The Life and Art of Edward Hopper with Christian Conrad

hi everyone and welcome to another art lecture my name is dr. Christian Conrad with the global events being as they are recently I've been looking at the work of the American artist Edward Hopper and kind of reconsidering his work in a modern context please join me as I look at his work historically in reference to his life and we can see the evolution of his painting style thank you hello everyone and welcome to a lecture on Edward Hopper an American artist who worked primarily before 1950 made famous for his city scenes are usually pretty sparse in terms of the amount of people that were in them his most famous painting is Nighthawks that was painted in 1942 this is a easily recognizable very iconic painting in American culture but again it has that sense of isolation that we usually associate with an Edward Hopper painting Edward Hopper was born in 1882 in Nyack New York to an upper middle-class family his boyhood home would later become an art center he showed an aptitude for art at a very early age and his parents encouraged him in this but also wanted him to pursue a career as an illustrator or graphic designer he began his formal education in 1899 through correspondence but very soon after that went to the New York School of Art where he studied under William Merritt chase and the very famous Robert Henry who was instructor to many of the painters of the ashcan School of Art we have several works that are left over from his time as a student including a study of a seated woman where again this is a line drawing but you can see his use of contour within the woman's dress we also have some of his earliest paintings including this wonderful study that he did of a woman and it's very very reminiscent of some of his later treatments of figures where again it seems like the architecture of the space is as much of an interest to Edward Hopper as the individual that he's painting by 1905 he had secured a job as an illustrator and he also takes several trips to Europe around this time as well in 1906 we can see this in one of his paintings Paris street scene and already we can kind of see what he enjoys about painting these urban landscapes again it's the structuring of the urban landscape as much as it is anything he almost has a separation between the the paintings of locations and the paintings of people as we can see here with again a woman dining order or sitting at a Paris cafe then we kind of transition and we go and we look at some of the structural paintings that he does and things like note Redang where again it's very much about the structuring of the building and we have this wall out in front of the church but again there's the sense of isolation already in his work because of the very sparseness or very much lack of any human interaction with the space we also see some of the things that would are very iconic in some of his other paintings things like railroad from 1908 where again the railroad is an important part of early American movements and travel and it becomes a very important part of the art of Edward Hopper we see this tendency both in the paintings that he does in the United States like the El station from 1908 where again the figures almost are completely lost in the background and it's the the urban situation or land that he's very much interested in painting and on another return trip that we have to Europe we can see the Seine River bridge over the same from 1909 and we get that same type of sensation this kind of shows the the influence of some of the Impressionists that he of course would be looking at when he was in Europe he was of course most greatly influenced by Rembrandt and was deeply impressed by the painting the Night Watch returning from Europe hopper will set up a studio in New York in 1913 he participated in the very famous Armory Show where he sold this painting sailing for 250 dollars his first official sale as an artist sadly it is also around this time that his father passes away and the artist himself goes through this struggle to kind of determine what it is that he actually wants to paint we see a lot of wonderful paintings though of New York kind of following the trajectory I have already kind of mentioned where he has this real focus on the architecture and urban planning of a city and less interest in people from around this time there we had this very very wonderful plane ting called Blue Knight from 1914 where again is this kind of surrealism that he set up this bizarre late night kind of situation where it almost looks like the circus folk have come to town we've got clowns and Japanese lanterns hanging and other strange objects we also have a portrait of his mother from 1915 and again we can see his is clear artistic talent but again his kind of lack of a clear interest in a particular subject matter around 1915 growing a little frustrated with painting he turned to printmaking and began creating these wonderful edgings including night on the l-train really focusing more on the psychology of individuals within spaces much more than we would see in his paintings in my opinion he also continued to work as an illustrator this is the more style poster that he created that of course smashed the huns was the title and it was a very good example of the type of work that he actually created in this illustrative setting in comparison with that we have left from around 1916 that again has this very open impressionistic style in terms of how the brush is kind of dancing across the surface of the painting and a real fluidity to how he's actually placing the paint on the canvas from 1921 we have girl at a sewing machine which is thought to be an early break through in terms of his compositions this is one of his first window paintings where he uses a window as a prominent device in the narrative of the painting in the girls sewing you'll notice that she is not observant of the fact that she is being painted as if we were just taking a glimpse through a doorway at an individual he also continues to work in printmaking kind of exploring the psychology of the inner city with things like night shadows where again we have a prominent City Street but we only have but one lonely figure strolling down the street by himself another wonderful painting we have from this period is New York restaurant from 1922 where again very much like girl at a sewing machine it seems as if we're walking through a doorway or glimpsing at something with the people inside not being aware that they're being observed in fact we even have this woman's back as the center of the composition with the person that she's eating with looking over her shoulder in 1923 he becomes reacquainted with a woman named Josephine Nevison who he had first met while living in New York while studying under Robert Henry within a short period of time the two will be married although they had what many would describe as polar opposite personalities with her being more outgoing and liberal and him being more introverted and conservative the two worked very well together and throughout his career she supplies not only help in terms of getting his work out there and galleries and museums but she's also has his constant model with most of the women in his compositions being Josephine nificent it's also from this period that we see him branching out into different forms of paint with him actually embracing watercolor in many of his trips to the Northeast areas like Glouster Massachusetts and also Cape Cod this is a whole other side of his work kind of showing the the coastline and things wonderful things like lighthouses and simple streets in in what we would think of as the Northeast but even within these we have the same kind of structuring where it's the buildings that he's really interested in much less than the individuals that might occupy the space we also see an evolution in terms of his window paintings with apartment house from 1923 where again we have this view through a window into someone's apartment with someone kind of being unaware of the fact that they're being observed and what would be a normal every day activity he'll continue with this work slowly refining his particular style within these parameters and and as we see the the marriage with Josephine really is kind of this turning point not only in terms of sales but in terms of his style again you look in that this beautiful painting but it's really the site of the building that is the focal point much more than anything but we also start to see things like this interior model reading where again we have his wife and we start to see this more intimate side of humanity that we really had not witnessed previously in his paintings I think the addition of his wife really gave him a viewpoint or a vantage point into kind of the psychological aspects that he had been missing with some of his paintings beforehand the other interesting aspect is that the hoppers were voracious travelers and you get these wonderful looks into different parts of the United States between the 20s and 30s just by édouard going to different places this is a watercolor that he actually did in New Mexico and it's really fascinating to kind of look at the architecture and see how much has changed and how much still is relevant when you're thinking about New Mexico here we have adobe houses again another really beautiful watercolor that he did in his trip to the southwest the other interesting thing that we find in Edward Hopper's work from this period is a look into the railroad culture of America with him painting directly trains but also looking at different aspects of culture that you would find around the railroad at this time things like this next painting the very very famous house by the railroad from 1925 and if it looks a little bit like the house from psycho you're not the first person to see that kind of similarity but again this is this lone house kind of off by itself and you can see the railroad tracks in front of it the other thing we see is is the culture of the time things like this wonderful painting the bootleggers from 1925 where again we see these gentlemen kind of what we can imagine is is moving some bootleg liquor from one location to the next but again we have this house as a prominent feature even in a story about bootleggers it's also around this period that I think Edward Hopper really hits his stride in terms of painting when we look at beautiful works like 11:00 a.m. from 1926 this really has the power and impact of this kind of sense of isolation that one might feel in this city and again we're going back to the motive of this window in this this figure pausing from their daily life to look out the window and see the street in front of them and we don't actually ever get to see what's on the street we're more fixated on the individual and in some ways can find ourselves within that same kind of reference point we continue this examination of psychology within the the figures of his canvass with sunday 1926 were again we have this lone figure almost in meditation in front of some storefronts and we have to ask ourselves where are the rest of the people in this scene while this lone figure almost looks like he's contemplating being the last person on earth the other interesting thing that we see from Edward Hopper's work and and we can see this very famously an automat from 1927 is kind of the role or relationship of women within this New York Society of the 20s and 30s here we have automat we have this lone woman sitting and I absolutely love the reflection of the lights in the front window leading off in almost both directions simultaneously we also go back to kind of these lonelier scenes with things like the drugstore where we get this wonderful view of a storefront from 1927 you've seen at night and again this kind of eeriness without any figures there you'll notice these larger kind of Christmas bulbs hanging down in the front window giving us an indication of the time of year as well Edward Hopper continues to travel to the Northeast and this will be something that he does throughout his life continuing to paint lighthouses in the a texture that is found in Maine and other parts of America this is a popular genre of art and painting at this period in time and then we returned to this city and and we have almost a balcony type of view where it almost looks like we're looking out a window down onto the streets and and the the people almost seem like tiny ants where again just a few for the massive amount of architecture that we're looking at we then switch gears and we go to two on the Isle which was actually a painting that he sold for around $1,500 and this enabled him to buy an automobile and both him and his wife could then travel even farther and more readily and continue their work and enjoyment of making art going to night windows from 1928 we again have this almost a peeping tom look if you don't mind the phrase into someone's room and and again almost from a across the way from another window focusing event again on the city Manhattan Bridge loop from 28 showing the wonderful architecture of New York at the time and our one lonely figure kind of walking off in the distance the other thing that you'll notice from this period is an expansion of the colors that Edward Hopper seems to use and one of the kind of really hit paintings from this period chop suey you can see this whole range of colors a whole rainbow that we really didn't witness and a lot of his earlier works the saturation of the blues in particular on the back of the woman's head is kind of a highlight from what we would normally experience from an Edward Hopper this is continued when he does railroad on a sunset where we're returning to our you know our idea of the railroad but all of a sudden there's this whole wealth of color in the sunset above the hill line in other works we return to the city landscape that we know so well but the thing that we'll notice is now he doesn't even bother to put the one isolated figure within the landscape and this we have a barber's pole that in some way stands in for a person but again this is an example of a city street with absolutely no one on it also from 1930 we have his last self-portrait or the last one that he worked on you can see kind of the range and complexity that he's now incorporating into his work though the whole range of colors that we can kind of see hidden within his face the greens and oranges leading down to that beautiful blue shirt as I mentioned before a lot of his paintings from this time kind of give us a look into what women young women were doing within the the city around the 1930s and again this is kind of one of the few times where we have women in the workforce so you actually get to see women in different capacities and different jobs that they would have had in New York during this time period we see this idea again in the painting barbershop which is one of my favorite paintings from this time period it's really kind of a fun painting if you look at the left side we have a stairway coming down with this handrail that's all the way in the foreground and then over on the right you actually have the activity of the barber within the barbershop but the focus is really the woman which we will just guess is the barbers wife sitting at a table reading a newspaper but you can only imagine the different activities that this woman would do within the capacity of the barbershop itself another point of significance is the fact that we are in the 1930s and we are dealing with a severe economic downturn in the Great Depression although Edward Hopper was still able to sell some works during the Depression just like every other artist he SiC he did have a downturn when we turn our attention to a hotel room from 1931 I think that this is really this almost intimate look into the life of Edward Hopper where again were reminded that that is most likely his wife and and kind of the scene where it's a very common thing that most people would do when they travel taking this moment out to kind of relax but it has this deep psychology to it that again you would only really experience a first-hand perspective we also then moved to other wonderful just scenic scenes like this one giving us a scene from the railroad tracks once again but giving us an indication of what the architecture and and the landscape looks like in the northern part of New York by 1930 they had rented a house in Cape Cod and they would go there every summer spending essentially the summers in Cape Cod in the rest of the year in New York here we get a different vantage point of the rooftops of these city buildings rather than looking at the buildings themselves you can almost imagine Edward Hopper on the roof of his apartment building again painting there in the beautiful light of this city we see a continued focus of interest on the roofline of these cities in room in Brooklyn from the 32 where as we look out the window our viewpoint is really just the rooftops of the buildings across the way which are nicely juxtaposed by the vase with flowers Edward Hopper continued to be very successful during this period and in 1933 he actually had a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art we can see kind of the continuation of his career beyond this point creating a lot of his more intimate works and in my opinion his works actually kind of merged towards surrealism towards the later part of his career this is a wonderful painting of his wife called Joe painting from 1936 a reminder that she is an artist herself and continued to work but this is one of the few paintings that we have where it is just a portrait of his wife rather than his wife posing as one of the individuals as we continue to look at Edward Hopper's paintings of New York City we see a changing dynamic within the city itself we now see things like traffic lights and a much more complex signage than we had witnessed in previous paintings even things as complex as the drugstore when we start to look inside of some of the theaters like the Sheridan theater painted in 1937 we see these massive massive interior spaces these truly were the entertainment palaces of their time and it's also a reminder of how important movie theaters were in American history compartment car painted in 1938 is one of my favorite paintings from this period it again kind of just shows what we very familiar with with Edward Hopper we have a window we have a train but if you look at the model it's very obvious that that is Joe and he's really not doing anything to really hide the fact and and I think this is actually again very autobiographical as many of his paintings kind of are towards the end of his career it's also from around 1939 that we start to see the inclusion of a second figure with the first figure in most of his kind of settings what I mean by that is usually we're concentrating on a single figure in the psychology of that individual but in paintings like Cape Cod evening and again a reminder that they would summer in Cape Cod we see two figures together and in this case even with a dog and it's very hard not to kind of put those two individuals as being the artist and his wife and and again kind of showing a biography of what their life might be like he does continue to paint the single figure in kind of this isolated psychological moment as we can see from New York movie from 1939 where we have our uh sure again in the blue outfit kind of a by herself and we're not sure what she's thinking about her if she's watching the movie or what she's exactly doing and that's kind of the interesting and really kind of provocative aspect of the painting as it puts you in this situation where again you're kind of guessing about what might be occurring another very popular painting from this period is gas from 1940 that shows a lonely gas station employee on what would be kind of thought of as a rural back road gas station and the signage and the gas pumps themselves are very much reflection of the time period that it was painted again this is this wonderful kind of call back to American nostalgia I mentioned earlier about how he starts using more than one figure and this is another wonderful example where again we see a couple together in a space rather than that individual figure that we would normally be accustomed to what's interesting about this painting though is even though we have these two figures they don't really seem to be highly interactive and in fact they almost seem like they're both dealing with their own individual aspects of isolationism and in 1942 we get to the famous Nighthawks which in my opinion is is not only a masterpiece but a masterpiece of Edward Hopper's paintings it really reflects all of the different aspects that we've kind of talked about rolled into one single painting we have the wonderful window that he's very famous for but we also have the isolated street that he's also so famous for and when we look at the interior we have four different individuals but if we look closely what we'll notice is we have one individual that's kind of servicing two groups and in those two groups what we have is one person who's by himself again this kind of lonely isolation and then we have two individuals together this couple kind of reflecting what he's talking about in kind of his later career the psychology of these people together rather than the individual by themselves and part of the psychology of this painting is also the time period that it was created in of course the United States is engaged in World War two and a lot of people have found this as kind of the commentary that a section of the populace that the male's of a certain age were of course absent from America and were overseas fighting in combat from Nighthawks which is really to be considered the masterpiece of his career Edward Hopper continues to paint the psychological ideas that we're so familiar with in a similar way with hotel lobby we have a couple together and then we have a lone figure sitting by herself in the foreground and again this kind of balance of the psychology of the individual versus a group is something that he plays with often in his later paintings with summertime from 1943 again we have his wife Joe standing in front of what we would assume to be in New York City front building front with an open window very simple painting but then we have beautiful things like this and this is obviously one of my favorite paintings Joe in Wyoming he looks like he's sitting in the back seat drawing her or painting her I should say while she's painting a mountain range off in the distance this is actually one of my absolute favorite Edward Hopper paintings just because it really just shows the simplicity and wonderfulness of their relationship and how these two people probably traveled all throughout the United States with just the goal of enjoying each other's company and creating beautiful art along the way hopper paints less and less as his career continues and as he starts to become older and older with much of his work kind of revolving around similar things that we've seen before this is another wonderful travel piece that we have again done in watercolor and looking again at many of the paintings that we have like Pennsylvania coal town he really is kind of just reinforcing a lot of the thematics that we've seen in previous paintings of the lonely individual again with a beautiful American architecture usually in the form of homes but we also see intimate scenes like this one and some are evening from 1947 is very very almost like a kind of a sore thumb because this is the first time we've seen kind of a younger couple and we've got this classical situation of the young couple on the porch and of course we have the window in the door and we can almost see one of the parents peeking through a continuation can be found in 7:00 a.m. 1948 where we again just have this very very simplistic scene with a clock on the wall indicating the time but again this absence of individuals almost moving back to where he was earlier in his career towards the end of his career the surrealism that I mentioned earlier really becomes apparent and we look at high noon from 1949 we have a house that would be very typical thing for him to paint and we have a woman standing in the doorway but the house is located on this very very dreamlike plain where there isn't anything really else around it whatsoever he combines this with using regular motifs like Cape Cod morning from 1950 where again we have our person kind of silently being observed looking out a window towards something we're not a hundred percent sure of what it is but a lot of it is about his use of light on the side of the buildings one of his favorite things to paint some are in the city from 1950 I always feel would be great in an advertisement for air-conditioning it's almost like you can just feel the heat in this room with the gentleman laying face down and the woman again looking out the window in one of his more surrealistic paintings we have this wonderful rooms by the sea from 1951 where it looks like the ocean has overtaken the land and the front door leads directly out into the water but you also have to be just admire the angles of the painting that he's using in the interior kind of returning to paintings that he of course had some success with earlier we see first row Orchestra from 1951 and admittedly even from the artists own interviews he has stated that towards the end of his career he had trouble finding subject matter that he wanted to paint in hotel by a railroad from 1952 I again see a very biographical chapter from Edward Hopper's life and again if we think of the fact that both him and his wife have aged over the period of this lecture this almost seems like where they would have been at this point in their life in office in a small city from 1953 we again returned to the individual in the city looking out the window but we've kind of moved forward to the 1950s and it's a very interesting painting because if you look at it closely what you'll notice is in the background you have these kind of brown older buildings but surrounding them is these kind of white facades of new architecture including the one that the individual is look or is looking from to me this is always kind of a symbol of the new architecture of the city that's moving in at the same time you have the individual kind of looking at contemplating their past I always feel that one of his last great masterpieces was Western motel from 1957 in it we see just kind of normal things we would see in the Hopper painting we have the window we have the woman in the center but when you really look closely at this it's really a study of different forms of lines you go from the bed to the automobile onto the road and then eventually to the hillside each one of them kind of having a different sense of place within the painting itself one of the more interesting paintings from late in his career as people of the Sun from 1960 where we actually have a larger group of people and again they're all kind of looking off in the distance and almost the surrealistic space where we're not a hundred percent sure where they're looking and if you look very closely we have a gentleman sitting in the back row who's actually reading and not looking in the same direction as everyone else one of the last paintings we have from Edward Hopper is to comedians from 1965 and I always think this is such an amazing painting to kind of end one's career with because again from his biography we know the intimate relationship that he had with his wife and how much she was a part of his work and when we look at the two figures on the stage it's very hard not to kind of see the artisan his wife standing there almost giving their last bow in their final act before they left us Edward Hopper dies in 1967 and his wife Josephine passes away shortly after he does you

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Length: 33min 39sec (2019 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 05 2020