Edward Hopper was a pure painter, interested in his material for its own sake, and in the utilization of his idea of form, color, and special development. There is a strong emotional, almost dramatic quality about his work and one can interpret his underlying meanings of architecture, city life, and landscape as one wishes. “My aim in painting is always, using nature as the medium, to try to project upon canvas my most intimate reaction to the subject as it appears when I like it the most; when the facts are given unity by my interest and prejudices. Why I select certain subjects rather than others, I do not exactly know, unless it is chat I believe them to be the best medium for a synthesis of my inner experience.”5 The sheer physical power of his paintings strike us immediately. His forms are massive, simplified, and stripped of nonessential details. His design is characterized by straight lines, sharp angles, and strong contrasts of horizontals and verticals. He designed his paintings consciously and deliberately, spending a great deal of time studying his motifs and making many sketches of them. It was not uncommon for Hopper to make composites of sketches from many locations for a single painting. “The idea for
Room in New York
had been in my mind a long time before I painted it. It was suggested by glimpses of lighted interiors seen as I walked along the city streets at night, probably near the district where I lived (Washington Square), although it’s no particular street or house, but it is rather a synthesis of many impressions.”6
Choosing the proportions for a painting was a matter of great concern for Hopper. The very long horizontal shape of
Manhattan Bridge Loop
was an effort to produce a sensation of extending the scene beyond the borders while dwarfing the pedestrian may have been an attempt to suggest the overpowering affect that major cities have upon their inhabitants.
The dramatic play of light and shadow played an impressive role in many of his compositions. Light and shadows are sharply defined and strongly contrasted. Light was an active force by streaming into a scene, falling on forms and modeling them, and acting as a dynamic element in the whole pictorial concept.
In his usage of light, Hopper was unrestrained. Often, the mood of the painting or the hour or the season or the weather was determined by lighting conditions. There is an incredible sensation produced by the intensity of the painted sunlight falling on the white walls of his
Lighthouse at Two Lights
and there’s an eerie feeling of night as the fluorescent lighting of the diner creates sharpangled shadows against neighboring buildings in
Nighthawks.
But the light is never literal; it is perhaps the most powerful tool of Hopper’s expressive compositional techniques.
A device which Hopper has used ever since his Paris days is the bold, foreground horizontal such as a sidewalk, a wall, the railing of a bridge, or a railroad track. They are like the edge of a stage beyond which the drama begins.
On occasion, Hopper would freely alter what he observed. He would subtly change the spatial organization of a composition to one that better suited his purpose. By cropping the house in
Rooms For Tourists.
he ensures that the viewer’s eye receives the inviting message of the availability of warm hospitality.
Multiple points of view were selected intentionally to increase the sensation of realism. In
Cape Cod Evening,
we see the home from the left side creating a frontal affect for the collie that is parallel to the viewer plane. In
Mansard Roof,
the viewer is located below the subject while in
Night Shadows,
an elevated position has been chosen. Hopper sometimes chose to compress space, making the foreground distances disappear, as he did in
Davis House.
Hopper’s idea of casting the spectator as a witness is evident in
Office at Night
as the viewer observes the sexual tension and the drama created by this encounter. Throughout his long career, Hopper was primarily interested in mood and human interaction. Many critics have claimed that Hopper only painted what he saw, yet his writer believes that there was much more than what initially engaged the eye. For Hopper, painting was an intensely private experience. “So much of every art is an expression of the subconscious that it seems to me most of the important qualities are put there unconsciously, and little of importance by the conscious intellect. But these are things for the psychologist to untangle.”7