Saturday, December 5, 2015

Edward Hopper's Expressions of Loneliness

Although viewers take various stances as to what themes are characteristic of Edward Hopper’s work, one common opinion is that he poignantly portrays human loneliness and isolation. His paintings are sometimes animated with human figures and sometimes void of them. But when figure are there, they are often alone. Some of these figures look “apathetic, pensive, and proud of their solitude,”[1] while others seem to be dejected and longing for company.
            Hopper was creating at the tail end of the industrial revolution and in the decades following; all the works in this exhibition fall into the late 1920s to early 1950s. An important question to consider is how Hopper’s work is a product of his era and how acutely it reflect his immediate culture. Social critics of the industrial revolution prophesied of an increasingly isolated individuals living alone amongst the masses. Literarily, the Southern Agrarians called for a return to a pastoral lifestyle arguing that social exchanges like conversation, hospitality, sympathy, family life, and romantic love fall asunder in the face of industrialization, disturbing the right relationship of man-to-man just as mechanization disrupts the right relationship of man-to-nature.[2]
            Are Hopper’s figures the fulfillment of these prophesies; is he taking a similar critical approach, lamenting the loneliness of industrialized life? This proposition is no less important in this post-industrial, technology driven age as social commentator Sherry Turkle writes, “Technology is seductive when what it offers meets our human vulnerabilities. And as it turns out, we are very vulnerable indeed. We are lonely but fearful of intimacy.”[3] What can Hopper and his figures tell us about social isolation, not only in the industrial decades but in modern day?



[1] Edward Hopper and the Blank Canvas (2012: Films of Demand), Film.
[2] Andrews William, The Literature of the American South (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1998), 393.
[3] Turkle Sherry, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less form Each Other (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 1. 


Edward Hopper; Office in a Small City1953; oil on canvas; 28 x 40 in.; Accession Number: 53.183


All attention is drawn to the lone figure in this piece. He is encased in a box of windows and walls, like a mime. His desk in empty of any clutter, no loose papers or pens, no work to be done, and nobody to talk to. He is gazing out the window with his back turned to the viewer. There is not a single other living object in the painting and hardly anything that will claim attention, just geometrical shapes of buildings and vents. If the viewer could work around to gaze through the other window and see the figure’s face, what would his expression be: stoic, sullen, ambivalent? Importantly, Hopper loses the top left corner of the front window to the frame, suggesting the everydayness of the scene, like an aimlessly taken snapshot. 

Edward Hopper; Nighthawks; 1942; oil on canvas; 84.1 x 152.4 cm; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

Source: www.wikiart.com

This piece is Hopper’s most popular, hanging on the walls of classrooms and waiting rooms across the nation. Like Office in a Small City, Hopper places the figures in a glass box of windows. A simple and plain exterior redirects all attention to the interior of the diner and to the interactions, or lack thereof, between the four figures. One man sits alone with his back towards the viewer, while the other two customers are evidently together but are not paying any attention to each other. The woman is contemplating her hand, and the man smokes. The diner cook looks at the smoking man, but it is hard to imagine their conversation being anything more substantial than, “Would you like more coffee?” Is the figures’ aloneness the pathetic, regrettable kind Sherry Turkle describes as being Alone Together, or is it a prideful, stoic type suggested in the title Nighthawks?

Edward Hopper; Morning Sun; 1952; oil on canvas; 101.98 x 71.5 cm; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio, USA

Source:www.wikiart.com

Edward Hopper; Cape Cod Morning; 1950; oil on canvas; 101.98 x 87 cm; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., USA

Source: wikiart.com

Hopper employs his window box technique again in this painting. But ,somehow, its function seems different than how it is used in either Office in a Small City or Nighthawk. In this piece, the female figure inside the box leans over a table and looks searchingly out the window. She seems trapped, like she is stuck alone in her house. She looks out longingly, as if waiting for her loved one to come home but whose return is out of her hands and uncontrollable. How well does this piece communicate the anxiety and loneliness that transcends time and culture of being without a loved one?

Edward Hopper; Sunday; Edward Hopper; 1926; oil on canvas; 86.36 x 73.66 cm; Private Collection


In this piece, the organically shaped body of the male figure sits in sharp contrast to the vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines of the buildings, sidewalk, and road. The contrast draws the viewer’s attention to the lone man who looks like a bartender. It is hard to tell why he is sitting on the sidewalk, perhaps taking a break after a long night shift or getting a breath of fresh air during a slow Sunday afternoon. Like the window receding out frame in Office in a Small City, the diagonal lines of the buildings and sidewalk exit the painting abruptly, bespeaking the mundane, everydayness of the scene. It’s the commonplace aloneness felt most when everybody has left or nobody has come that is not altogether bitter but reflective.

Edward Hopper; Early Sunday Morning; 1930; oil on canvas; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA

Source: www.wikiart.com

As opposed to all other paintings in this exhibit, this Hopper piece does not portray any human figures. Instead of figures depicting isolation, desolation describes emptiness and loneliness. Being early morning, the scene looks like a ghost town, lifeless and abandoned. The deep, negative space between the picture plain and the buildings is completely empty, and the flat space of the buildings could be the backdrop to a portrait. If this piece were a portrait, what would the subject be? Two objects stand out as particularly curved and rounded compared to the building and sidewalk: the fire hydrant and barbershop pole. Hopper indwells them—as they stand in the desolate space—with the same loneliness evident in his figures. 
   



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