to the city, pt.1

Nighthawks, 1942, The Art Institute of Chicago

The family trip to Washington was focused on a stop at the National Gallery of Art, where several shows of some distinction continue through most of January. The first exhibit we attended was a fairly large collection of paintings and watercolors of American artist Edward Hopper. A grand showing of work from one of this nation's greatest painters of the 20th century, heavily attended on a midweek afternoon between Christmas and New Year's.

I've never studied his work before, so it was illuminating to see the depth of his modernism. While he turned his back on both the work of the French Impressionists and other Modernists early in the century, and then again in the middle of the century when Abstract Expressionists ruled the Art World, his compositions and subject matter predate the coming tidal wave of photographic images later in the century. Many of his images have become truly iconic in the pop culture of the present day, Nighthawks being the best known. Years earlier he showed his interest in capturing the color of light falling on the geometric planes of rural farmhouses and barns from Massachusetts and Maine. He would go to seaside resorts that often attracted other painters, and instead of showing ships and the harbor, he concentrated on simple buildings and the land they sat on. Always a realist, Hopper never idealized his landscapes: power poles and other signs of the modern world appear in nearly all these paintings. He was always able to show the beauty in the commonplace, directing our gaze towards  scenes of mystery in everyday life.

Hopper is better known to many of us for his city scapes, such as Nighthawks and New York Movie, Office at Night, Morning Sun, and Chop Suey. Despite the apparent loneliness of his paintings, there is a strong universality to the common stares into space by the silent individuals. It is a recognition that despite the noise and busyness of the urban environment, everyone is ultimately alone with their self and their thoughts. Towards the end of his life, Hopper showed it clearly when he dispensed with the human element and simply painted light on the walls in Sun in an Empty Room.