In Railroad Sunset (1929), Edward Hopper depicts an imposing signal tower against a luminous sunset © Whitney Museum of American Art/Scala, Firenze
Edward Hopper has been done to death. At least so it seems. Retrospectives, diverse thematic or group shows, a catalogue raisonné, biographies, books by novelists, poets and even a medical doctors travel guide, calendars, films, fridge magnets and much more besides attest to an insatiable appetite for the artist. In February, Edward Hopper and the American Hotel closed at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. That the Fondation Beyelers exhibition manages to add a new chapter to this unfolding saga is remarkable. Edward Hopper: A Fresh Look at Landscape achieves what its title declares.
Plainly, Hopper has long since become both a classic and an American icon. “Classic” is easily defined. In short, something constantly renewed through the readings of successive audiences. This fits Hopper, in whom people tend to find whatever they have sought—realist, precisionist, regionalist, symbolist (more Belgian in the Léon Spilliaert mould than French), existentialist, sexist and a quasi-abstractionist. “American icon” is harder to nail. Yet consider some obvious candidates. John Ford, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol and Andrew Wyeth. What do these disparate stars share? Mixed messages—by turns bold and ambiguous—about America and the human condition.
Is the iconic American experience John Fords epic Monument Valley or Hemingways bleak urban tale, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place? The Russian émigré Rothkos enigmatic colour fields influenced by his alienation in the New World, Warhols deadpan banality or Wyeths folksiness? The answer is a “yes” to all. They voice Americas perennial love-hate relationship with itself. So does Hopper.
The spacious installation in Basel prompts similarly diverse thoughts. Across eight galleries it displays 36 paintings and 30 works on paper, the latter concentrated in the last two rooms. Of course the Whitney Museums numerous Hoppers have helped the loans. Yet the whole feels neither meagre nor monotonous. Hopper packs a melancholy punch that precludes too many knockout blows. Putting Railroad Sunset (1929) opposite the entrance and Gas (1940) in the final space makes the right impact. The predictable crowds are another matter. Still, even they accentuate Hoppers hallmarks: silence and vacancy.
Otherworldly light[hhmc]
The natural illumination from Renzo Pianos skylights immediately draws attention to a third characteristic. No matter how detailed Hoppers scrutiny of landscape—confirmed by the record books that he and his wife Jo kept—his pictorial luminosity never quite belongs to this world. Rather, it looks ever filtered through the minds eye. The cast shadows incline to be a bit too intense. Ditto the seas blue in the Gatsby-like breeziness about The “Martha McKeen” of Wellfleet (1944). At another extreme, an almost transparent dimness subdues the cityscapes. As for the foliage in Cape Cod Evening (1939), its tonality has (so to speak) the blues. The wall-size windows in three galleries give onto the museums garden and thereby heighten the difference between real nature and Hoppers, which he insistently, subtly, rendered artificial.
Somewhere in this mix lurks a chillier soul
This artificiality—simultaneously hypnotic and disconcerting—pervades the exhibition. In fact, it enhances the curatorial “fresh look” in the subtitle. Such a framework rightly debunks the homespun, anecdotal-cum-nostalgic Hopper. Instead, there emerges a strange, profoundly joyless visionary, at once more modern and old-fashioned than he is commonly deemed. Somewhere in this mix lurks not a nature boy but a chillier soul. Hoppers introversion (“Im after ME,” he once said), penchant for the angular and psychological austerity suggest a Nordic spirit.
Valley of the Seine and Le Bistro or The Wine Shop from Hoppers second European sojourn in 1909 reflect his early romance with France. Each combines aspects he would later both leave behind and intensify. On the first score, Paris and French joie-de-vivre. On the second, lofty or somehow truncated or vexed sightlines. Taken together, these aberrant elements create an aura of being gone awry. Hence Hoppers prefiguring Alfred Hitchcock and film noir, echoed in a specially commissioned 3D Wim Wenders movie at the exit. The sum total reverses Robert Brownings Victorian optimism: “Gods in his heaven—alls right with the world!”
Hopper presents either a fallen world or situations on its brink. Thus understood, many landscapes in the selection are actually paysages moralisés, windows onto a surrogate theology. Morning, noon and dusk in America have rarely felt so cheerless.
The riders in Bridle Path from 1939 (not coincidentally an ominous year) take fright at entering what is tantamount to a dark cave. No matter under how halcyon a days sky, Route 6, Eastham (1941) leads nowhere. The undulant The Camels Hump (1931) has distinct parallels with a pastel or two by Degas, wherein the landscapes bulges disguise a womans body. In The City (1927), the high viewpoint once belonged to Northern Renaissance arts eye-in-the-sky that beheld humankinds teeming theatre, the theatrum mundi, below. In contrast, Hoppers New York is near-deserted. Likewise, his bold Maine and Massachusetts shorelines—a lively waystage in the shows trajectory—locate the spectator, as it were, between rocks and a hard place.
Stranger things[hhmc]
Hoppers landscapes emerge here as an inhuman realm. Buildings embody their dramatis personae. We hardly need the Bates mansion in Hitchcocks Psycho (1960) to grasp that these edifices are “gothic”—not just for the pointy gables but also their isolation, sightless windows and spookiness. One composition after another appears constructed according to some arcane geometry, and nearly everything directs the gaze elsewhere. No wonder Rothko said: “Wyeth is about the pursuit of strangeness. But he is not whole as Hopper is whole.”
Like Rothkos abstract “façades” (his word), Hoppers—literally and metaphorically—conceal as muRead More – Source
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