Hopper, Edward

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) appropriated the visual iconography of the American city and made paintings out of it. Timeless, haunting images of men and women in urban settings engaged in the act of being human are his trademark. Whether depicting the recognizable but stark landscape of the filling station along a rural road or a corner diner in the midst of a city block, Hopper's canvases portray human life and suggest the psychological drama that accompanies daily existence. In his work, the city forms a backdrop and a metaphor for larger human realities and conditions.

Hopper used light like a saber, slashing through interior space, throwing light into space to make known people, isolated in private rooms, alone in their thoughts or their simple tasks, detached or absorbed in their own stories. Very much of a particular era, the Depression of the 1920s and 1930s, Hopper's work is nevertheless universal in its appeal and timeless in its effect. His simple and compelling images inspire the imagination and allow viewers to construct and interpret what they see. Most of his characters seem oblivious of their surroundings, which he constructs intentionally and simply to frame what is most important—their absorption in thought. Exposed to moments that seem at the same time intensely important yet incredibly ordinary, viewers become voyeurs or spectators taking it all in from the briefest of views. Rather than referencing specific places, these interior or exterior views capture the essence of many places or even types of places, which again makes it easy for viewers to place themselves in the narrative. These paintings rely on pictorial narrative terms to suggest rather than tell a specific story; they leave impressions or compelling images that seem to speak solemn volumes. Rather than dramas full of action, they are the intense moments before people act, when they contemplate actions, moments charged with the potential of something immense.

Hopper interprets the modern human condition through his paintings, using light, the settings of American cities, and men and women turned inward in thought.

[Page 346]Edward Hopper was born in Nyack, New York, in 1882 and moved to New York City in 1913, where he lived until his death in 1967. In his 20s, Hopper produced illustrations for magazines, books, and even posters, and he became well known as a painter of the American human landscape while in his early 40s, meeting with immediate and significant success and recognition after a one-man show at the Frank K. M. Rehn Gallery. Known as an acute observer of American everyday life, he was a realist at the same time that he greatly simplified and abstracted what he “saw” in the real world around him. There is often a sense in his world of exclusion or withdrawal, of human beings watching life move on around them. Much of his work seems to involve individuals dealing with the problems that resulted from the industrialization of American cities. In this, Hopper is a narrator of a particular moment in the American urban experience.