The Art Institute of Chicago
www.artic.edu/aic
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Edward Hopper
February 16 to May 10, 2008

Susan Weinrebe
February 13, 2008

(See a Co-Exhibit: Watercolors by Winslow Homer: The Color of Light)

Apocryphally, Edward Hopper declared that what he wanted, to the exclusion of all else was, “to paint sunlight on the side of a house.” As one tours the galleries of this emotionally draining and visually stunning show, one can see the artist’s yearning towards the magnetic pull of angles, frames and light until that is all there is left on his canvas.

Many of Hopper’s paintings are architectural; they depict buildings, streets, Victorian homes, and businesses devoid of any sense of human presence. Where are the people? Some of the street scenes and buildings as in The Mansard Roof, painted from low angles, create a looming and threatening perspective. In others, the angle shifts to a near bird’s-eye view, also unsettling. I imagined set designs for Rod Serling Twilight Zone episodes in which the people lie inanimate and waiting behind the facades.

Other paintings, which do include people, frequently portray isolation and contain voyeuristic elements. In Automat, a woman sits alone at a table, nursing a cup of coffee in the midst of what should be a bustling restaurant. Where are the pies behind the little doors and other patrons grabbing a quick bite? Sunday, a painting that reappeared to me as a bad dream that night, focuses on a street of shops, closed, dark and brooding. The only sign of life amidst the blue law Sunday deadness is a man, all alone, hunched over on a stoop. In another work, a female usher at a movie is cut off by a partition from the patrons and the action on the screen; lost in her thoughts, she is essentially by herself. A woman filing papers and a man at a desk in an office shown after hours might as well be isolated from one another by the protective domes of bell jars. Hopper typically doesn’t show people connecting with others except through their proximity.

Part way through the exhibit, a film about the artist shows us a man who is taciturn to the point of being nearly non-verbal. Has Hopper made his own feelings of isolation the subject of much of his work? If, however, one considers the people as shapes rather than persons, and if the windows are seen as frames, slants of light and pools of shadow as more shapes, then the paintings do not need to be read as "realism", but as abstract works.

Perhaps they are less about individual narratives and more about form. Sun in an Empty Room may even remind you of the shapes and colors of 20th century abstraction. In any event, Hopper apparently fulfilled his wish in this final painting, of ultimately showing us walls against which there is only the play of light.

Edward Hopper. Captain Upton’s House, 1927.
Oil on canvas; 28 1/4 x 36 1/4 in. (71.8 x 92.1 cm). Collection of Steve Martin.
Courtesy of Art Institute of Chicago

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Edward Hopper. Sun in an Empty Room, 1963.
Oil on canvas; 28 3/4 x 39 1/2 in. (73 x 100.3 cm). Private Collection.
Courtesy of Art Institute of Chicago

For more information, contact Dr. Roberta E. Zlokower at zlokower@bestweb.net