Edward Hopper was born in 1882 in Naik, upstate New York. Today, iconic light greens, open windows, solitary atmospheres, and empty compositions have become classic features of Hopper's artworks, and his paintings successfully capture the solitude of the middle class in the modern city, with dramatic images that tell the empty moments that everyone has experienced. His paintings were highly regarded by the public and loved by writers, with the poet Mark Strand writing reviews on Hopper's paintings, and Lawrence Bullock assembling a group of short story writers to write a story for each of Hopper's dozen paintings.
Hopper's influence in art history is unquestionable, but his progress towards artistic maturity has not been smooth. He had also been lost in the sights of cities such as Paris and New York, making a living in different ways of painting, and holding poor exhibitions to suit the audience's preferences, until he calmed down and ushered in a major artistic transformation. He finally returned to his original intention, "all I want to do is to paint the sunshine on the other side of the house", in the truth that art needs authenticity, his works have a richer meaning in simple nature. Those oil paintings with light and shadow as the main body make silence the only color, and each of us can be in it, listening to the resonance of the vibrations of our own hearts, no longer the painter himself, but our own inner vibrations.
This year, July 22, the 140th anniversary of Hopper's birth, we are here to approach Hopper's artistic life.
This article is from the B01-B03 edition of the Beijing News Book Review Weekly's July 15 feature "Edward Hopper: Silence is the Only Color".
"Theme" B01 丨 Edward Hopper: Silence is the only color
"Theme" B02-B03 丨The final birth of a Hopper-style painting
"Theme" B04-B05 丨 Edward Hopper Painting Review: Man on Board
Interview B06-B07 | Zhang Nian: In the cracks of philosophy, rethink the possibility of love
"Literature" B08 丨 "The Universe Reconstructs Itself": Cheng Yi's Pessoa
Edward Hopper's paintings have a signature personal style, but his process of finding this style has not gone well. He successfully showed his talent for painting in his childhood, but he searched for the subject of painting with great twists and turns. Ships, villages, literature, France, New York... After repeated failed attempts to ponder the audience's interests, it was not until the age of 39 that he gave up the confinement of the subject matter and found true artistic freedom.
Shipbuilder's Dream
"The boat overturned."
This is not a very flustering event for the people of Naiack, located next to Hackensack Creek in the United States. It is a tourist destination that was only classified as an administrative division a decade ago, and is surrounded by water. Near the crisscrossing river network are shipyards and docks built by locals, and inland waterway shipping has gradually developed this small settlement into a decent town. After commercial shipping reached a certain scale, regatta became the main entertainment for locals. Even if you're not a good sailor in a regatta here, mastering swimming is a must-have skill for every local. Therefore, the overturning of a ship usually does not have any serious consequences, but the news came that after the overturning of the boat, two children who were only about five years old fell into the water, and suddenly people were worried.
However, the two boys, who were about five years old, were safe and sound, and their lives were not in danger. Later, the local newspaper wrote about the incident in a follow-up report, and the accident was able to be thrilling, all because of the calmness of one of the boys, who stood up effortlessly in the water after falling into the water, trying to keep his head out of the water, while still having the strength to reach out to another friend. This amazingly watery little boy, his name is Edward Hopper.
Edward Hopper.
Edward Hopper's future life will be inextricably linked to water. Hopper, who was taller than the other children, always liked to stay in the harbor and stare at the sailboats, and he didn't have the feeling of longing to sail away and leave his hometown, he just really loved the ships to the point of fascination. Throughout the weekend, he stayed by the port to observe the construction of ships and the assembly of sails. In middle school, he and a few friends formed a rowing club and began to spend a lot of time swimming on the water. "Tomorrow I'm going to spend a day with the water witch", Hopper should have said it often, and he named his ship, which was not very good, slightly more elegant than the naming techniques popular among the boys at the time, full of adventure and fantasy.
His father came over when Hopper was 15 years old and gave him wood and tools as gifts. The practical use of these two gifts is clear at a glance. When he got the gift, Hopper immediately began his first shipbuilding attempt, which sank to the bottom and was later sold as scrap.
We've never met anyone who had such a deep obsession with shipbuilding, and who was still experimenting with it later when he lived in the attic near Broadway, he tossed out a canoe. This time he found a safer place for the boat he had built, not on the river, but in an oil painting. Hopper had always dreamed of becoming a shipbuilder, and painters, in his eyes, were completely unexpected professions.
"Room by the Sea".
Despite what he claimed, hopper's ability to become a painter was not particularly unexpected. In middle school, he drew boats very frequently, or, rather, he was crazy about painting. His language organization skills were so poor that you could not imagine, and once, during the exam, he knew what the answer was, but he couldn't describe the answer he knew in words, and finally he drew a picture on the paper. Miraculously, the little painting proved that the answer he gave was completely correct, and the teacher saw it and encouraged him. What could be better suited to be a natural artist—knowing the true answer or outcome of something in the world, but unable to respond to it in words, and presenting it in another alternative, or more precise form?
In short, in Naik, a place with no clear social order, imperfect education system, a good life, and busy ships, Hopper entered the path of barbaric growth—fully sailing to his own talent. Oh, of course, maybe in addition to the shipbuilding, which is more than enthusiastic but incompetent. His mother was a well-born woman with great respect for her child's talents, and she collected ship stick figures and sketches that Hopper himself had no intention of leaving. However, although he grew up with almost no resistance, Hopper as a teenager was still a very contradictory child, he was naughty, love to toss, can break through, but also very introverted; He has a lot of ideas in his head, wonderful eyes, but he doesn't speak much; He is tall, but in his self-portraits he always portrays himself as an ugly monster with low self-esteem.
These contradictions, when you push open the door of Hopper's house, you will understand.
Please keep me quiet
A group of women came and went at Hopper's house. They were all friends and relatives of Hopper's mother, her sister, her mother, and the maid of the house, who was the leader of the house. Mrs. Hopper is a well-known hostess with an outgoing personality. But despite her dominant position in the family and her extravagant personality, Mrs. Hopper was not a repulsive person. She came from a wealthy family, and the Hopper family was able to sustain herself decently, entirely on the property she brought with her. Mr. Hopper, by contrast, is much more Buddhist, and in the face of such a female-ruled family, all he can do is escape, spend the whole day in the small shop he runs, and leave his son in the room at home. In this way, father and son, one running outside, the other hiding indoors, seeking a quiet space.
Hopper's father was a man who was at odds with the age when men generally had red necks and coarse tones, and he was rarely gentle, introverted, and even made people feel insecure enough. Growing up, he had never been formally exposed to the infiltration of masculinity—Garrett Hopper had no idea what his father looked like. Therefore, he did not educate Edward Hopper in this way. He runs a store that doesn't really care about revenue, and it's not in a good position. For his son's preferences, since little Edward liked ships, he gave him wood and tools, liked dramas and production props, and also gave him a show. Garrett Hopper and his wife, Elizabeth, are very much in agreement in nurturing children's talents. Mother collected little Hopper's paintings. The father bought some illustration books for the children, so that little Hopper could learn the style of illustration in different countries such as the United States, Germany, Britain, and France. After discovering that their son was obsessed with painting when he was about 5 years old, the couple gave him an easel and a blackboard at Christmas.
They understood Edward Hopper's talent very well, but perhaps not so well understood Hopper's inner world.
Usually, this is the scene in the home, where the mother, sister, and maid are out chatting, the father, who has no common topic at all, chooses to go to the store or church to take shelter, and Edward Hopper, who cannot be taken away, can only stay in the room to find a quiet space. His father, Garrett, left a large number of books at home. As a "businessman", Garrett most often held not a ledger, but a novel, which was also commensurate with his taciturn personality. Garrett's favorite book was Montaigne's collection of essays, as well as works by Henry James, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Emerson, and others. Later, these books also melted into his character in the light of one afternoon after another. Hopper, who had extremely poor language expression skills, in addition to expressing his views through painting, later added a skill - directly quoting sentences from literary works to express his views. This is perhaps the most profound influence left to him by his father Garrett, because many times his father speaks the same way.
The Man Who Dwells in the Darkness and Looks Up at the Light: A Biography of Hopper by Gail Levine, Translated by Li Weiyi He Tongshan, Creation on Paper| Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House is expected to be published in November 2022.
In the process of reading books, Hopper also developed a strong interest in the illustrations in the books. Still, it could be something he'll regret.
As Hopper approached adulthood, his artistic talent and interest became apparent, and Hopper himself showed a desire to become an artist in the future. His parents had no opinion on the artist profession itself, but they all had different concerns. Because of his own experience, the father does not want his son to become a person like himself, he hopes that his son can reduce the time spent indoors, participate in more outdoor sports (in fact, Hopper's interest in outdoor sports is also quite strong), and have some strong manhood; The mother has an excessive desire for Hoper, there is nothing wrong with engaging in art, but it is too difficult to eat from art, and she prefers to give her son a good life through the property left by her ancestors. The parents thought about it again and again, and finally begged their son that it was okay to learn to paint, but not to learn pure art, it was best to go to an illustration academy. Anyway, people have to make a living after that, don't they?
The artistic path of "anti-academy"
In the fall of 1899, Edward Hopper followed his parents' wishes and entered the New York School of Illustration, where Garrett and Elizabeth showed great support for their son's career, collecting illustrations from various periods and countries in their hometown and sending them to Hopper. They even paid special attention to the activity of the illustration market, and did some research on what kind of illustration is most popular.
As for Hopper's state of study, it can only be said that the attitude is indeed particularly serious, did not let go of himself, and in the period of his enrollment, because the income of the illustrator was considerable, which also greatly reduced Hopper's resistance to this profession. He studied the brushwork of the master illustrator and studied it carefully, but the heart of artistic creation was always unlocked, and even when practicing illustration, the flow of lines and the choice of scenes constantly called for the passion of creation in Edward Hopper's heart. Finally, a year later, he applied to his parents for a transfer and entered the New York School of the Arts (then called Chase College), which also had an illustration program, except that Hopper could study real art here.
The New York School of Art is a rather maverick "anti-academy" art institution, and you don't need any exams to get into this school, as long as you are interested in painting and have a certain foundation, you can come. After enrollment, instead of practicing the most basic plaster casts, sketching courses and color classes are conducted simultaneously. If you walk into a new Art Institute classroom when students are gathered and the teacher is not there, you can see the boys boxing with the models, grabbing the door frames for pull-up exercises, and there are paint boxes everywhere, mixing the useful and the unusable together until they are piled up to the ceiling. It was such a chaotic school that produced a group of future painters who would make their mark on art history, most of whom were classmates of Edward Hopper in that period, including Du Bois, George Bellos, Rockwell Kent, and others. Principal Chase attaches great importance to the independent creativity of students, and in his opinion, the shorter the time students spend in school, the better, and it is best to leave as soon as possible to find their true style in the outside world. Although Edward Hopper did not like the founder, his later experience inevitably confirmed the correctness of this view.
Two years later, Edward Hopper's body and mind were fully immersed in the field of oil painting. Time flies, the school course is over, and many of Hopper's classmates go to Paris or become commercial painters. Paris across the Atlantic also attracted Hopper, but he did not rush to leave school, but stayed behind as a teacher. Until he realized for himself that he could no longer stay where he was.
In 1907, Hopper's oil paintings from the Paris period. Hopper painted a large number of landscapes during this period, and the color block and smudging technique were clearly different from the mature Hopper paintings.
From an artistic point of view, Hopper desperately needed new insights and breakthroughs, the inspiration that the United States could bring him was almost exhausted, and he needed new environments to update his way of perceiving the world. From a realistic point of view, Edward Hopper is 24 years old, and many of his classmates are already making a lot of money in the world of illustration. So, in 1906, he set out for Paris.
Famous illustrator? Who are you scolding?
The city of Paris attracts countless artists because of its modernity. Hopper, on the other hand, has always had a clear gap with the modern art of the time. The exhibition of special fire in France is Cézanne's painting exhibition, but Hopper is not only critical of Cézanne's work, he once expressed his lack of interest in Cézanne very bluntly, and believed that Cézanne's oil paintings have no depth to speak of, "just a piece of paper". He likes the depth and three-dimensionality of the objects in the picture, but what about Cubism? Hopper was not interested either, and he managed to be in the same place countless times in Paris with Picasso, but never said hello. Delaunay, Kandinsky, Matisse... Hopper was not interested. The treasure master he found in Paris, where modern art flourished at the time, was Courbet, a typical realist painter. He learned a lot from Courbet, and if we put Hopper's paintings and Courbet's together, we can vaguely find the inheritance in them, but these achievements obviously cannot be transformed into successful exhibitions. In contrast, what makes him most fascinated by Europe is the atmosphere of daily life, as well as the scenery by the river, the music team on weekends.
Paris period oil painting "Austin Embankment".
In this way, when Hopper wandered around Europe for a full decade (his mother never treated him badly in terms of funding), when he returned to the United States, he found that he could not return as a "gold-plated". His friends helped him promote it, and his journalist friends wrote a lot of praise for his paintings, but the exhibition has not been very successful, and it took a long time to sell a painting for $300. The excited Hopper even misremembered the date when keeping the account, which was a rare omission for the always calm man.
In order to make a living, he had to draw commercial illustrations, but don't forget that a full decade had passed since the time when his classmates were digging for gold in the illustration industry.
Hopper's workload is heavy and he encounters some not-so-normal requests. The most outrageous one was when he illustrated a novel about a girl and her bearded lover. After the illustration is finished, the other party asks to remove the male protagonist's beard, Hopper is confused to point out that the characters in the novel have beards, and the reply is that the story can be written like that, but the illustration is not, and the male characters with beards are not attractive on the screen. Hopper could only paint it again. Even more fatal than this is his rigorous work attitude, even in the face of such work, Hopper is extremely engaged, without cutting corners. He is also referring to European illustrations and contemplating the latest illustration techniques.
Hopper illustration.
As a result, because of his investment in illustration and the golden period of posters after the war, he was given a completely unexpected title - famous illustrator. The media gave Hopper's illustrations a highly black humor effect, "with a strong concept and a firm artistic concept".
Who is a famous illustrator? Who regards illustration design as their artistic ideal? - Hopper was furious when he learned that he had such a title. Obviously, this is not the real ideal in his heart.
However, although he had painted many works of art before, when would he be able to draw a picture of his own, in the Style of Hopper?
The evening wind finally came
Edward Hopper has taken a long detour in his art since his return from Europe.
There's a painting called Blue Nights, which is a very bad work, arguably the worst of Hopper's paintings. The painting was so heavily criticized at the exhibition that even Hopper himself was reluctant to admit that it was his work, and after the exhibition he threw the painting into the warehouse and almost never took it out again. Blue Nights is a very typical paradoxical Hopper work, and it looks very screwed. The appearance of prostitutes and clowns in the picture seems to be a noisy scene, but the quiet blue background and static depiction make the picture sluggish, and the characters inside seem to be lifeless puppets.
Blue Nights.
It is clear that Hopper wants to follow the trend and choose typical French themes, and tries to prove the influence of French life on himself. At that time, the biggest difference between French life and American life was that the United States of that era seemed to be a Puritan society, where desire was imprisoned, and the discordant marriage between Hopper and his wife later proved this, and Paris was indulgent of desire. Strangely enough, though, in Hopper's eyes things were the opposite, he thought that Europe was more orderly and American life was disorderly—whatever the truth, Hopper did want to include a lot of French themes in his creations.
The question is, how did he really integrate into France? On several occasions in Europe, his identity was more like that of a tourist. He has never been involved in the furnace of modern French art, nor has he ever been involved in the bright and green streets of Paris, Willow Lanes – he prefers to watch rather than devote himself. This half-hanging identity dictates that Hopper's paintings of French themes will not be profound. After this failure, Hopper returned to the Theme of The United States. As a result, it did not stand out among the piles of American painters. His classmate Kent became a well-known painter for his landscape paintings of Maine, and he also tried to paint Maine, but no one cared. That is to say, during this period, Hopper did not seriously think about the problem of the form of creation, but believed that all problems lay in the subject of the painting. The only thing that brought him some fame was the etching prints, which were more in line with the audience's tastes and received some praise, although the price of the paintings was not high, and he could barely make a living. It seems that he can almost only leave two lines of annotation in the thick art history as an etching printmaker.
Parisian oil painting "Saint Cloud Park".
At the same time, after a long and tepid attempt at American themes, Hopper once again misjudged as the times changed, and he believed that it was time for audiences to embrace the French theme. He made another exhibition with a French theme, and the effect was worse than all the previous exhibitions. Because at this time, Hopper, who was not so integrated with Paris, even the memory of the Paris scene began to fade, and he created a series of paintings with so-called French themes almost entirely by virtue of his vague impression of Paris. Moreover, he has not been to France for a long time, and for the audience, these French urban scenes that stayed twenty years ago are also very outdated. The total failure of this exhibition made Hopper completely dismiss the idea of choosing a French theme. His artist friends believe that Hopper is only "really free" from becoming a good painter, which is a precise comment, but it is not easy for the parties to understand.
This turning point of true freedom did not come until 1921.
Sometimes, the negative effects of time are not necessarily negative. At this time, Hopper's career has been stagnant for a long time, he almost does not have much obsession, and the experience and impression of France in the early years have gradually faded in his mind with time. Finally, he returned to the normal creative path - no longer entangled in the themes of France or The United States, the clear scenes of the city, but painted according to his own feelings. In 1921, he created the most exhibited painting of the next two years, The Evening Wind.
"The Evening Wind".
This painting was well received. It has a metaphorical storytelling, the woman in the picture seems to have just experienced something before, the wind blowing outside the window is both liberating and has a faint tragic color, and the image of the woman also has a dynamic visual perception under the blowing of the wind. The subject of this painting is neither France nor New York, it can be any location. Hopper then created two paintings with similar feelings, which in 1921 made Hopper really start to rise to fame. More importantly, it truly fulfilled Hopper's artistic ideals —"all I wanted to do was paint the sunlight on the other side of the house." Light and shadow became the real themes in his art, that is, as his friend had said before, Hopper, who no longer paid so much attention to regional themes, found the true freedom of artistic creation in the forgetting.
Of course, "Late Wind" is not Hopper's mature work. It's just a black-and-white sketch, without Hopper's signature colors and large brush color blocks. However, Hopper's own art world has quietly opened up. The woman in this room can almost be seen as the prototype of Hopper's later classic paintings, and even though it does not yet have color, the sense of silence and dramatic tension in the picture has given it a unique, Hopper-like tone in the silence.
Text/Miyako
Cartography/Liu Xiaofei
Editor/Zhang Jin Shen Lu
Proofreader/ Xue Jingning Wang Xin