Hopperscapes : Emptiness Crowded With Solitude

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About Hopperscapes : Emptiness Crowded With Solitude

"Edward Hopper didn't belong to a movement or a group or a school. The consummate outsider, he belonged to himself. In the 1920s, at the beginning of his career, he painted the plain, unadorned face of America—factories, telephone poles, small town streets and touring cars. And he pared them down to the raw essentials.

Art critics saw Hopper's work as the latest chapter in the history of American realism. They compared him to Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer. But Hopper's paintings lacked their dynamism and verve. That restraint seemed to come from within. Even his closest friends found the six foot seven inch Hopper a little daunting.

As the confidence of the twenties gave way to the uncertainties of the thirties and forties, his subjects increasingly became uncommunicative figures, often alone in empty rooms. He translated their small dramas into something timeless and universal—in images of stillness and solitude that suggest but never describe a narrative.
Hopper's work engaged our imaginations by drawing on what was universal in the American experience. They capture silent moments, like frozen frames from the drama of American life."