
its
so-
impact from the presentation of the bar and the background
stores,
it is
primarily a screen onto which discrete fantasies are pro-
jected.
"Nighthawks seems
night street.
ly.
to
be the
didn't see
it
way
think of a
made
the restaurant bigger. Unconsiously, probably,

I
was painting
Hopper returned
as particularly lone-
simplified the scene a great deal and
the loneliness of a large city."
EDWARD HOPPER
Cafeteria
(p. 80).
to a related
composition
1958 Sunlight
in
This painting and Nighthawks are like mirror im-
ages of each other. The older work
from the outside, the

80
in the
later is
is
a nighttime scene looking in
an interior by daylight with a view
to-
wards the outside. In Nighthawks mutuality
established amidst the
is
isolation, while in Sunlight in a Cafeteria the bright light only serves
to
emphasize
that divide that separates the
what might be going on around
indifferent to
woodenly gazing past her through

acting in the
same scene,
as
it
the
the effect of a divide, and
boundary between
if it
interior
her,
and the man,
window, do not seem
were. Their sightlines cross
angles; both are caught in the light.
the
two people. The woman,
The window
itself
to
be
at right
no longer has
were not for the potted plant on the
sill
and exterior would not be by any
means as obvious. The light has the effect of a medium in which the
two figures are held in suspended animation; wishes and desires are
still
present,
no doubt, as the phallic
salt cellar
behind the
man
sug-
gests.
The mirrored
effects of
Nighthawks and Sunlight
repeated in Sea Watchers (1952;

p. 87). In
p.
a Cafeteria are
86) and People in the Sun (1960;
these paintings the scenario
works show people
in
is
in a natural setting,
radically different.
Both
turned to the sun. In Sea
Watchers, the silence of the couple produces psychological tension, a

articulated in the compositional lines of the picture.
tension that
is
The sea and
the dais provide horizontals, while the foreshortening of
the house
emphasized by the perspectival reduction of the second
beyond
it.
is
These
structural lines not only give depth to the painted
space; they dramatize

in the
it.
The towels billowing
in a
breeze on the line
foreground contrast strikingly with the placid calm of the rest
of the picture, from foreground to sea, and particularly with the

frozen attitudes of the couple.
Second Story Sunlight, I960

Oil on canvas, 101.6 x 127 cm
Collection of
Art,
New
York, Purchased with funds from the
Friends of the Whitney

Art 60.54
Museum
of American
It is
this frozen arrest that
painting; the technical
provides the psychological depth of the
dynamics underline
are not looking out to the horizon but
waves, and their gaze runs parallel

bodies are close, they
and
other, as so often
it.
down
The man and woman
at the
beach and the
to the horizontals.
Though
their
make a separate, closed-off impression. Self

in Hopper (compare Nighthawks or Hotel by a
Railroad), exist side by side but
seem unlikely
to achieve
any
real
communication.
The
contrast of
movement and
stasis, a
core contrast in
Edward
Hopper's work and one which seems generally to signal these psychological
problems of communication,
structure of
Sea Watchers.
nomically, even reductively.
what
to their rear.
slight angle to the
two
We
foregrounded through the
in the
Sim
it is
see the group at an angle,
and the chain of
sets of structural lines;
hills
beyond. What results
and the energy
fect contrasts in turn with the repose of the people.
who
is
not frozen and staring
for absorption
spiring
is
the
man
Hopper's work
in
is
felt in this ef-
The only
at left, the reader,
and concentration, positive values of the
tinually recur in
more ecofrom some-
treated
The people in the front row are sitting in line, at a

sun. The perimeter of the terrace runs almost exact-
ly parallel to the valley
a contrast of
People
In
is
figure
who
stands
self that con-
defensive distinction from the unin-
woodenness of others.
Hold Room.
93
cm
Th\ssen-Bornemisza Foundation. Lugano.

Switzerland
In a sense, this picture
shows
the
that
is
a recapitulation of the core Hopper.
Hopper's scenes of American Nature
(like his
scenes set in
mation.
A psychological condition
is
It
also highlights transfor-
transformed into a correlative, a
projection, an observed scene that expresses silence
Nature
itself is frozen, as
not only apparent to us as

the perceptions
into a
on a postcard. But
we
look
at the picture,
and behaviour of the people
panoramic view, and intertwining our
with that of the people portrayed,
appears
at first
this
in
it.
and
arrest;
and
frozen condition
is
but also determines

In freezing Nature
own mode
of perception
Hopper has transformed
a scene
glance to be traditional mimetic realism into some-
thing evocative, psychologically allusive, richly associative.

structural

Private collection
realm of Civilization) represent the divide between Nature and
Civilization as dynamic, in flux, reversible.
that
Four Lane Road, 1956
It
And
the
laws of his approach operate beyond mere representation.
83
cm
Transformations of the Real:

Hopper as Modernist
though they may seem, Edward Hopper's paintings are not
Realistic
mere representations of supposed

transforming
struct the real,
the
it
They deconstruct and recon-
reality.
beyond
am
not very
human. What
to paint sunlight
wanted
on the side of a
EDWARD HOPPER
house."
the purely experiential. Like
Hopper composition
is
not
and foremost an image
first
of visible fact but rather a gestalt created out of
breakdown and
and indeed the capacity
ture in the process of perception
His works have aptly been dubbed metaphors of silence.
governed by what remains unsaid, and by
utterance
is
Hopper's
art
has
its
centre of gravity in what
Hopper's
the paintings.
art
enacts
anchor superficial situations
There
a clear continuity
is
works through a more

Hopper's
fully
late paintings
in
Just as all
silence, so too
profound depths.
in his early
in the
middle phase
the artist's late work. Narrative as
well appear, they invariably draw their

is
people or the nature of modern
unexpressed, whether the sublife.
Hopper's pictures are about
many
tension and isolation, and the silence indicated in

ations has
to perceive.
28
not actually visible in
developed expression
may
frac-
ways of seeing and understanding
impact from the awareness of what

is
is
from what was sketched
complex flowering of
to the full,
ject
do was
views Hopper regularly included as pictures within his pictures, a
characteristic
that
"Maybe
to
major dramatic and communicative value
of his
situ-
in his aesthetic
scheme. The rigorous structure of his paintings, their limited subject

matter and Hopper's experimental use of light create an impression of
calm and concentration which can
itself
be seen as a response to soRooms by
ciety.
the Sea, 1951
The meaning of Hopper's

be understood
if
late pictures
of people and cities can best
we compare Reginald Marsh's work
Yale University Art Gallery,
Connecticut. Bequest of Stephen Carlton
of the 1930s
Clark. B.A. 1903
and 1940s. Marsh too was painting
life in
the
modern
drawing attention to social gaps and tensions, and
showed women
we might
his
city.
work
He
too
was
often
Marsh did work that

Bowery Drunks, but in the
as catalysts of societal change.
label as social criticism, such as
course of his career he tended more and more to paint pictures in
which
women had
fantasy at the
tion
between
women
at the
(p. 10),
we
emancipated
same
status yet
were also objects of male
Paramount Pictures (1934) blurs the distincHollywood's dream world and the real
time.
women
in
entrance to the cinema. In the 1936 Steeplechase Park
see
women
in a ring, as if
they were being served up to
male desire. Eyes Examined (1946) shows a

prime of youth; the
men
woman
look almost repellent
in
in the desirable
comparison.
These simplified close-focus views of aspects of
cm
New Haven.
society, with their
85
unambiguous sexual coding,
Where Marsh's
less
eye of a
are foreign to the art of
pictures (like John Sloan's)
on stripping
critic intent
zoom
ly
described his
art as
me
so
much
," 29
.
Hopper's
strik-
He himself reticent-
memories of glimpses of rooms seen from
the streets in the eastside. (...) simply a piece of

that interests
with the merci-
his subject bare.
ingly preserve a certain detachment and distance.

".
in
Edward Hopper.
New
York, the city
Nonetheless, even his seemingly
most casual of pictures are loaded with significance - consciously
in
the case of his compositional structure, unconsciously in terms of

their suggestive
power. Time and again his idiosyncratic use of per-
spective, seen with full striking force for the first time in Night Shad-
ows
(p. 31),
shows
that his scrutiny
is
finally
aimed
at
locating
ways
of expressing himself rather than recording what he might happen to

see before him. In this respect.
debt,
owing
Hopper always remained
in
Degas's
a great deal to the French painter's concept of the trans-
formation of the real through imagination and memory.
Hopper's
acteristic
city scenes restate the closed-off, pathless inertia so char-
of his natural scenes featuring roads and railway track. Hop-
per's settings are not always easily accessible, and imply a barrier bet-
ween
the scene
and ourselves as viewers. This highlighting of
isolation, this reductiveness. is
something Hopper has
in
common
with Marsh and other painters of the American Scene: like them, he
rejected contemporary
American attempts
tial reality
into sugared, illusory images.
succeeded
in capturing social reality
to translate hard, experien-
And
in the
process Hopper
and the nature of
city life
pre-
cisely because he broke through the superficial, quasi-utopian para-
digms of thought and behaviour which he had
still
(necessarily) paid
Sea Watchers. 1952

Oil on canvas. 76.2 x
Private collection
.6
cm
service to in his days as a commercial illustrator
lip
In his paintings.
Hopper was out
to transform into
(cf. p.
95, below).
National
so often and so skilfully achieved in his caricature work: the interface
vidual experience.
We
indi-
can detect his reaction against social appear-
ances as early as 1927, in his response to Hemingway's short story
The
work:
tion
in
Killers',
"It is
in a
magazine for which Hopper did
refreshing to
come upon such
illustra-
a honest piece of
work
an American magazine, after wading through the vast sea of sugar-
coated
to
published
mush
that
makes up
the
most of our
fiction.
Of the concessions
popular prejudices, the side stepping of truth and the ingenious
mechanism of trick ending

This notwithstanding,
it
there
is
no
30
taint in this story."
would be wrong
to
suppose there were a
simple contrast between Hopper's commercial work and his mature

art.
Rather, his later
realm
in the
poses.
We
work used
visual material
from the commercial
form of quotation or reminiscence or for decorative pur-
might compare Charles Sheeler's Precisionism of the
1920s and 1930s, or the photo-realism of Richard Estes
we would have
But
tieth
to
add
that in
century experience there
is
in the
in the Sun,
1960
an image what he
between patterns of experience fixed by society and the need for
People
1970s.
Hopper's representations of twen-
always an awareness of the tension

87
Museum
cm
of American Art. Washing-
ton. D.C.. Gift of S.C.
Johnson
&
Son, Inc.
Andrew Wyeth
Christina's World. 1948
Tempera on gesso panel. 81.9 x 121.3 cm
Collection. The Museum of Modern Art.
New York
between the consumer society's pressures and the wishes and needs of
the individual.
Hopper's
In retrospect, the evolution of
late
work
strikes us as hav-
ing been logically anticipated by his 1920s position between the
Ash
Can School (Robert Henri, John Sloan and others) and the Fourteenth
Street School of Marsh and others. Reacting to the Modernism that entered the USA through the 1913 Armory Show and which Alfred
Stieglitz's famous gallery, '291', so powerfully advocated, the Ash
Can School took to realistic street scenes and pictures of society as a
whole. But theirs was essentially a 19th century tradition. Pictures
such as Sloan's Bleecker
Street,
Saturday Night (1918) were basically
picturesque genre responses to the industrialization of society.
Marsh
and other Fourteenth Street School painters rejected the tendency

the idyllic, and used their accounts of city life to satirically
cial structures
to
decode
so-
and values.
Edward Hopper and Charles Burchfield (who was influenced by

and in turn influenced Hopper; cf. p. 91 ) went a way of their own
from the 1920s on, painting
in a style
of natural expression that
derived from the example of Robert Henri.

the choice of subjects.
Both
artists (but
tated towards the intermediate
They dispensed with shallow
We
see this most clearly in
Burchfield
in particular) gravi-
zone between urban and
social criticism
grasp the everyday scene in such a
way
and instead
as to render
it
this
critique.
We
power
that resulted far
must bear
in
mind
that
tried to
In his late
approach but also succeeded
playing off the surface against the deeper meaning

the subversive
America.
both an image
and a screen for the projection of wishes and fantasies.

work, Hopper not only perfected
rural
in
such a
way
in
that
exceeded mere judgement or
Hopper,
in his
1928
article
on
Burchfield, stressed the tandem importance of observation and inspira88
tion
- which affords us
a clue to the effect of his
effect derives to a large extent
day.
"No mood
31
tion,"
has been so
mean
as to
seem unworthy of
wrote Hopper. The tension between
Motifs that appear
seen in
New
many
in
works with photographs shows.
seeing, and
deja-vu.
33
image
what looks
32
This
is
to the smallest of de-
Cod -
as
be
still
comparison of the
At the same time, of course, the

impact of Hopper's pictures derives
that the
reality into
relates to concepts that

realistic
interpreta-
realistic representation
from transformation of immediate perceived

idea: the painted
works. That
of Hopper's paintings can
York, Gloucester and Cape
comparison demonstrates
late
from careful observation of the every-
and the painter's transformation can be traced

tails.
own
an aesthetic
preceded the act of
on the canvas acquires a dimension of
not a matter of purely individual experience requir-
ing psychological decoding, but rather draws
upon a collective
Eric Fischl
Bad
Boy, 1981
Oil on canvas. 168 x
244 cm
Saatchi Collection. London. Courtesy of
Boone
Gallery,
New
Mary
York
store
of images and concepts.

This approach was highly developed, and even further complicated,
in
Hopper's
late
work.
On
between preconceptions
representation, and
mystery.
On
hand he was decoding the
the one
in
our ways of seeing and simple mimetic
was showing both
the other
relation
to be subject to
an overarching
hand Hopper was investigating the gaps be-
tween motif, content and aesthetic
calm and also of the detachment
in
34
effect.
This
is
the source of the
Hopper's work.
It is
as if the
things in his paintings were seen behind glass. This tense interplay of
realism and abstraction, representation and transformation, prompts
conceptual responses, as
guistic
means
to
is
shown by
we
account for the impact of Hopper's
posed lack of ambiguity. There

work, and
the fact that
critics like to
fill
is
tend to use
art,
for all
lin-
its
sup-
a sense of gaps and fissure in his
the gaps with verbal metaphors.
They
Eric Fischl
A Brief History of North Africa, 1985

cm
Courtesy of Mary Boone Gallery.
New
York
Rene Magritte
L Empire cle.s Lumieres
II,
1950
cm
Oil on canvas. 79 x 99
Collection.
Art.
New
York. Gift of Dominique and John de Menil.

1951
transform the specific perceptions provoked by the pictures into lan-
phenomenon Hopper's
critics
have of course been aware
''Hopper's scenes not only invite
literal
comments on
guage.
of:
It is
and observed, they play a game of hide-and-seek

pursuit of his identity
such a
game
is
in
the observer
which the
artist's
pursued by the audience. The elements of
are part of the picture's content
stealth, suspense, bafflement,
- disappearance,
silence,
3
glimpses - but no denouement."
"
The transformational and imaginative power generated by Hopper's art is not purely conceptual in character. To an unusual extent,
his scenes of isolation
Man
and Nature but also involve questions concerning the viewer's
identity.
ly
and alienation not only probe the relations of
The observers of his
scenes,
who sometimes have
an obvious-
voyeurish streak, tend to be identified with us as outside viewers,
in a
manner
that implicates us in the psychological fabric of the
scenes. At the
same time,
the psychology of Hopper's paintings
no means always unambiguous:

mimesis,
it
like his use
is
by
of traditional, realistic
tends to be overlaid with abstraction.
For these reasons, classifying Hopper as a painter of the American
Scene seems questionable. He himself rejected such pigeonholing.

Writing of
Thomas Hart Benton, John Stewart Curry and
west painters, he declared:

catured America.
"I think the
other Mid-
American Scene painters
cari-
always wanted to do myself. The French painters
didn't talk about the 'French Scene', or the English painters about the
'English Scene'"/
tive sense of things

90
Still,
the compositions that articulate this distinc-
American
are based on a synthesis, a psychologi-
Charles Burchfield
Six O'Clock, 1936
Watercolour on paper, 61 x 76.2
Everson
Museum
Museum
cm
of Art. Syracuse,
Purchase. Jennie Dickson
New
York.
Buck Fund
cally
tions,
encoded and
intellectually organized configuration of observa-
impressions and thoughts.
And
they use a visual idiom that

31
draws on a limited repertoire of realistic props.
This clarifies the twofold importance Hopper's work

possess. His individual transformation of
with collective myths and concepts;

far
beyond
this,
is
now
seen to
American images coincides
at the
same
time, his
work goes
expressing a social condition in which a coherent
sense of the real has been
lost. It is
primarily Hopper's meticulous use
of detail that points up the psychological and epistemological ruptures
between experience and
idea, collective
myth and
social fact.
ceptions adumbrated in his paintings are modified by our
The
own
per-
perceiv-
ing eye.
Time and
sists in
again, Hopper's late
work shows
that realism
now
con-
a ludic manipulation of real props and the perspectives of the
viewer. Everything that appears capable of

in fact a construct;
unambiguous decoding
and everything constructed
chological radiance that
makes
it
far
more
is
endowed with
is
a psy-
interesting than anything
merely represented.
In reality the "imagination"
"invention"
the real
is at
not a single,
is
Hopper opposed
very closely related to
it.
to abstract art's
mere
His psychological recoding of
once a transformation and an abstraction.
unambiguous meaning. Rather,
his art
is
And
plural
its
aim
is
and am-
biguous. Just as abstract artists transform the given subject into a sys-
tem of signs which allow us various kinds of access and permit the
projection of our fantasies, so Hopper's pictures use detachment to es91
openness that
tablish an
The
tions.
their
its
is
painters of the
work; but Hopper's
available to
many and
various interpreta-
American Scene created closed contexts

art
involves the viewer in
in
conception, in
its
dramaturgy, and establishes what postmodernist theory has dubbed
intertextuality.
But before we conclude we should
have been of major significance
lines that
The
evolution of postmodernism.
tic
relate
Hopper's paintings to two
in
Modernist
art
and
in the
principle of defamiliarizing authen-
perceived reality relates Hopper's
art to
Rene
Magritte's; and the
use of images of Civilization suggests comparison with postmodern
who
artists
re-introduce mimetic strategies into their work, such as
Eric Fischl.
L 'Empire des Lumieres II (p. 90), we find

our perceptual responses disoriented if we take the scene at face
value. This effect is characteristic of Hopper's work too. Magritte
aimed at a moment of clear vision beyond anything that was methodologically or psychologically explicable. What is implied in Hopper's
late work and is in fact fully achieved in Rooms by the Sea or Sun in
Looking
an Empty
gian
at
Magritte's
Room
artist,
is
even more pronounced
the creation of a visual
For the Bel-
in Magritte.
image was no longer a matter of
straightforward representation of reality nor did
it
involve clear
divides between the real, the imaginary and the created image.
Michel Foucault has observed, Magritte's pictures are
which things
The
that are disparate in the
world respond
ludic use of pictures within pictures (which
well)
is
of the
mode
the fundamental
real, the
matically insisted that
all
like a mirror in
to
each other.
Hopper employs
as
of thought for Magritte. The interplay
imaginary and the created image
ture, in Magritte's eyes. In his
As
is
the reality of a pic-
essay 'Words and Images' he program-
was
the indications suggested there
little
connection between objects and the means used to represent them.
At
first
glance, the narrative elements Hopper's art has in
with that of (say) Eric Fischl or
common
Andrew Wyeth would appear
the very opposite of this principle of abstraction. But in fact the
approaches offer mutual reinforcement. Fischl continues a
be
to
two
line pres-
ent in Hopper: the technique of dual coding, loading images that

realistic
with unconscious and often sexual significance.
Fischl not only paints

also,
and
mankind
more nakedly than Hopper,
historical questions.
tradition.
Or he
(p.
as a creature of Civilization but
directs attention to psychological
With white America
Brief History of North Africa
Bad Boy
seem
in
mind he
(p. 89), for instance,
paints
emphasizing black
presents voyeurish views of erotic scenes
89) or Birthday
- such
Boy - which not only suggest
as
a private
obsession but also recall the processes by which society represses

desires, processes
which constitute the
secret heart of
Edward Hop-
per's art as well.
The
92
aesthetic games-playing in
Hopper's paintings has
its
more
inti-
Two Comedians, 1965

cm
Private collection
mate
side, a side that links
World
(p.
him
to the
Andrew Wyeth of
Christina
's
88) and particularly the autobiographically coloured Helga
Game
pictures.
Hopper
also plainly considers the
with the
Game
Two Comedians (p. 93),

shows two clowns on a stage, bowing in farewell
of Life. His
painted in 1965,
of Art to be one
last picture.
front of a closed curtain. Their features leave us in
two figures
are
no doubt
Edward and Jo Hopper. For both of them,
that the
the
games
the painter plays with the real are evidently a role to be played.
totally serious clue to
in
It is
Hopper's view of realism. His realism was
never merely reproduction of the visible, the given, the actual; he was
not interested in mimetic representation as such. Rather, image and
imagination, and representation and aesthetic construction, were inter-
dependent
in his
work.
It is
only the ludic interplay between images
of the real and the viewer's gaze decoding the real that finally establishes the reality of
Edward Hopper's
art.
93
Edward Hopper 1882-1967:
A Chronology
1912
Painting in Gloucester. Massachu-
and
setts,
1913
later at
Ogunquit. Maine.
Exhibits in the
exhibits one
Armory Show and
oil. Sailing.
I
1915
about
Takes up etching and produces

fifty plates in the
1916
next eight years.
Spends the summer working
at
Monhegan. Maine.
1920
at
First
one-man show, of
Paris oils,
Whitney Studio Club.
1922
Exhibits caricatures
1923
Begins
at
Studio Club.
to paint watercolours.
Re-
ceives the Chicago Society of Etchers
Edward Hopper
in Paris,
1907
Logan
Edward and Josephine Hopper
Prize.
South Truro,
in
Massachusetts, 1960
1924
1
882
Born on 22
July,
son of Garrett
Henry Hopper and Elizabeth

Smith-Hopper,
in
Nyack.
stille
Griffiths
New
July 9: marries Josephine (Jo) Ver-
Nivison. November: exhibits recent
watercolours
York.
lery in
New
at the
Frank K.M. Rehn Gal-
1927
February: exhibition of
and watercolours
1926
After high school he en-
York school
for illustrators.
1900-1906
painting at the
April: exhibition of prints
watercolours
Summer
at
at St.
and
Botolph Club. Boston.
(Chase School). He
taught by Robert
Europe. Hopper
most of
his time in Pans.
1908
Settles in
New
January: exhibition
December: work included
artist,
Museum
of
Modern
Art.
visits
England,
but spends
Art,
New
York,
Museum ofAmerican
Josephine N. Hopper Bequest
930
Summer
at
South Truro. Cape
1933
Builds a house at South Truro,
as
summer home hence-
the Hoppers"
is
painting in his free

forth.
Motoring
in
Canada and Maine. No-
in
vember: retrospective
New
York.
ern Art,
1909
Second
visit to
Europe.
He
France, chiefly spending his time
Spain.
Third
trip to
New
in
Museum
of
Mod-
York.
stays in
1934
in Paris.
is
1910
York.
70.1159
York and works
Harmonie Club
New
Cod, renting Burly Cobb*s house.
time. First exhibition, with other pupils of
Henri, at
in 'Paint-
in
which
a commercial
Rehn Gal-
at
Wyoming, 1946
Watercolour on paper, 35.4 x 50.8 cm
Germany and Belgium,
Holland.
Hartford. Connec-
ticut.
ings by Nineteen Living Americans" at the
Jo
In
exhibits watercolours
Morgan Memorial.
at the
lery.
Henri and Kenneth Hayes Miller.
1906
November:
1929
York School of Art

is
oils, prints
Gallery.
Rockland. Maine.
Studies illustration and then
New
Rehn
York.
1928
899- 900
rolls in a New
1
at
seen
January: most of the retrospects e

at
the Arts
Club of Chicago. Motor-
ing in Colorado, Utah, Nevada. California.
Europe: France and
Oregon and Wyoming.
94
Awarded Pennsylvania Academy
1935
of Fine Arts Temple Gold Medal, and First
Purchase Prize in Watercolor by Worcester
Museum. Massachusetts.
Art
1937
Receives the
first
tf>
W.A. Clark
Prize
and the Corcoran Gold Medal of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
1940
Motoring on West Coast.
1942
Awarded Ada
Institute
of Chicago.
1943
To Mexico by
945
Elected a
Institute
946
S. Garrett Prize,
Art
rail.
member
of the National
of Arts and Letters.
To Mexico by
Caricature of Hopper as a boy with books on

Freud and Jung, c. 1925-35
car.
Pencil on paper, 10.5 x 7.9
1950
February-March: retrospective

York; later seen
Art,
Museum
stitute
Terrible:
On
the Rooftops,
1906-07
Hugo's Book of Poems

Watercolour and ink on paper, 55.2 x 37.5 cm
cm
Illustration for Victor
Private collection
New
Museum of American
Josephine N. Hopper Bequest
Art,
of Fine
Boston (April) and the Detroit
Arts,
195
at the
at
L'Annee
or 1909
New
York,
70.1338
In-
of Arts (June).
Third
Mexico. Brief stay
visit to
in
960
Receives Art
in
1963
America Annual
Award.
Santa Fe.
Retrospective
in
Arizona Art Gal-
Receives award from
lery.
St.
Botolph
Club, Boston.
1952
The American Federation of Arts
nominates Hopper one of four American

tists
representing the
USA at
Biennale. Fourth visit to
ber
1952-March
ar-
the Venice
Mexico (Decem-
962
October: retrospective exhibition of
graphic work, Philadelphia
Museum
travelling to Worcester Art
Museum, Massa-
of Art,
1
964
September-November:
retrospective in the
chusetts.
American
1953).
Art,
the
major
Whitney Museum of
New
York,
is
a triumphant
success with critics and public alike.

1
953
Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, Art
Institute of
Cover: Hotel Management,
Chicago. Honorary Doctor of
954
Academy
MANAGEMENT
965
Hopper
Louis.
Institute
Receives First Prize for Watercolor,
Elected to American
St.
Kohnstamm
Butler Art Institute, Youngstown, Ohio.
1955
and
6 (November 1924)
Letters. Rutgers University.
It
tours to Chicago, and in 1965 to Detroit
receives.
M.V.
Prize for Painting from the Art
of Chicago.
Honorary Doctor of Fine
Arts. Phil-
of
adelphia College of Art. Paints his
last pic-
Art and Letters, and awarded the Acadeture.
my's Gold Medal for Painting.
Two Comedians.
Fifth trip to
Mexico.
1956
1966
Huntington Hartford Foundation
Awarded Edward McDowell Medal.
fel-
lowship.
1
1957
Receives
New
York Board of Trade
967
pital.
Fourth International Hallmark Art Award.
rier
November: one-man show
Gallery of Arts, moving to
at
Rhode
representative at
Sao
Hopper
dies at his
New
in
hos-
York studio
on 15 May. His wife Jo also dies within a

year of him.
CurIs-
land School of Design (December) and
Wadsworth Atheneum. Hartford, ConnectiAHRENS PDBUSHING
cut (January 1960).
US
Paulo Biennale. After several weeks
Salute to the Arts Award, and First Prize.
1959
Major
COMPANY'ncNEW YORK
3 dollars a year
a5 cents A copy
95
Notes
Carl Baldwin: 'Realism.
The American Main-
10
John Perrault: "Hopper: Relentless realism.

American light", in Village Voice. 23 Sep-
tember 1971. p. 27.

2 Peter Handke: Die Lehre
Frankfurt. 1980. pp. 18-19.
Quoted
1987.
in
On Hopper
p. 7.
Hobbs. op. cit.. p. 65.

15 For Hopper's links to the Transcendentalists. see Hobbs. op. cit.. p. 67.
14
17 ibid. p. 83.
in Paris cf.
Levin Gail: Edward
American Masters:
The Voice and the Mxth. New York, 1973,
such as Wyeth. see Hobbs. op.
cit.. p.
110.
8 For Hopper's views on Sloan and Marsh, cf.
Hobbs. op.
cit.. p.
42. For correspondences
Edward Hopper: 'Notes on Painting"

(1933). Quoted from Goodrich, op. cit..
cit.. p.
22 Cf. Hopper's statement
cit.. p.
9 The passage comes from Goethe's
88.
letter to
Jacobiof21 August 1774.
in
Real in: Spring
p. 8.
art.
see Levin, op.
in
lit-
cit.
The publishers wish to thank the museums, galleries, collectors and photographers whose assistance made this book possible. We particularly want to thank the Whitney Museum of American
Art for their help and cooperation. In addition to the persons and institutions named in the picture
credits
we
are also grateful to: Geoffrey Clements. N.Y. (pp. 2. 6. 7. 9. II. 12 [top). 15. 19. 21.
22. 33,
42
(top).
57,58, 60
[left
and
Robert E. Mates. Inc.. N.J. (pp. 8. 12. [below], 13

Lee Stalsworth (p. 10): Ed Owen (p. 20): Stephen Kovacik
right]):
):
Jacobson Studio. N.Y. (p. 34): Malcolm Varon. N.Y. (p. 35); Mike Fischer
John Tennant (p. 70 |top]): Otto Nelson (p. 72): Henry Nelson (p. 73): Steven Sloman.
N.Y. (pp. 77. 94 [middle]): Joseph Szaszfai (p. 80): and Arnold Newman (p. 94 [right]).
(pp. 24. 66): Bill

(p. 63):
30.
York. 1962.
in Gail
Levin. Edward Hopper

The Whitney Museum of
American Art. New York 1979. p. 7

Quoted in Lloyd Goodrich, op. cit.. p. 30
New
23 Goodrich, op. cit.. p. 109.

24 For Hopper's links to symbolism
erature and
[top], 13 [below]. 16. 17. 18. 25. 81
p.
York. 1985.
33 Cf. O'Doherty. op.
p. 22.
1953.
31
22.
Sherw ood Anderson. Sinclair Lewis. John

Dos Passos. Thomas Wolfe and William
Goodrich, op.
New
in
32 Cf. Gail Levin: Hopper's Places.
p. 150.
20 O'Doherty. op.
21 ibid.
cf.
134.
as Illustrator,
with the literary work of Theodore Dreiser.
Faulkner,
p.
30 Quoted
p. 22.
19
Quoted
Hobbs. op. cit.. p. 129.

28 Cf. J[oseph] A[nthony] Ward: American
Silences. The Realism of James Agee.
Walter Evans, and Edward Hopper. Baton
Rouge. 1985: and O'Doherty. op. cit.. p. 19.
29 Cf. Gail Levin. Edward Hopper.
The Complete Prints, New York 1979.
Cf. Brian O'Doherty:
Hopper, the Art and the Artist. Whitney

Museum of American Art. New York. 1980.
7 For Hopper's links to the realism of artists
in Goodrich, op. cit.. p. 133.

26 Flexner's unpublished letter to Hopper is
quoted in Levin, op. cit.
27 Katharine Kuh: The Artist's Voice. Talks
with Seventeen Artists.
12 ibid. p. 7.
16 ibid. p. 83.
p. 23.
5 ibid. p. 23
25 Quoted
ibid. p. 5.
13 ibid.
Lloyd Goodrich: Edward Hopper.

New York. 1971 (1983 reprint), p. 152.
4 Robert Hobbs: Edward Hopper. New York.
3
'Charles Burchfield:
p. 5.
1
cler Sainte-Victoire.
Edward Hopper:
American', in The Arts 14 (July 1928).

pp. 5-12. The quoted comment occurs on
stream*, in Realties. April 1973. p. 117. Cf.
34
ibid. p. 19.
35
ibid. p. 19.
36
37
ibid. p. 15.
ibid. p. 22.
cit.. p.
21
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3-8228-0543-2
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RENNER, R0L F
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Edward Hopper - Transformation of The Real

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Edward Hopper - Transformation of The Real

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3 1111 01756 6322

Renner, Rolf Gunter

Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 106.7

Private collection. Washington, D.C.

Self Portrait, 1925-30

Josephine N. Hopper Bequest 70.1 165

1990 Benedikt Taschen Verlag

Hohenzollernring 53, D-5000 Koln

English translation: Michael Hulse

Picture research: Frigga Finkentey

Cover design: Peter Feierabend

Transformations of the Real

For most Europeans, Edward Hopper's

image of America. Responses

the late 1970s suggested that this

can qualities are

Hopper exhibitions seen

encoded twofold: Hopper's use of motifs

those scenes are

can, and his love of realistic detail, are alike defamiliarized.

the subject matter. Hopper's

not due to the painter's style or ap-

scenes he chose to paint.

subjects his scenes to

fractures beneath the painted skin of

intended to reveal the

This twofold, ambiguous quality has a dimension of aesthetic openness to

explains Hopper's special significance during the

are interpreted as the twin poles "of

American individualism and

Realism of Edward Hopper

At times Hopper's realism can be so overdrawn

admits things not actually visible in the work. Or

the real with an air of the fantastic. Hopper's

view of landscape, for

Standing Female Model

the archetypal experience of the Frontier, that

York. Josephine N. Hopper Bequest

Charcoal on paper. 30.8 x 24.

writers (Hawthorne, Melville, Poe) but also

Cole and of the Hudson River School.

Melville, so too the

curious metamorphosis. Either

on the pictures of Thomas

ossified loss of bearings in

blemishes, by streets and railroad crossings and lighthouses, or those

- an impression conveyed by most of the

painted. For this reason, his paintings tend not

rather, they limit the

view - and Hop-

per often substitutes an interior seen through a window, or

prospects limited by houses or other icons of the civilized world, for

an unrestricted view of Nature.

Hopper froze archetypal dynamism

into rigidity in his

Given the time

that this reversal

between European aesthetic

Painter and Model,

and American, we might compare Hopper's window views and

Oil on cardboard. 26 x 20.5

York, Josephine N. Hopper Bequest

natural scenes with similar images