Art from 'over there'

To start with, a slightly unusual picture from the always ambiguous Edward Hopper.  The fact that it features one person, a woman, sitting alone in an anoymous motel room, is not at all unusual for Hopper, the man who painted 'the man in the street' for 'the man in the street'!  What is unusual is that in this case the woman is actually looking at us.  Normally Hopper's subjects never look at us, nor indeed, do they even look at each other if there are more than one of them.  Mostly what they seem to be doing is looking into themselves.

I like this one also for the way in which it combines the abstract with the real, by which I mean that if you remove the realistic objects from it, the room, the window, the blocks of light and shade on the walls, and the outside 'scenery' could be an abstract painting. 

Here's an example of what I mean:

I like the way he shows both the outside and the inside with the stairs hinting at more spaces beyond.  Also, the contrast of the moving sea and the absolute stillness of the interior.  As so often with Hoppr you are left wondering at the nature of the 'back story' - who lives there, why is it empty and the door wide open?

And next, another of my favourites.  In fact I have a prints of these two pictures hanging on my wall which I bought in New England at the Norman Rockwell Museum:

Sorry about the warning sign across the bottom.

Yes, yes, I know they reek of sentimentality but you always feel better after you've looked at most of Rockwell's pictures and there's nothing wrong with that.  The 'doom 'n' gloom' merchants who relish capturing the squalor of life are entitled to their place in the gallery; but so too are the painters who delight, and who offer us an uplifting image of ourselves.

 

Comments

[Whyaxye]

Amen to your last point. I do genuinely feel uplifted, and I thank you for it. It is good to be reminded of goodness.

[David Duff]

Glad you enjoyed it, 'W'. I particularly like the ones with children in them because the late-middle-aged couple supervising the museum had, as kids, been his models for some of the pictures.

[Andra]

Rockwell is great. Corny - maybe, but it does bring a smile to a person, and that can never be bad.

[David Duff]

But what about Hopper?