Loneliness, Skill, and Vulnerability

Danielle James

October 1, 2016

Edward Hopper’s paintings are some of the most recognized and highly praised of American realist painters. They feel familiar and relatable. One scholar said of his work, “Hopper’s interpretations exist in our consciousness in tandem with our own experience” (Lyons). His paintings are incredibly influential and highly praised. His application of paint was inefficient and timid, which contributed to the raw vulnerable feel of his work.

Edward Hopper painted scenes of a lonely America, either devoid of life or home to solitary figures in transient spaces. If figures are present, they appear introspective, vulnerable, and brooding in places away from home—diners, motels, hotel bars, and moving trains. Hopper often depicted bridges, railroad tracks, gas stations, and other travel related subjects, but in his work “the idea of travel is fraught with loneliness and mystery” (Murphy). Hopper was drawn to the “introspective mood that travelling seems to put us into” (Botton). Hopper put his figures in temporary environments with very few clues to further a narrative about them.

Loneliness is the pervading theme throughout Hopper’s work. He depicted shared spaces that the mass public is familiar with, “places of transit where we are aware of a particular kind of alienated poetry” (Berman). Hopper “gave more significance to the journey than the destination” (Berman). The introspection and isolation of his figures speaks to the self-reliance and loneliness of industrial and post-industrial life.

Hopper denied intentionally including “symbols of isolation and emptiness” in his paintings. Of Nighthawks, arguably his most famous work, he did admit, “unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city””(The Art Institute of Chicago). In Nighthawks, Hopper includes four figures, but “the anonymous and uncommunicative night owls seem as remote from the viewer as they are from one another” (The Art Institute of Chicago). Three are sitting around a bar and one is working, but they are not speaking. Their body language seems protective and introverted. The street outside is dark and devoid of life, hinting at a very late hour. The vantage point for the composition is distant and floating slightly. There is no sign of an entrance to the bar, which further keeps the viewer from entering the scene.

Hopper has a very distinctive style with “clearly outlined forms in strongly defined lighting, a cropped composition with an almost “cinematic” viewpoint, and a mood of eerie stillness” (Murphy). Hopper was well known for depicting scenes “in which urban settings, New England landscapes, and interiors are all pervaded by a sense of silence and estrangement” (Murphy). When painting buildings and landscapes, Hopper removed distinguishing details, which allowed the specific reference for the painting to remain anonymous. This makes the scene feel familiar.

Hopper had a reputation of being a “ruminator: placid, sometimes, on the surface, but an artist of incalculably deep feeling” (Hughes). Art historian Lloyd Goodrich wrote of Hopper’s “monumental silences,” which, “like the spaces in his pictures…were not empty” (Berman). These traits applied directly to Hopper’s artistic process. Before beginning a painting, Hopper labored for months, sketching, modifying his ideas, and deliberating.

When Hopper finally began applying paint to canvas, he struggled. He was educated as an illustrator. His composition and drawing were confident and well executed, but he was not a natural painter. His brushstrokes were not “sweeping brushstrokes from a fevered hand,” and there were “no electrifying eurekas” (Smithsonian). Hopper’s finished works are not displays of confident and efficient paint application. They show signs of persistent scraping and painting and scraping and reworking. Clement Greenberg wrote that Hopper, “is not a painter in the full sense; his means are second-hand, shabby, and impersonal” (Smithsonian). Hopper’s discomfort with his chosen medium was not a handicap in his work. On the contrary, the obvious toil adds to the tension and vulnerability of the paintings. Clement Greenberg also said of Hopper that he “simply happens to be a bad painter. But if he were a better painter, he would, most likely, not be so superior an artist” (Smithsonian).

Eric Fischl’s early paintings showcased a similar discomfort with the medium of paint. The brushwork is careful and deliberate in his early work. Fischl said his early paintings are “primitive and direct” because he was “working at absolutely [his] limit of control” (Russeth). Fischl is now technically a much better painter, and his new work is confidently and efficiently painted with bold, loose brush strokes. The work looks like he enjoyed painting it, but unlike his early work, it lacks the tension suggested by evidence of painstaking labor. Fischl said in 2013 that “to some extent [he is] trying to recapture some of the feel of the early paintings” (Russeth). Showing discomfort shows vulnerability, which feels more sincere and raw than impressive technical ability.

There is a paradox where less skill and less confidence sometimes make for a better artist. For artists like Hopper and Fischl (early career Fischl), the goal is for the paint to not be a subject of the work. They do not have painterly sleight of hand or magical technical secrets. Ideally for them, the physical paint is largely disregarded, allowing the scene depicted to be the full focus of the viewer, with the shaky paint application only adding to the tension, anxiety, and vulnerability. Many artists have the opposite relationship with their medium. The abstract expressionists had an absolute love affair with paint. Their depicted subject matter seemed less important than the physicality and surface of the work. Their main focus was pushing and mixing and smearing colors onto canvas. Their brush strokes were confident. Abstract expressionism does not feel vulnerable or tense—it feels aggressive and energetic. The application of the paint can control the emotion it evokes in the viewer.

In my own work, I focus on mundane scenes and unnoticed time. I have experimented with different ways of applying paint but have considered confidence and efficiency to be the goal. The more I look at artists like Hopper, the more I understand how valuable intentionality with paint application can be. I want to evoke feelings of discomfort and anxiety, and maybe bold energetic brush strokes and pretentious trompe l’oeil are not the way to get there.

Works Cited

Berman, Avis. “Hopper: The Supreme American Realist of the 20th-Century.” Smithsonian Magazine. Smithsonian, July 2007. Web. 26 Sept. 2016.

Botton, Alain De. “The Pleasures of Sadness.” Tate. Tate, 01 May 2004. Web. 21 Sept. 2016.

“Edward Hopper – Approaching a City.” American Art at The Phillips Collection. National Endowment for the Arts, n.d. Web. 22 Sept. 2016.

Hughes, Robert. “ART: UNDER THE CRACK OF REALITY.” Time. Time Inc., 17 July 1995. Web. 26 Sept. 2016.

Lyons, Deborah, Edward Hopper, Adam D. Weinberg, and Julie Grau. Edward Hopper and the American Imagination. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art in Association with W.W. Norton, 1995. Print.

Murphy, Jessica. “Edward Hopper (1882–1967).” The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, June 2007. Web. 22 Sept. 2016.

Russeth, Andrew. “To the Bone: In New Book, Eric Fischl Talks Painting, Drinking, Snorting.” Observer. N.p., 07 May 2013. Web. 22 Sept. 2016.

“The Art Institute of Chicago.” The Art Institute of Chicago – Art Access. The Art Institute of Chicago, 2013. Web. 24 Sept. 2016.