LUX URY MA GAZINE SUMMER 2020 , 1930, oil on canvas, 35 3/16” x 60”

An American Life One of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century, painted melancholic cityscapes and rural scenes imbued with loneliness and uncertainty—now eerily prescient. Digital image © Whitney Museum of American ArtDigital image © Whitney Scala / Art / Licensed by NY Resource, BY JASON EDWARD KAUFMAN

190 LM SUMMER 2020 LM SUMMER 2020 191 192 LM SUMMER 2020 E particular. are andlandscapes Hiscityscapes peopledoingnothingin unextraordinary places and ofhispicturesall depicteveryday success. toshort-circuit calculated Nearly andcelebrities. ofheadlines history his work remained divorced from thegrand 1960s. Yet, throughout epoch, thisdynamic of rock androll, andthecounterculture ofthe culminating amidthe War,Vietnam thebirth War II, age, thenuclear andthe Cold War, through ofHollywood, therise World Depression, andtheJazzAge. Itcontinued War I, theRoaring Twenties, theGreat he remained adie-hard realist. promoted theinnovations ofabstraction, yet His choice of subjectsseemsalmost His choice Hopper’s (1882–1967)spanned life World representational painting and condemned at atimewhencritics paradoxical.somewhat Heemerged dward Hopper’s reputation is work atauction. $92million,in 2018for therecord his for two women inaChineserestaurant, sold of hispaintings, (1929), ChopSuey depicting Streisand,Barbra Martin. andSteve One belong Gates, toBill Spielberg, Steven museums,American thoughmajorworks illustrations. Mostofhispaintingsare in and drawings and numerous preparatory hundreds ofwatercolors, about70etchings, life.quintessential documentsofAmerican works landmarks are and hailedasartistic virtuosity. ofovert devoid And yet, these ofbland,in asort manner, straightforward scale, subduedintone, often are they painted as theirsubjectmatter. Never monumental in objects,physical are thecanvases asmodest individuals. than dynamic rather cyphers As inhabitantstendtobeboredtheir occasional norpicturesque,neither awe-inspiring and Hopper completed 366oilpaintings, Self-Portrait, 28 1/4” x 39 1/2” 39 x 1/4” 28 Lighthouse Hill oil oncanvas, 30 3/8”x 40 1/4” South Carolina Morning, Opposite, from top: oil oncanvas, 25 3/8”x 20 3/8” 1925–1930, , 1927,oiloncanvas,

1955,

human condition.” loneliness. Idon’t know. It couldbethewhole areflectionprobably ofmy own, ifImay say, thing isoverdone,” butheacknowledged, “It’s of hislife, hecomplained that “the loneliness encounter withtheworld. Toward the end toreflect emotional anartist’s was necessary once explained. thatrealism Hebelieved most intimateimpressions ofnature,” he possibleofmy the mostexact transcription commands.Hopper soexpertly sadness ofitspassing. Emotive power iswhat to allow ustocontemplate thepeculiar in anenigmaticstillness, asiftimehaspaused Even hisunpopulatedscenesare enshrouded intheirown worlds.of individualsabsorbed of loneliness, representing thesomber life work deepens. Heisknown asthepainter of America, andtheappealofHopper’s “My aim in painting has always been aiminpaintinghasalways “My Consider dimensions thepsychological 

Top and opposite: Digital image © Whitney Museum of American Art / Licensed by Scala / Art Resource, NY. Bottom: “Edward Hopper” at the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel 2020. © Heirs of / 2019, ProLitteris, Zurich / Artists Rights Society (ARS); Photo: Mark Niedermann LM SUMMER 2020 193 194 LM SUMMER 2020 , and painting. His parents hisart, encouraged the docks, makingmodelboats, anddrawing spent much ofhistimeon hisown, exploring artist. adolescent, Agawky 6-foot-tall Hopper goods store andhismotherwasanamateur center.landmark andart Hisfatherhad adry fromblocks theriver, istoday ahistoric wood-frame housewhere hegrewup, afew ofManhattan.River 25milesnorth The Nyack, New York, atown on theHudson in Baptistfamily inamiddle-class child recognition. in1882, Hewasborn thesecond Hopper worked before decades gaining for INBEGINNING THE 1940, oiloncanvas, 26 1/4”x 40 1/4” teach, thenfrom 1906to1910made three graduation stayedexcelled andafter on to urged life. studentstopaintmodern Hopper admired Frans HalsandÉdouard Manet, and approaches. Another teacher, Henri, Robert toadvocate more progressiveLeague broken from Students theacademicArt Chase, Merritt impressionist William had of Parsons, whosefounder, American the New York ofArt, School aforerunner inManhattan,a school thenenrolled at training.but insistedthatheget practical He studiedcommercial at illustration and struggled to support himself. tosupport and struggled Asailboat business journals, butheloathedthework Toulouse-Lautrec. athome thatwould ina characters beright in theFrench tradition, of cast with amotley this period, SoirBleu(1914), scene isa café impressionist. work from Hismostimportant in themuseums andpaintedlikea late with theavant-garde. Hestudiedthemasters were stars, rising butHopperhad nocontact in Paris. Picasso, Braque, Matisse, andothers toEurope,trips spendingmostofhistime He eked out a living illustrating trade and tradeand He ekedoutalivingillustrating

“Edward Hopper” at the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel 2020. © Heirs of Josephine Hopper / 2019, ProLitteris, Zurich / Artists Rights Society (ARS); Photo: Mark Niedermann he began making etchings influenced he beganmakingetchings by be visitedby appointment.) now owned by New York University, can therestfor ofhislife. apartment, (The the stairs, butHopperwould remain there and washeatedby coalthathelugged up . The flat had notoilet walk-up on Washington in North Square a decade. Hemoved from Midtown toa it wasthelastpaintinghewould for sell abuyer, of1913found Show Armory but picture thathesubmitted tothelandmark Unable to sell oilpaintings,Unable tosell in1915

Bois—but none of the16paintingssold. Péne Guy classmate andformer du friend his firstsoloshowby his in1920—organized Art, MuseumofAmerican Whitney mounted Vanderbilt Whitney, the wholaterfounded Club, Studio Whitney ledby patron Gertrude the elementsofHopper’s mature work. The railroad nearafarmhouse, track contain all (1920), crossing depictscattle a which houses.rural Landscape Prints likeAmerican bedrooms,in working-class andlonesome atnight, scenesofthecity melancholic women Rembrandt, Degas, andJohn Sloan—

moved into the Greenwich Village walk-up.moved intotheGreenwich Village 40s, werewhen they bothintheirearly andJo .) Places following the year, married They photographed herbook for Hopper’s Levin many extantsitesthatHopperbiographerGail RoofThe Mansard (1923). houseis one of (The ofasun-drenched Gloucesterhouse,portrait Museum, and themuseum purchased his his watercolors inanexhibitatthe Brooklyn New York ofArt. School helpedplace She Nivison, whohad attendedthe anartist Massachusetts, Josephine hebegancourting Railroad Sunset,1929,oilonpanel,48”x29 1/4” In 1923, toGloucester, on apaintingtrip LM SUMMER 2020  195 196 LM SUMMER 2020 with an inheritance shehad received,with aninheritance the in South Truro on CapeCod, andin1934, visitedMexicoby rail.often summeredThey and the West Coast, they andinlaterdecades road toNewEngland, trips theSoutheast, car andbegantaking and Joboughttheirfirst on tofocus hisownquit illustration work. He of hiscareer. The show soldout, andHopper and would remain Hopper’s therest dealer for owner represented artists major American Frank K.M. Avenue, Rehnon Fifth whose He soon had hisfirstsoloshow atagallery, arolling pinandladle.featuring heracoatofarms sketched Hopper duly distinguishedcombat,”a medalfor and shequippedthatthey “deserve anniversary bit, blood. drawing even On their25th pushed heraround, and andshescratched heslappedand inwhich brawls described him,for hisbenefit,” for wrote. she She lovemaking. wholethingwasentirely “The met, andshegainednopleasure from their thatshewasavirginwhenthey her diaries his condescending gaze. We know from career fade under and letherown artistic ashismodel,served secretary, andmanager, by mutual resentment andrancor. She his art, their43-year wasmarked marriage when ithitsbottom.” Though she admired well,” shesaid, “except that itdoesn’t thump with Eddieisjustlikedropping astone ina taciturn husband.inch talking “Sometimes teacher, Jowastheoppositeofher6-foot-5- Petite andchatty, actress aformer andschool THE MIDDLE But their partnership kindled hissuccess. kindled But theirpartnership MoMA mountedaretrospective in1933, PavilionAmerican atthe Venice Biennale. annual andbiennialshows, andinthe work inthe appearedWhitney’s regularly restaurant sceneTables (1930). Ladies for His and theMetropolitan Museumboughtthe showand hungitintheirinaugural in1931, (1930) purchased Sunday Morning Early Art.Museum ofModern Whitney The opened collection ofthenewly permanent become thefirstoilpaintingtoenter swing. (1925)had House by theRailroad summer. every that ledhimtoreturn nearly theplace ofafondness for evidence perhaps are present, butsoisasubduedoptimism, ofquietandsolitude feelings characteristic on inbroadbrushed flatareas ofcolor. The light andshadow, andusingalimitedpalette detail,unnecessary creating strong of effects by away scenesmemorable such stripping tinged sunlight. witheastern Hemakes pale-yellowsky veiled withdelicate clouds ofblueseabeneatha distance liesaribbon lightanddark.umber inalternating Inthe green infecund and carpeted undulating hills railroad track, ground ofsoftly intoamiddle houseintheforeground,secluded pasta to maketheirhome. decided where eventually the landscape they thatfirstvisittotheCape,during depicts ocean.South Truro (1930), Hills, completed had acquired the onoverlooking abluff couple builtahouseandstudioon landthey By thistime, Hopper’s careerwasinfull The composition proceeds from a his raciest picture, (1941). Show TheGirlie across shimmying thestage in artist striptease in arestaurant window, and ared-headed in thought, awaitress thedisplay arranging at theautomat, theaterusherette amovie lost drinking coffee into theworld: anofficegirl sexuality. women Heportrayed out moving atmosphere ofalienation andrepressed are joinedby theirhusbands, there isan looking outthewindow.often they When reading, orsmoking, sometimes nudeand He paintedsome home alone, sewing, women roles andtheirchanging insociety. ofpubliclife.at thesiren call rooms,furnished withjustawindow hinting figures insparsely present are solitary or hippies. The teemingthrongs are absent; leaders,interest inworld pop-music icons, speakeasies, games. orbaseball Hehad no ormarkets,bustling factories packed jamsorairports, paintedtraffic He never theaters, officeinteriors, andhotellobbies. buildings,apartment parks, empty darkened and modernity, hiseye hetrained on aging thatdefinedprogressDeco skyscrapers people andplaces. Art thegrand Ignoring andoverlooked he depictedunextraordinary townssmall along theNew Englandcoast, traveled toBoston andDetroit. Lloydardent supporter Goodrich—that retrospective by in1950—curated Hopper’s watercolors in1939, helda andthe Whitney his surveyed InstituteofChicago the Art Hopper was especially fascinatedwith Hopper wasespecially Working inNew mainly York and City

Top: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC / Art Resource, NY. Bottom: © DeA Picture Library / Art Resource, NY. 28” x36” , oil oncanvas, 40 3/8”x 60 3/8” Above: People intheSun, 1927, oiloncanvas, 1960, LM SUMMER 2020

197 The following year Hopper painted his most recognizable masterpiece, (1942)—a nocturnal scene that has become as iconic to Americana as Grant Wood’s pitchfork-wielding Midwestern couple in American Gothic (1930). (Both works are at The .) The subject is nothing special. Two men are in dark suits and gray fedoras, one of them sitting at the counter next to a woman with a red dress and chestnut hair. A white-clad server looks up at the couple while continuing his work. We view the scene as if passing by at night, looking through the restaurant’s plate-glass window that wraps the corner of the café. The bright light of the interior floods the foreground sidewalk and angles across a dark, narrow street. 

Nighthawks, 1942, oil on canvas, 33 1/8” x 60”

198 LM SUMMER 2020 The Art Institute of Chicago / Art NY Resource, LM SUMMER 2020 199 A LEGACY THAT LIVES

The largest cache of Hopper paintings was given in the bequest from Jo to the Whitney Museum. The gift includes not only masses AND THE END of art but ledger books in which Hopper made thumbnail drawings of every oil, watercolor, or print that he planned to sell. Jo penciled in the Hopper was not religious, but he was In his own work, he portrayed American the foot of a bed, and suitcases rest on the dates, descriptions, sale prices, buyer names, conservative, a lifelong Republican who life refracted through the lens of his own floor as if she and her traveling companion notes on exhibitions and reviews, and notes voted against Franklin Roosevelt. He personality. The artist Charles Burchfield have just arrived or are about to leave. about where and how the works were made, opposed the New Deal’s employment of saw him as the truest exponent of American Through the huge window behind her we even the brands of paints and canvas used. artists in the Works Progress Administration realism. In Hopper, he wrote, “we have see the hood of their green car, a ribbon of The Whitney frequently mounts Hopper because he felt it promoted mediocrity. He regained the sturdy American independence road, and sun-topped hills beneath the open retrospectives, and whenever they do never dabbled in abstraction, expressionism, which Thomas Eakins gave us, but which sky. In his final painting, Two Comedians attendance surpasses everything else on view. or any of the other -isms, but he shared the for a time was lost.” (1966), a pantomime couple dressed in white, Scholars and curators continue to explore modernist search for visual means to convey We think of Hopper as a prewar artist, stand-ins for Ed and Jo, take the stage one aspects of his work. Last winter, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts presented Edward subjective experience. He joined the “Reality” before Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, last time for their final bow. Hopper and the American Hotel, a show that group that protested museums’ favoritism but his final decades overlapped with Mark Hopper’s health had long been in decline. will be at the Indianapolis Museum of Art for abstraction, and in 1953 wrote in the Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, He had thyroid and pituitary problems— through September. And his reputation in organization’s journal, “The inner life of a Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and possibly a cause of his depression—and in Europe has grown steadily in recent decades. human being is a vast and varied realm and Andy Warhol. As the art world moved on, 1948 a prostate operation led to the first of On view at the Beyeler Foundation near Basel, does not concern itself alone with stimulating so did the critics, but he remained a respected many hospitalizations. In 1967, at 84 years of Switzerland, until July 26, is Edward Hopper: A arrangements of color, form, and design … eminence, profiled in Time magazine’s age, he died in the Washington Square studio. Fresh Look at Landscape. Painting will have to deal more fully and less 1956 Christmas issue in a cover story titled, Jo passed away 10 months later. German filmmaker Wim Wenders created a obliquely with life and nature’s phenomena “The Silent Witness.” He and his fictive cast of characters, Hopperesque short to accompany the Beyeler before it can again become great.” His later works take on an abstract familiar and accessible, serve as mirrors in show, joining Hitchcock, Ridley Scott, and other Like many American artists, he was grandeur and metaphysical gravitas. Rooms which citizens recognize themselves in a film directors who pay homage to Hopper’s determined to develop a native art distinct by the Sea (1951), an interior with a door that dimmed version of the American Dream, aesthetic. Photographers Robert from European influence. In the catalog of appears to open directly over the sea, has the one that chimes with Henry David Thoreau’s Adams, Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and William Eggleston share Hopper’s penchant for his 1933 show at MoMA, Hopper wrote that enigmatic quality of a Magritte. Streaming observation that “the mass of men lead lives solitary figures in humble settings brimming after decades of “domination” by France, it was sunlight creates a hard-edged geometry on of quiet desperation.” Amid the COVID-19 with psychological tension. high time for American artists to move on the wall, an element that takes center stage pandemic, Hopper’s somber vision has The British writer Geoff Dyer suggests that from their “apprenticeship.” He distinguished in an even more minimal work, Sun in an gained renewed currency, with his paintings Hopper “could claim to be the most influential himself from the so-called Ashcan School Empty Room (1963). In this summa, Hopper posted on social media as evocations of American photographer of the 20th century— painters, including John Sloan and George jettisons everything but the bare essentials deserted cities and lonely people sheltering even though he didn’t take any photographs.” Bellows, whom he knew. They illustrated of his art—light and shade, surface and at home. They remind us of having felt alone Hopper resonates also with writers and vignettes of American life, but Hopper said volume, and the interpenetrability of and withdrawn from society, and that these musicians. Joyce Carol Oates wrote a that they captured America and he was more interior and exterior space. moods are not unique. This therapeutic poem that gives voice to the characters in interested in capturing himself. Their realist He did not entirely abandon the function, coupled with his image as an Nighthawks, Tom Waits composed the song successors were the American Scene painters, anecdotal in his late years. American original, account for Hopper’s “Nighthawks at the Diner,” and Madonna titled Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood, but (1957) is an almost tender recollection of canonical stature and enduring popularity her 1993 tour The Girlie Show after the Hopper Hopper deemed their pictures caricature. travels with Jo. A blond woman faces us from among connoisseurs and the general public. Thyssen- Museo Nacional / Artists Mark Niedermann Bottom: Zurich Rights Society (ARS); Photo: Riehen/Basel 2020. © Heirs of Josephine Hopper / 2019, ProLitteris, Beyeler, Hopper” at the Fondation “Edward Top: Bornemisza / Scala Art NY. Resource, burlesque painting of that name. u

Top: An installation at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where Hopper’s work has appeared since the New York museum’s inaugural show in 1931.

Above: Hotel Room, 1931, oil on canvas, 60” x 65 1/4”

200 LM SUMMER 2020 LM SUMMER 2020 201 The Ultimate Convenience

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