Edward Hopper: Capturing Private, Confinement Moments
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- October 19th, 2009 |
- Comments
I have a fascination with the paintings of the American artist, Edward Hopper. Somehow&ndashwhether by model, imagination or case matter&ndashhe is able to create the most compelling and evocative scenes, which affect my imagination.
One of my favourites is Automat an oil painted by him in 1927.
A adolescent Black with a old felt hat sits absolutely alone in a barren restaurant drinking a cup of coffee. I look at this and immediately feel her isolation and loneliness as if it were my own. Is she running away? What thoughts are in her mind as she stares into the cup?
Right away, Hopper has got us speculating, as he does with all his paintings. Where did she come from? Where is she going? You’re caught right in the middle of a account which you can “read” backwards or forwards in time. I was so enamored this painting that the Black in it became the inspiration for a character in a abbreviated account, The Criminal, and now a novel which I am writing. Smitten by her isolation and consciousness containment, I called her Celia.
I examine the painting to accompany what emotions Hopper creates and how he does it. Behind the confinement Black is a large pane, blackened by an impenetrably gloomy night. The lights or reflections of lights recede into the background giving a murky, tunnel-like effect, leading to nowhere. The radiator, crouching at the left of the painting, seems just as isolated as the girl in the composition, but almost looks more communicative than her. The lonely, confinement moment is caught in time&ndashpermanently engraved on my mind.
Just believe how many stories could grow from this one painting! Will individual, a boyfriend or family member enter that door, hoping to bring her back? If no one comes, where will she go as presently as she drinks her coffee? To a dingy hotel room? Onto a train to New York? That would be just like so many other Hopper paintings, which so often depict hotel lobbies, motels and railway cars. Or maybe she will change her mind and go back home.
Perhaps this painting speaks to me of the apprehension of the chartless as we proceed moment to moment finished life. So often, we are insecure and tentative, fearing to adventure out into the strange. So again, maybe the girl is incapable of reaching out to others. After all, for me, Celia &ndash the character in my account who was inspired by this painting &ndash grew into a character that was desperate to get free of her self-imposed isolation from the class. And so, for me &ndash art, painting, art, and photography are so often an inspiration for writing. Of course, all art [whether it is painting or writing or music] speaks of its own time &ndash that is, the time and place in which the artist lived.
Hopper painted much of his activity in the decade, decade and forties of the last century, when rapid industrialization and urbanization were forcing people from their old dwellings and old distance of living. Consequently, so many people felt lost and displaced. And yet, the emotions evoked by his activity are coupling, whatsoever the time and place. Great art transcends time and place and touches a nerve in us all, which communicates those coupling emotions and ideas to us. Just like a photograph, Automat is a permanent moment in time existing in a class which, at the same time, seems so transeunt.
And that is why much a painting as the Automat inspires me even today.