Perhaps, I am indeed unconsciously depicting the loneliness of a big city.
—Edward Hopper, Edward Hopper, 1882-1967

"We are all Edward Hopper paintings now." In a March 2020 Guardian article, art critic Jonathan Jones put " "Lonely Window", "Empty City" and "Woman Looking Out of a Bay Window in a Cape Cod Morning" are typical elements of Hopper's paintings, piecing together a world that has just fallen into social lockdown. In an "New Yorker" in June of the same year, the author called Edward Hopper "the visual bard of loneliness in America" and directly pointed out the essence of Hopper's art: loneliness was his great theme.

Indeed, in Hopper's paintings, a strong sense of loneliness always comes and lingers. For this painter who was born at the end of the 19th century and entered the American painting circle in the 1920s, loneliness is his lifelong theme. While his contemporary Fitzgerald chronicled the gilt parties of the American Jazz Age in his novels, Hopper depicted people who were never invited to the party. Hopper's choice of painting subjects was specific to his era. His lifelong activities were also limited almost exclusively to New York to New England, parts of the northeastern United States. However, his examination of the world through painting was not only applicable to the entire United States at that time, but also resonated with us half a century later. His art is undoubtedly timeless, transcending the reference of time and casting a long shadow in the history of art.

Edward Hopper self portrait

Edward Hopper is widely regarded as the most important American realist painter of the twentieth century. But his view of reality was selective: he chose to paint empty cityscapes, suburban landscapes, and isolated, atomized figures. These works reflect the artist's own temperament, while also showing that realism is more than just a reproduction of what we see. Edward Hopper is also a modern American painter, but his art is not very "modern": they are realistic in content, neither abstract nor innovative in technique. to be moved. That period of upheaval in Western art seemed to come to an abrupt end in Hopper's world. Edward Hopper was born in Nyack, New York, in 1882 into a middle-class family, the son of a businessman. Hopper has been obsessed with painting since he was 5 years old. In one of his paintings at the age of 9, a young boy stands on an empty beach with his hands behind his back, and a deep sense of loneliness haunts his back. It seems that since then, Hopper's creative style seems to have taken shape.

The Little Boy Looking at the Sea (1891)

With the support of his parents, Hopper studied commercial art at the New York Academy of Art from 1900 to 1906. During this period, he was greatly influenced by Robert Henri, the leader of the "Dumpster School". After completing his studies and briefly working as an illustration artist, Hopper turned away from commercial art, and at a time when the United States seemed to have run out of inspiration for him, a trip to Europe became a natural choice. Hopper made three trips to Europe, where he spent his long journey. Back then, Europe meant France to Edward Hopper—more specifically, Paris. When he arrived in France in 1906, Paris was the artistic center of the Western world. Art has begun to shift towards abstract painting. Cubism begins. In 1907, Picasso painted his masterpiece "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" there.

Works painted by Hopper during his studies in Europe

But Hopper insists he never heard of Picasso when he was in Paris. For Hopper, the decisive influence was not Cubism, but the encounter with Impressionism. The Impressionists' treatment of themes of light, architecture, and nature influenced all of his subsequent works.

Sailing, 1911,Hopper's first painting sold

From then on, he left behind the sombre, classical styles of his student days, leaving the traditions of Vermeer, Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Velázquez in favor of Impressionism camp. Monet, Cezanne and Van Gogh were his teachers. His palette brightened, and he began to paint with brisk brushstrokes, giving his pictures ever-changing tonal contrasts and unbalanced compositions. In 1962, Hopper said, "I think I'm still an Impressionist."
Returning to the United States, Hopper found his way through etching while supporting himself as a commercial illustrator. House by the Railroad (1925) was the first work that made him "out of the circle" and the first Hopper acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

"House by the Railway" (1925)

In the painting, bright sunlight hits the house, casting deep shadows. No trains pass by on the rails, and there is silence all around, which makes the house even more abrupt and huge, with an air of sadness permeating it.
As the starting point for Hopper's "Desolate Metropolis Paintings", House by the Railroad has a style that would appear again and again throughout Hopper's career, forming the basis of his career as a professional artist. This painting also inspired film master Hitchcock. In his 1960 film Psycho, the exterior of the Bates Hotel was taken from this painting.

Psycho (1960)

In fact, one of Hopper's characteristics is that although he did not initiate or participate in any painting revolution, we can always identify his paintings at a glance. "Once you see a Hopper, it sticks in your mind", which The New Yorker attributes to "a remarkable stylistic wisdom". Hopper himself had a similar expression: "I try to present my feelings in the form that is most intimate and impressive to me." Like Van Gogh's sunflowers, Monet's water lilies, Hopper has his A theme to love and keep coming back to. One of the important keywords is light. Hopper's handling of light is exceptionally sensitive. Whether it's the early morning or twilight sunlight, or the twilight of the sun shining into a hotel room or office, he always makes the light in the picture create a sense of drama.

Chop Suey, 1929

Room in Brookly, 1932

Second Story Sunlight, 1960

People in the Sun, 1963

But he did not care about the color of objects in different light, as the Impressionists did, but used light as a tool - especially the color of light, brightness, and shadows in strong light, which are all his means of dramatizing scenes. Sometimes this light is sunlight or natural light. For example, Cape Cod Morning (1950):

The cool color palette echoes the building in the light, creating a strong contrast between light and dark. In the picture, a woman is led out the window by the morning sun, looking out and squinting in front of the bright light. This is a moment of infinite anticipation. Yet for a painter who repeatedly painted the emptiness and loneliness of evening scenes, such great expectations were doomed to fail. And Rooms by the Sea (1951):

The sunlight in the picture is very strong, but it is very cold, and it even makes people feel "cold". Coupled with the openness in the room and the hollowness of the window, the whole picture presents a strange cold feeling. Under the light and shadow, the walls, doors and windows, furniture and furnishings cut the picture into large and small geometric shapes, echoing the modern style of painting in a subtle way. When depicting urban life, Hopper prefers unnatural and artificial light. One of the most typical is "Night Wanderers" (also translated Nighthawks, 1942):

This is Edward Hopper's most well-known masterpiece, created in 1942, and has since appeared in many movie scenes, and is widely regarded as the best interpretation of the word loneliness. The subject of the picture is a corner bar with blinding lights. There was a waiter and three guests in the bar who didn't seem to have any communication with each other and we couldn't see their relationship.

The four figures were shrouded in bright light in the bar, while the outside was deserted, quiet, and lonely, with no half-person figures and no light from other light sources. It echoes a context in which the city was thrown into a blackout and surrounded by darkness during World War II and after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Because of the lighting, the picture is divided into different blocks, the boundaries are clear and distinct, even very sharp, and more three-dimensional. The strange light in the picture does not make people feel the slightest warmth, but it reveals a kind of loneliness that has nowhere to talk. Along with an obsession with light, another obvious theme in Hopper's paintings is loneliness. After returning from a study tour in Paris, Hopper just ushered in the "Golden 20s" in the United States. At this time, shortly after the end of the First World War, the American economy ushered in rapid development, and a large number of people came to the city to pursue the American dream. It was also the "Roaring 20s" of frenzied pleasure. The novel "The Great Gatsby" once described this: At that time, people were crazy parties, and even the peels of oranges and lemons could be piled into small "pyramids". At the same time, Hollywood movies began to rise; mystery novels represented by Raymond Chandler ushered in a golden age; skyscrapers led by the Empire State Building rose from the ground... However, the rapid development of society and the high hedonism , and also created a generation of loneliness and confusion. People have left their hometowns and no longer follow the traditional concepts and lifestyles that their predecessors insisted on, and “stranger societies” have gradually formed within cities.

If the American society at this time was noisy and changeable, the United States and Americans described by Hopper were lonely, indifferent and alienated; if people were generally pursuing the "American Dream" at that time, Hopper's writing Americans are experiencing "American insomnia". In Hopper's paintings, the structure of modern cities and landscapes is like a loneliness-making machine. For example, in Hotel Room (1931), a woman sits in a cramped Parisian hotel with a thick book on her lap. She has her head down and her mood is down, as if defeated by life:

Similar is "Morning Sun" (Morning Sun, 1952). The woman stood up and sat in a short nightdress, and the sunlight outside the window was exceptionally dazzling. The woman seemed to have just been woken up by the sun, staring out the window blankly, still reminiscing about the dream she just had:

and The Nightcrawler. The four figures in the painting are in the same space, close to each other, but they have nothing to say and are worried. The huge windows do not have any shelter, but have a complete layer of glass, which makes the space seem open, but in fact it is isolated.

Combined with the closed composition is an exaggerated contrast of cool and warm colors. In this painting, the color itself constitutes a language, which is more expressive than the actions of the characters.

Without the hustle and bustle of the day as a cover, the great sense of loneliness has nowhere to hide. Even Hopper himself said: "Unconsciously, perhaps, I was indeed painting the loneliness of a big city." These images pushed the communicative power of painting to the limit. This is Hopper: He leaves us alone and takes our breath away. His paintings are not only a deep observation of American society, but also reveal a universal truth of life: no place can truly belong to us. Loneliness is our destiny - whether we are alone or not.

Article Source:艺术与设计

版权声明：【除原创作品外，本平台所使用的文章、图片、视频及音乐属于原权利人所有，因客观原因，或会存在不当使用的情况，如，部分文章或文章部分引用内容未能及时与原作者取得联系，或作者名称及原始出处标注错误等情况，非恶意侵犯原权利人相关权益，敬请相关权利人谅解并与我们联系及时处理，共同维护良好的网络创作环境，联系邮箱：603971995@qq.com】