ART/ARCHITECTURE - Edward Hopper — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Edward Hopper is a painter of gloomy paintings that don't make us feel gloomy.
2. 0:04Instead, they help us to recognize the loneliness that so often lies, at the heart of sadness.
3. 0:10In his Automat
4. 0:11women sits alone drinking a cup of coffee
5. 0:13It's dark outside, and judging by her hat and coat, it's cold.
6. 0:17The room is large, empty and brightly lit, the decor is functional,
7. 0:22and she seems slightly self-conscious, and little a afraid.
8. 0:26Perhaps, she's not used to sitting alone in a public space
9. 0:29something seems to have gone wrong,
10. 0:31and the viewer is invited to invent stories for her
11. 0:35of betrayal, or loss
12. 0:37She maybe trying not let her handshake, as she takes the coffee cup to her lips,
13. 0:42It might be eleven at night, on a dark February night,
14. 0:45in North America
15. 0:47Automat is a picture of sadness, and yet it is not a sad picture.
16. 0:51There can be something enticing, even charming, about anonymous diners.
17. 0:55The lack of domesticity, offers a relief, from what can be, the fullest comforts of home.
18. 1:00It may be easier to give a way sadness here,
19. 1:03than in a cozy living room with wallpapers, and framed photos.
20. 1:06Home often appears to have betrayed Hoppers characters.
21. 1:09Something has happened there, that forces them out in to the night, and on to the road.
22. 1:14The 24 hour diner, the train station waiting room, and the motel,
23. 1:18are all sanctuaries for those, who for sound reasons,
24. 1:20have failed to find their place, in a normal world of relationships, or community.
25. 1:25Hopper's ability to portray solitude,
26. 1:28came from his own familiarity with it.
27. 1:30He was born in 1882, in a ship builders town, Upper Nyack, New York.
28. 1:35He lived a nice, middle class childhood, as a son of a merchant.
29. 1:39And, yet inside, Hopper often felt awkward, indeed a bit like an outsider.
30. 1:44In one early portrait, we see him gazing, almost distrustfully, at the viewer.
31. 1:49Hopper longed to be an artist, and yet his parents insisted,
32. 1:52he trained an commercial art, to keep afloat financially.
33. 1:55He hated it, and to escape, he took several trips to Paris,
34. 1:59under the pretense of studying french art.
35. 2:02But in truth, he didn't feel a connection to the salons,
36. 2:05he absorbs some of the impressionist, but forgot Picasso's name.
37. 2:09He preferred to be outdoors,
38. 2:11watching children playing in the Luxembourg gardens,
39. 2:13listening to concerts and --.
40. 2:15or travelling up and down the Seine, by boat
41. 2:17In 1913, when Hopper was 31,
42. 2:20he settled in Greenwich Village, in New York,
43. 2:22where he would stay for the rest of his life.
44. 2:24This is where he discovered how crowded, and yet isolated, life could be in the city.
45. 2:29The population of American cities was skyrocketing,
46. 2:32and yet, they were inhabited by passing strangers, who were increasingly alienated from one another.
47. 2:37Hopper would ride the L-train, and look down at, in his own words,
48. 2:42dark glimpses of office interiors, that were so fleeting as to leave fresh and vivid impressions on my mind.
49. 2:48In each room, a separate drama was unfolding, an unnoticed oblivious island, in the sea of people.
50. 2:55Although Hopper painted a New York for over a decade,
51. 2:58his paintings failed to sell, and he often struggled to find inspiration.
52. 3:03Then in his early-forties, he met a beautiful social painter, named Josephine.
53. 3:07Edward and Josephine took excursions to paint by the sea, they went to the movies, they went to the theatre,
54. 3:13and eventually, they got married.
55. 3:15Hopper was no longer, so alone.
56. 3:17But, of course, as most of us discover in our relationships,
57. 3:20Hopper's marriage didn't permanently end his feelings of isolation, and woe.
58. 3:25He still felt lonely at times.
59. 3:26He and his wife, couldn't quite figure out their sex life,
60. 3:30and she often seemed to prefer, the company of her cat.
61. 3:33Hopper discovered that even, when somebody loves us very much,
62. 3:36There is always some essential part of us, that remains alone.
63. 3:40It is, this recognition that makes his paintings so compelling,
64. 3:43and indeed, by addressing loneliness, the art can at it's most therapeutic.
65. 3:48Consoling us, and reassuring us that --, and sorrow are normal,
66. 3:52and that we are neither strange nor shamefull, for experiencing them.
67. 3:56Sad and lonely art, allows us as viewers, to witness an echo, of our own grieves and disappointments.
68. 4:01And therefor, to feel less personally persecuted, and pursued by them.
69. 4:05Hopper's art helps us to notice, the landscapes of loneliness in our own lives.
70. 4:10A side effect, of coming into contact with any great artist,
71. 4:14is that we come more aware of the things that the painter would had been receptive to.
72. 4:18Nowadays we've come to accustomed to what one might call a "hopperesque",
73. 4:21a quality found, not only in the North American places that Hopper visited, but anywhere in the developed world,
74. 4:28where there are motels, and service stations, roadside diners, and airports, bus stations,
75. 4:34and all night supermarkets.
76. 4:36For example, service stations readily evoke Hopper's famous "Gas", painted thirteen years after "Automat".
77. 4:43In this painting, we see a petrol station on it's own, in the impending darkness.
78. 4:47The isolation is made poignant and enticing.
79. 4:51The darkness that spreads like fog from the right of the canvas,
80. 4:56contrast with the security of the station.
81. 4:58Against the backdrop of Night in the Wild Woods,
82. 5:01and the last outpost of humanity, a sense of kinship seems easier to develop, than in daylight in the city.
83. 5:08Hopper loved the introspective mood that travelling often puts us in to.
84. 5:11He liked painting the atmosphere inside half empty train carriages, making their way across the landscape.
85. 5:18But we can stand outside our normal selves, and look over our lives in a way that we don't,
86. 5:23in more settled circumstances.
87. 5:25We have all known the atmosphere inside Hopper's car C No. 293
88. 5:29that perhaps we have not recognized it as well, as when Hopper has held the mirror up to it.
89. 5:34After Hopper's marriage, his professional life suddenly improved as well.
90. 5:38He felt more creative,
91. 5:39it was the era of the great depression, and yet his paintings began to sell.
92. 5:44Critics rated, museums bought his work, and he received awards.
93. 5:47Yet despite his succes, he remained deeply introverted,
94. 5:51and instead of escaping his solitude, he embraced it.
95. 5:54For decades, he turned down the awards, rejected the speaking opportunities,
96. 5:58and lived simply, out of the public eye.
97. 6:01He died in 1967,
98. 6:03and yet his art remains, and retains the ability to help us to see, the loneliness in our own lives,
99. 6:09from a wiser, and more mature perspective.
100. 6:12Oscar Wilde, once remarked that there had been no fog in London, until Whistler painted it.
101. 6:17There was of course lots of fog,
102. 6:19it was just that it was harder to notice it's qualities, without the example of Whistler,
103. 6:24did direct our gaze.
104. 6:26What was said of Whistler,
105. 6:27we may well say of Hopper.
106. 6:29That there were far fewer strangely haunting,
107. 6:31and consolingly beautiful service stations, and train carriages, motels and dinets,
108. 6:38before Hopper began to paint.