Aziz Art Sep 2019
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<strong>Aziz</strong> <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Sep</strong> <strong>2019</strong><br />
Edward Hopper<br />
Nadim Karam
1-Edward Hopper<br />
20-Nadim Karam<br />
Director: <strong>Aziz</strong> Anzabi<br />
Editor : Nafiseh Yaghoubi<br />
Translator : Asra Yaghoubi<br />
Research: Zohreh Nazari<br />
Iranian art department:<br />
Mohadese Yaghoubi<br />
http://www.aziz-anzabi.com
Edward Hopper<br />
July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967<br />
was an American realist painter<br />
and printmaker. While he is best<br />
known for his oil paintings, he was<br />
equally proficient as a<br />
watercolorist and printmaker in<br />
etching. Both in his urban and<br />
rural scenes, his spare and finely<br />
calculated renderings reflected his<br />
personal vision of modern<br />
American life.<br />
Early life<br />
Hopper was born in 1882 in<br />
Upper Nyack, New York, a yachtbuilding<br />
center on the Hudson<br />
River north of New York City.He<br />
was one of two children of a<br />
comfortably well-to-do family. His<br />
parents, of mostly Dutch ancestry,<br />
were Elizabeth Griffiths Smith and<br />
Garret Henry Hopper, a dry-goods<br />
merchant.Although not so<br />
successful as his forebears, Garrett<br />
provided well for his two children<br />
with considerable help from his<br />
wife's inheritance. He retired at<br />
age forty-nine.Edward and his<br />
only sister Marion attended both<br />
private and public schools. They<br />
were raised in a strict Baptist<br />
home.His father had a mild nature,<br />
and the household was dominated<br />
by women: Hopper's mother,<br />
grandmother, sister, and maid.<br />
His birthplace and boyhood home<br />
was listed on the National Register<br />
of Historic Places in 2000. It is now<br />
operated as the Edward Hopper<br />
House <strong>Art</strong> Center.It serves as a<br />
nonprofit community cultural<br />
center featuring exhibitions,<br />
workshops, lectures, performances,<br />
and special events.<br />
Hopper was a good student in<br />
grade school and showed talent in<br />
drawing at age five. He readily<br />
absorbed his father's intellectual<br />
tendencies and love of French and<br />
Russian cultures. He also<br />
demonstrated his mother's artistic<br />
heritage. Hopper's parents<br />
encouraged his art and kept him<br />
amply supplied with materials,<br />
instructional magazines, and<br />
illustrated books. By his teens, he<br />
was working in pen-and-ink,<br />
charcoal, watercolor, and oil—<br />
drawing from nature as well as<br />
making political cartoons. In 1895,<br />
he created his first signed oil<br />
painting, Rowboat in Rocky Cove. It<br />
shows his early interest in nautical<br />
subjects<br />
1
In his early self-portraits, Hopper<br />
tended to represent himself as<br />
skinny, ungraceful, and homely.<br />
Though a tall and quiet teenager,<br />
his prankish sense of humor found<br />
outlet in his art, sometimes in<br />
depictions of immigrants or of<br />
women dominating men in comic<br />
situations. Later in life, he mostly<br />
depicted women as the figures in<br />
his paintings.In high school, he<br />
dreamed of being a naval architect,<br />
but after graduation he declared<br />
his intention to follow an art<br />
career. Hopper's parents insisted<br />
that he study commercial art to<br />
have a reliable means of income.<br />
In developing his self-image and<br />
individualistic philosophy of life,<br />
Hopper was influenced by the<br />
writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson.<br />
He later said, "I admire him<br />
greatly...I read him over and over<br />
again."<br />
Hopper began art studies with a<br />
correspondence course in 1899.<br />
Soon he transferred to the New<br />
York School of <strong>Art</strong> and Design, the<br />
forerunner of Parsons The New<br />
School for Design. There he studied<br />
for six years, with teachers<br />
including William Merritt Chase,<br />
who instructed him in oil<br />
painting.Early on, Hopper modeled<br />
his style after Chase and French<br />
Impressionist masters Édouard<br />
Manet and Edgar Degas.Sketching<br />
from live models proved a<br />
challenge and a shock for the<br />
conservatively raised Hopper.<br />
Another of his teachers, artist<br />
Robert Henri, taught life class.<br />
Henri encouraged his students to<br />
use their art to "make a stir in the<br />
world". He also advised his<br />
students, "It isn't the subject that<br />
counts but what you feel about it"<br />
and "Forget about art and paint<br />
pictures of what interests you in<br />
life."In this manner, Henri<br />
influenced Hopper, as well as future<br />
artists George Bellows and<br />
Rockwell Kent. He encouraged<br />
them to imbue a modern spirit in<br />
their work. Some artists in Henri's<br />
circle, including John Sloan, became<br />
members of "The Eight", also<br />
known as the Ashcan School of<br />
American <strong>Art</strong>.Hopper's first existing<br />
oil painting to hint at his use of<br />
interiors as a theme was Solitary<br />
Figure in a Theater (c.1904).During<br />
his student years, he also painted<br />
dozens of nudes, still life studies,<br />
landscapes, and portraits, including<br />
his self-portraits.
In 1905, Hopper landed a parttime<br />
job with an advertising<br />
agency, where he created cover<br />
designs for trademagazines.<br />
Hopper came to detest illustration.<br />
He was bound to it by economic<br />
necessity until the mid-1920s.<br />
He temporarily escaped by making<br />
three trips to Europe, each<br />
centered in Paris, ostensibly to<br />
study the art scene there. In fact,<br />
however, he studied alone and<br />
seemed mostly unaffected by the<br />
new currents in art. Later he said<br />
that he "didn't remember having<br />
heard of Picasso at all."He was<br />
highly impressed by Rembrandt,<br />
particularly his Night Watch, which<br />
he said was "the most wonderful<br />
thing of his I have seen; it's past<br />
belief in its reality."<br />
Hopper began painting urban and<br />
architectural scenes in a dark<br />
palette. Then he shifted to the<br />
lighter palette of the<br />
Impressionists before returning to<br />
the darker palette with which he<br />
was comfortable. Hopper later<br />
said, "I got over that and later<br />
things done in Paris were more the<br />
kind of things I do now."Hopper<br />
spent much of his time drawing<br />
street and café scenes, and going<br />
to the theater and opera. Unlike<br />
many of his contemporaries who<br />
imitated the abstract cubist<br />
experiments, Hopper was attracted<br />
to realist art. Later, he admitted to<br />
no European influences other than<br />
French engraver Charles Méryon,<br />
whose moody Paris scenes Hopper<br />
imitated.<br />
Years of struggle<br />
After returning from his last<br />
European trip, Hopper rented a<br />
studio in New York City, where he<br />
struggled to define his own style.<br />
Reluctantly, he returned to<br />
illustration to support himself.<br />
Being a freelancer, Hopper was<br />
forced to solicit for projects, and<br />
had to knock on the doors of<br />
magazine and agency offices to find<br />
business.His painting languished:<br />
"it's hard for me to decide what I<br />
want to paint. I go for months<br />
without finding it sometimes. It<br />
comes slowly."His fellow illustrator<br />
Walter Tittle described Hopper's<br />
depressed emotional state in<br />
sharper terms, seeing his friend<br />
"suffering...from long periods of<br />
unconquerable inertia, sitting for<br />
days at a time before his easel in<br />
helpless unhappiness, unable to<br />
raise a hand to break the spell."
In 1912, Hopper traveled to<br />
Gloucester, Massachusetts, to<br />
seek some inspiration and made<br />
his first outdoor paintings in<br />
America.He painted Squam Light,<br />
the first of many lighthouse<br />
paintings to come.<br />
In 1913, at the Armory Show,<br />
Hopper earned $250 when he<br />
sold his first painting, Sailing<br />
(1911), which he had painted<br />
over an earlier self-portrait.<br />
Hopper was thirty-one, and<br />
although he hoped his first sale<br />
would lead to others in short<br />
order, his career would not catch<br />
on for many more years.He<br />
continued to participate in group<br />
exhibitions at smaller venues,<br />
such as the MacDowell Club of<br />
New York.Shortly after his father's<br />
death that same year, Hopper<br />
moved to the 3 Washington<br />
Square North apartment in the<br />
Greenwich Village section of<br />
Manhattan, where he would live<br />
for the rest of his life.<br />
The following year he received a<br />
commission to create some movie<br />
posters and handle publicity for a<br />
movie company.Although he did<br />
not like the illustration work,<br />
Hopper was a lifelong devotee of<br />
the cinema and the theatre, both of<br />
which he treated as subjects for his<br />
paintings. Each form influenced his<br />
compositional methods.<br />
At an impasse over his oil paintings,<br />
in 1915 Hopper turned to etching.<br />
By 1923 he had produced most of<br />
his approximately 70 works in this<br />
medium, many of urban scenes of<br />
both Paris and New York.He also<br />
produced some posters for the war<br />
effort, as well as continuing with<br />
occasional commercial<br />
projects.When he could, Hopper<br />
did some outdoor watercolors on<br />
visits to New England, especially at<br />
the art colonies at Ogunquit, and<br />
Monhegan Island.<br />
During the early 1920s his etchings<br />
began to receive public recognition.<br />
They expressed some of his later<br />
themes, as in Night on the El Train<br />
(couples in silence), Evening Wind<br />
(solitary female), and The Catboat<br />
(simple nautical scene).<br />
Two notable oil paintings of this<br />
time were New York Interior (1921)<br />
and New York Restaurant (1922).He<br />
also painted two of his many<br />
"window" paintings to come: Girl at<br />
Sewing Machine and Moonlight<br />
Interior
oth of which show a figure<br />
(clothed or nude) near a window<br />
of an apartment viewed as gazing<br />
out or from the point of view from<br />
the outside looking in.<br />
Although these were frustrating<br />
years, Hopper gained some<br />
recognition. In 1918, Hopper was<br />
awarded the U.S. Shipping Board<br />
Prize for his war poster, "Smash the<br />
Hun." He participated in three<br />
exhibitions: in 1917 with the<br />
Society of Independent <strong>Art</strong>ists, in<br />
January 1920 (a one-man<br />
exhibition at the Whitney Studio<br />
Club, which was the precursor to<br />
the Whitney Museum), and in<br />
1922 (again with the Whitney<br />
Studio Club). In 1923, Hopper<br />
received two awards for his<br />
etchings: the Logan Prize from the<br />
Chicago Society of Etchers, and the<br />
W. A. Bryan Prize.<br />
Marriage and breakthrough<br />
By 1923, Hopper's slow climb<br />
finally produced a breakthrough.<br />
He re-encountered Josephine<br />
Nivison, an artist and former<br />
student of Robert Henri, during a<br />
summer painting trip in<br />
Gloucester, Massachusetts. They<br />
were opposites: she was short,<br />
open, gregarious, sociable, and<br />
liberal, while he was tall, secretive,<br />
shy, quiet, introspective, and<br />
conservative.They married a year<br />
later. She remarked: "Sometimes<br />
talking to Eddie is just like dropping<br />
a stone in a well, except that it<br />
doesn't thump when it hits<br />
bottom."She subordinated her<br />
career to his and shared his<br />
reclusive life style. The rest of their<br />
lives revolved around their spare<br />
walk-up apartment in the city and<br />
their summers in South Truro on<br />
Cape Cod. She managed his career<br />
and his interviews, was his primary<br />
model, and was his life companion.<br />
With Nivison's help, six of Hopper's<br />
Gloucester watercolors were<br />
admitted to an exhibit at the<br />
Brooklyn Museum in 1923. One of<br />
them, The Mansard Roof, was<br />
purchased by the museum for its<br />
permanent collection for the sum<br />
of $100. The critics generally raved<br />
about his work; one stated, "What<br />
vitality, force and directness!<br />
Observe what can be done with the<br />
homeliest subject."Hopper sold all<br />
his watercolors at a one-man show<br />
the following year and finally<br />
decided to put illustration behind<br />
him.
The artist had demonstrated his<br />
ability to transfer his attraction to<br />
Parisian architecture to American<br />
urban and rural architecture.<br />
According to Boston Museum of<br />
Fine <strong>Art</strong>s curator Carol Troyen,<br />
"Hopper really liked the way these<br />
houses, with their turrets and<br />
towers and porches and mansard<br />
roofs and ornament cast<br />
wonderful shadows. He always<br />
said that his favorite thing was<br />
painting sunlight on the side of a<br />
house."<br />
At forty-one, Hopper received<br />
further recognition for his work.<br />
He continued to harbor bitterness<br />
about his career, later turning<br />
down appearances and<br />
awards.With his financial stability<br />
secured by steady sales, Hopper<br />
would live a simple, stable life and<br />
continue creating art in his<br />
personal style for four more<br />
decades.<br />
His Two on the Aisle (1927) sold<br />
for a personal record $1,500,<br />
enabling Hopper to purchase an<br />
automobile, which he used to<br />
make field trips to remote areas of<br />
New England. In 1929, he produced<br />
Chop Suey and Railroad Sunset. The<br />
following year, art patron Stephen<br />
Clark donated House by the<br />
Railroad (1925) to the Museum of<br />
Modern <strong>Art</strong>, the first oil painting<br />
that it acquired for its<br />
collection.Hopper painted his last<br />
self-portrait in oil around 1930.<br />
Although Josephine posed for many<br />
of his paintings, she sat for only one<br />
formal oil portrait by her husband,<br />
Jo Painting (1936).<br />
Hopper fared better than many<br />
other artists during the Great<br />
Depression. His stature took a<br />
sharp rise in 1931 when major<br />
museums, including the Whitney<br />
Museum of American <strong>Art</strong> and the<br />
Metropolitan Museum of <strong>Art</strong>, paid<br />
thousands of dollars for his works.<br />
He sold 30 paintings that year,<br />
including 13 watercolors.The<br />
following year he participated in<br />
the first Whitney Annual, and he<br />
continued to exhibit in every<br />
annual at the museum for the rest<br />
of his life.In 1933, the Museum of<br />
Modern <strong>Art</strong> gave Hopper his first<br />
large-scale retrospective.<br />
In 1930, the Hoppers rented a<br />
cottage in South Truro, on Cape<br />
Cod.
They returned every summer for<br />
the rest of their lives, building a<br />
summer house there in 1934.<br />
From there, they would take<br />
driving<br />
trips into other areas when<br />
Hopper needed to search for<br />
fresh material to paint. In the<br />
summers of 1937 and 1938, the<br />
couple spent extended sojourns<br />
on Wagon Wheels Farm in South<br />
Royalton, Vermont, where Hopper<br />
painted a series of watercolors<br />
along the White River.<br />
however, he suffered a period of<br />
relative inactivity. He admitted: "I<br />
wish I could paint more. I get sick of<br />
reading and going to the<br />
movies."During the next two<br />
decades, his health faltered, and he<br />
had several prostate surgeries and<br />
other medical problems.But, in the<br />
1950s and early 1960s, he created<br />
several more major works,<br />
including First Row Orchestra<br />
(1951); as well as Morning Sun and<br />
Hotel by a Railroad, both in 1952;<br />
and Intermission in 1963.<br />
These scenes are atypical among<br />
Hopper's mature works, as most<br />
are "pure" landscapes, devoid of<br />
architecture or human figures.<br />
First Branch of the White River<br />
(1938), now in the Museum of<br />
Fine <strong>Art</strong>s, Boston, is the most<br />
well-known of Hopper's Vermont<br />
landscapes.<br />
Hopper was very productive<br />
through the 1930s and early<br />
1940s, producing among many<br />
important works New York Movie<br />
(1939), Girlie Show (1941),<br />
Nighthawks (1942), Hotel Lobby<br />
(1943), and Morning in a City<br />
(1944). During the late 1940s,<br />
Death<br />
Hopper died in his studio near<br />
Washington Square in New York<br />
City on May 15, 1967. He was<br />
buried two days later in the family's<br />
grave at Oak Hill Cemetery in<br />
Nyack, New York, his place of birth.<br />
His wife died ten months later.<br />
His wife bequeathed their joint<br />
collection of more than three<br />
thousand works to the Whitney<br />
Museum of American <strong>Art</strong>.Other<br />
significant paintings by Hopper are<br />
held by the Museum of Modern <strong>Art</strong><br />
in New York, The Des Moines <strong>Art</strong><br />
Center, and the <strong>Art</strong> Institute of<br />
Chicago.
Personality and vision<br />
Always reluctant to discuss<br />
himself and his art, Hopper<br />
simply said, "The whole answer is<br />
there<br />
on the canvas."Hopper was stoic<br />
and fatalistic—a quiet introverted<br />
man with a gentle sense of humor<br />
and a frank manner. Hopper was<br />
someone drawn to an emblematic,<br />
anti-narrative symbolism, who<br />
"painted short isolated moments<br />
of configuration, saturated with<br />
suggestion".His silent spaces and<br />
uneasy encounters "touch us<br />
where we are most vulnerable<br />
",and have "a suggestion of<br />
melancholy, that melancholy<br />
being enacted".His sense of color<br />
revealed him as a pure painter as<br />
he "turned the Puritan into the<br />
purist, in his quiet canvasses<br />
where blemishes and blessings<br />
balance".According to critic Lloyd<br />
Goodrich, he was "an eminently<br />
native painter, who more than any<br />
other was getting more of the<br />
quality of America into his<br />
canvases".<br />
Conservative in politics and<br />
social matters (Hopper asserted<br />
for example that "artists' lives<br />
close to them"),he accepted things<br />
as they were and displayed a lack of<br />
idealism. Cultured and<br />
sophisticated, he was well-read,<br />
and many of his paintings show<br />
figures reading.He was generally<br />
good company and unperturbed by<br />
silences, though sometimes<br />
taciturn, grumpy, or detached. He<br />
was always serious about his art<br />
and the art of others, and when<br />
asked would return frank opinions.<br />
Hopper's most systematic<br />
declaration of his philosophy as an<br />
artist was given in a handwritten<br />
note, entitled "Statement",<br />
submitted in 1953 to the journal,<br />
Reality.<br />
Great art is the outward expression<br />
of an inner life in the artist, and this<br />
inner life will result in his personal<br />
vision of the world. No amount of<br />
skillful invention can replace the<br />
essential element of imagination.<br />
One of the weaknesses of much<br />
abstract painting is the attempt to<br />
substitute the inventions of the<br />
human intellect for a private<br />
imaginative conception.
The inner life of a human being is<br />
a vast and varied realm and does<br />
not concern itself alone with<br />
stimulating arrangements of color,<br />
form and design.<br />
The term life used in art is<br />
something not to be held in<br />
contempt, for it implies all of<br />
existence and the province of art<br />
is to react to it and not to shun it.<br />
Painting will have to deal more<br />
fully and less obliquely with life<br />
and nature's phenomena before it<br />
can again become great.<br />
Though Hopper claimed that he<br />
didn't consciously embed<br />
psychological meaning in his<br />
paintings, he was deeply<br />
interested in Freud and the<br />
power of the subconscious mind.<br />
He wrote in 1939, "So much of<br />
every art is an expression of the<br />
subconscious that it seems to me<br />
most of all the important qualities<br />
are put there unconsciously, and<br />
little of importance by the<br />
conscious intellec.<br />
Methods<br />
Although he is best known for his<br />
oil paintings, Hopper initially<br />
achieved recognition for his<br />
watercolors and he also produced<br />
some commercially successful<br />
etchings. Additionally, his<br />
notebooks contain high-quality pen<br />
and pencil sketches, which were<br />
never meant for public viewing.<br />
Hopper paid particular attention to<br />
geometrical design and the careful<br />
placement of human figures in<br />
proper balance with their<br />
environment. He was a slow and<br />
methodical artist; as he wrote, "It<br />
takes a long time for an idea to<br />
strike. Then I have to think about it<br />
for a long time. I don't start<br />
painting until I have it all worked<br />
out in my mind. I'm all right when I<br />
get to the easel".He often made<br />
preparatory sketches to work out<br />
his carefully calculated<br />
compositions. He and his wife kept<br />
a detailed ledger of their works<br />
noting such items as "sad face of<br />
woman unlit", "electric light from<br />
ceiling", and "thighs cooler".<br />
For New York Movie (1939), Hopper<br />
demonstrates his thorough<br />
preparation with more than 53<br />
sketches of the theater interior and<br />
the figure of the pensive usherette.
The effective use of light and<br />
shadow to create mood also is<br />
central to Hopper's methods.<br />
Bright sunlight (as an emblem of<br />
insight or revelation), and the<br />
shadows it casts, also play<br />
symbolically powerful roles in<br />
Hopper paintings such as Early<br />
Sunday Morning (1930),<br />
Summertime (1943), Seven A.M.<br />
(1948), and Sun in an Empty Room<br />
(1963). His use of light and shadow<br />
effects have been compared to the<br />
cinematography of film noir.<br />
Although a realist painter,<br />
Hopper's "soft" realism simplified<br />
shapes and details. He used<br />
saturated color to heighten<br />
contrast and create mood.<br />
Subjects and themes<br />
Hopper derived his subject matter<br />
from two primary sources: one, the<br />
common features of American life<br />
(gas stations, motels, restaurants,<br />
theaters, railroads, and street<br />
scenes) and its inhabitants; and<br />
two, seascapes and rural<br />
landscapes. Regarding his style,<br />
Hopper defined himself as "an<br />
amalgam of many races" and not a<br />
member of any school, particularly<br />
the "Ashcan School".Once Hopper<br />
achieved his mature style, his art<br />
remained consistent and selfcontained,<br />
in spite of the numerous<br />
art trends that came and went<br />
during his long career.<br />
Hopper's seascapes fall into three<br />
main groups: pure landscapes of<br />
rocks, sea, and beach grass;<br />
lighthouses and farmhouses; and<br />
sailboats. Sometimes he combined<br />
these elements. Most of these<br />
paintings depict strong light and<br />
fair weather; he showed little<br />
interest in snow or rain scenes, or<br />
in seasonal color changes. He<br />
painted the majority of the pure<br />
seascapes in the period between<br />
1916 and 1919 on Monhegan<br />
Island.Hopper's The Long Leg<br />
(1935) is a nearly all-blue sailing<br />
picture with the simplest of<br />
elements, while his Ground Swell<br />
(1939) is more complex and depicts<br />
a group of youngsters out for a sail,<br />
a theme reminiscent of Winslow<br />
Homer's iconic Breezing Up (1876).<br />
Urban architecture and cityscapes<br />
also were major subjects for<br />
Hopper. He was fascinated with the<br />
American urban scene,
"our native architecture with its<br />
hideous beauty, its fantastic roofs,<br />
pseudo-gothic, French Mansard,<br />
Colonial, mongrel or what not,<br />
with eye-searing color or delicate<br />
harmonies of faded paint,<br />
shouldering one another along<br />
interminable streets that taper off<br />
into swamps or dump heaps."<br />
In 1925, he produced House by<br />
the Railroad. This classic work<br />
depicts an isolated Victorian wood<br />
mansion, partly obscured by the<br />
raised embankment of a railroad.<br />
It marked Hopper's artistic<br />
maturity. Lloyd Goodrich praised<br />
the work as "one of the most<br />
poignant and desolating pieces of<br />
realism."The work is the first of a<br />
series of stark rural and urban<br />
scenes that uses sharp lines and<br />
large shapes, played upon by<br />
unusual lighting to capture the<br />
lonely mood of his subjects.<br />
Although critics and viewers<br />
interpret meaning and mood in<br />
these cityscapes, Hopper insisted<br />
"I was more interested in the<br />
sunlight on the buildings and on<br />
the figures than any symbolism.<br />
" As if to prove the point, his late<br />
painting Sun in an Empty Room<br />
(1963) is a pure study of sunlight.<br />
Most of Hopper's figure paintings<br />
focus on the subtle interaction of<br />
human beings with their<br />
environment—carried out with solo<br />
figures, couples, or groups. His<br />
primary emotional themes are<br />
solitude, loneliness, regret,<br />
boredom, and resignation. He<br />
expresses the emotions in various<br />
environments, including the office,<br />
in public places, in apartments, on<br />
the road, or on vacation. As if he<br />
were creating stills for a movie or<br />
tableaux in a play, Hopper<br />
positioned his characters as if they<br />
were captured just before or just<br />
after the climax of a scene.<br />
Hopper's solitary figures are mostly<br />
women—dressed, semi-clad, and<br />
nude—often reading or looking out<br />
a window, or in the workplace. In<br />
the early 1920s, Hopper painted his<br />
first such images Girl at Sewing<br />
Machine (1921), New York Interior<br />
(another woman sewing) (1921),<br />
and Moonlight Interior (a nude<br />
getting into bed) (1923). Automat<br />
(1927) and Hotel Room (1931),<br />
however, are more representative<br />
of his mature style, emphasizing<br />
the solitude more overtly.
As Hopper scholar, Gail Levin,<br />
wrote of Hotel Room:<br />
The spare vertical and diagonal<br />
bands of color and sharp electric<br />
shadows create a concise and<br />
intense drama in the<br />
night...Combining poignant<br />
subject matter with such a<br />
powerful formal arrangement,<br />
Hopper's composition is pure<br />
enough to approach an almost<br />
abstract sensibility, yet layered<br />
with a poetic meaning for the<br />
observer.<br />
Hopper's Room in New York (1932)<br />
and Cape Cod Evening (1939) are<br />
prime examples of his "couple"<br />
paintings. In the first, a young<br />
couple appear alienated and<br />
uncommunicative—he reading the<br />
newspaper while she idles by the<br />
piano. The viewer takes on the role<br />
of a voyeur, as if looking with a<br />
telescope through the window of<br />
the apartment to spy on the<br />
couple's lack of intimacy. In the<br />
latter painting, an older couple<br />
with little to say to each other, are<br />
playing with their dog, whose own<br />
attention is drawn away from his<br />
masters.Hopper takes the couple<br />
theme to a more ambitious level<br />
with Excursion into Philosophy<br />
(1959). A<br />
middle-aged man sits dejectedly on<br />
the edge of a bed. Beside him lies<br />
an open book and a partially clad<br />
woman. A shaft of light illuminates<br />
the floor in front of him. Jo Hopper<br />
noted in their log book, "he open<br />
book is Plato, reread too late".<br />
Levin interprets the painting:<br />
Plato's philosopher, in search of the<br />
real and the true, must turn away<br />
from this transitory realm and<br />
contemplate the eternal Forms and<br />
Ideas. The pensive man in Hopper's<br />
painting is positioned between the<br />
lure of the earthly domain, figured<br />
by the woman, and the call of the<br />
higher spiritual domain,<br />
represented by the ethereal<br />
lightfall. The pain of thinking about<br />
this choice and its consequences,<br />
after reading Plato all night, is<br />
evident. He is paralysed by the<br />
fervent inner labour of the<br />
melancholic.<br />
In Office at Night (1940), another<br />
"couple" painting, Hopper creates a<br />
psychological puzzle. The painting<br />
shows a man focusing on his work<br />
papers, while nearby his attractive<br />
female secretary pulls a file.
Several studies for the painting<br />
show how Hopper experimented<br />
with the positioning of the two<br />
figures, perhaps to heighten the<br />
eroticism and the tension. Hopper<br />
presents the viewer with the<br />
possibilities that the man is either<br />
truly uninterested in the woman's<br />
appeal or that he is working hard<br />
to ignore her. Another interesting<br />
aspect of the painting is how<br />
Hopper employs three light<br />
sources,from a desk lamp,<br />
through a window and indirect<br />
light from above. Hopper went on<br />
to make several "office"<br />
pictures, but no others with a<br />
sensual undercurrent.<br />
The best-known of Hopper's<br />
paintings, Nighthawks (1942), is<br />
one of his paintings of groups. It<br />
shows customers sitting at the<br />
counter of an all-night diner.<br />
The shapes and diagonals are<br />
carefully constructed. The<br />
viewpoint is cinematic—from the<br />
sidewalk, as if the viewer were<br />
approaching the restaurant. The<br />
diner's harsh electric light sets it<br />
apart from the dark night outside,<br />
enhancing the mood and subtle<br />
emotion.As in many Hopper<br />
paintings, the interaction is<br />
minimal. The restaurant depicted<br />
was inspired by one in Greenwich<br />
Village. Both Hopper and his wife<br />
posed for the figures, and Jo<br />
Hopper gave the painting its title.<br />
The inspiration for the picture may<br />
have come from Ernest<br />
Hemingway's short story "The<br />
Killers", which Hopper greatly<br />
admired, or from the more<br />
philosophical "A Clean, Well-<br />
Lighted Place".<br />
In keeping with the title of his<br />
painting, Hopper later said,<br />
Nighthawks has more to do with<br />
the possibility of predators in the<br />
night than with loneliness.<br />
His second most recognizable<br />
painting after Nighthawks is<br />
another urban painting, Early<br />
Sunday Morning (originally called<br />
Seventh Avenue Shops), which<br />
shows an empty street scene in<br />
sharp side light, with a fire hydrant<br />
and a barber pole as stand-ins for<br />
human figures. Originally Hopper<br />
intended to put figures in the<br />
upstairs windows but left them<br />
empty to heighten the feeling of<br />
desolation.
Hopper's rural New England<br />
scenes, such as Gas (1940), are no<br />
less meaningful. Gas represents "a<br />
different, equally clean,<br />
well-lighted refuge...open for<br />
those in need as they navigate<br />
the night, traveling their own<br />
miles to go before they sleep.<br />
" The work presents a fusion of<br />
several<br />
Hopper themes: the solitary<br />
figure, the melancholy of dusk,<br />
and the lonely road.<br />
accompaniment of the musicians<br />
in the pit.<br />
Girlie Show was inspired by<br />
Hopper's visit to a burlesque show<br />
a few days earlier. Hopper's wife, as<br />
usual, posed for him for the<br />
painting, and noted in her diary,<br />
"Ed beginning a new canvas—a<br />
burlesque queen doing a strip<br />
tease—and I posing without a stitch<br />
on in front of the stove—nothing<br />
but high heels in a lottery dance<br />
pose."<br />
Hopper approaches Surrealism<br />
with Rooms by the Sea (1951),<br />
where an open door gives a view<br />
of the ocean, without an apparent<br />
ladder or steps and no indication<br />
of a beach.<br />
After his student years, Hopper's<br />
nudes were all women. Unlike<br />
past artists who painted the<br />
female nude to glorify the female<br />
form and to highlight female<br />
eroticism, Hopper's nudes are<br />
solitary women who are<br />
psychologically exposed.One<br />
audacious exception is Girlie Show<br />
(1941), where a red-headed striptease<br />
queen strides confidently<br />
across a stage to the<br />
Hopper's portraits and selfportraits<br />
were relatively few after<br />
his student years.Hopper did<br />
produce a commissioned "portrait"<br />
of a house, The Mac<strong>Art</strong>hurs' Home<br />
(1939), where he faithfully details<br />
the Victorian architecture of the<br />
home of actress Helen Hayes. She<br />
reported later, "I guess I never met<br />
a more misanthropic, grumpy<br />
individual in my life." Hopper<br />
grumbled throughout the project<br />
and never again accepted a<br />
commission.Hopper also painted<br />
Portrait of Orleans (1950), a<br />
"portrait" of the Cape Cod town<br />
from its main street.
Though very interested in the<br />
American Civil War and Mathew<br />
Brady's battlefield photographs,<br />
Hopper made only two historical<br />
paintings. Both depicted soldiers on<br />
their way to Gettysburg.Also rare<br />
among his themes are paintings<br />
showing action. The best example<br />
of an action painting is Bridle Path<br />
(1939), but Hopper's struggle with<br />
the proper anatomy of the horses<br />
may have discouraged him from<br />
similar attempts.<br />
meaning can be added to a painting<br />
by its title, but the titles of<br />
Hopper's paintings were sometimes<br />
chosen by others, or were selected<br />
by Hopper and his wife in a way<br />
that makes it unclear whether they<br />
have any real connection with the<br />
artist's meaning. For example,<br />
Hopper once told an interviewer<br />
that he was "fond of Early Sunday<br />
Morning... but it wasn't necessarily<br />
Sunday. That word was tacked on<br />
later by someone else."<br />
Hopper's final oil painting, Two<br />
Comedians (1966), painted one<br />
year before his death, focuses on<br />
his love of the theater. Two French<br />
pantomime actors, one male and<br />
one female, both dressed in bright<br />
white costumes, take their bow in<br />
front of a darkened stage. Jo<br />
Hopper confirmed that her<br />
husband intended the figures to<br />
suggest their taking their life's last<br />
bows together as husband and<br />
wife.<br />
Hopper's paintings have often<br />
been seen by others as having a<br />
narrative or thematic content that<br />
the artist may not have intended.<br />
Much<br />
The tendency to read thematic or<br />
narrative content into Hopper's<br />
paintings, that Hopper had not<br />
intended, extended even to his<br />
wife. When Jo Hopper commented<br />
on the figure in Cape Cod Morning<br />
"It's a woman looking out to see if<br />
the weather's good enough to hang<br />
out her wash," Hopper retorted,<br />
"Did I say that? You're making it<br />
Norman Rockwell. From my point<br />
of view she's just looking out the<br />
window."Another example of the<br />
same phenomenon is recorded in a<br />
1948 article in Time:<br />
Hopper's Summer Evening, a young<br />
couple talking in the harsh light of a<br />
cottage porch
is inescapably romantic, but Hopper was hurt by one critic's suggestion<br />
that it would do for an illustration in "any woman's magazine." Hopper<br />
had the painting in the back of his head "for 20 years and I never<br />
thought of putting the figures in until I actually started last summer.<br />
Why any art director would tear the picture apart. The figures were not<br />
what interested me; it was the light streaming down, and the night all<br />
around."
Nadim Karam born 1957is a<br />
multidisciplinary Lebanese artist,<br />
painter, sculptor and architect who<br />
fuses his artistic output of<br />
sculpture, painting, drawing with<br />
his background in architecture to<br />
create large-scale urban art<br />
projects in different cities of the<br />
world. He uses his vocabulary of<br />
forms in urban settings to narrate<br />
stories and evoke collective<br />
memory with a very particular<br />
whimsical, often absurdist<br />
approach; seeking to 'create<br />
moments of dreams' in different<br />
cities of the world.<br />
Early life and education<br />
Nadim Karam grew up in Beirut.<br />
He received a Bachelor of<br />
Architecture from the American<br />
University of Beirut in 1982, at the<br />
height of the Lebanese civil<br />
war,and left the same year to<br />
study in Japan on a Monbusho<br />
scholarship. At the University of<br />
Tokyo he developed an interest in<br />
Japanese philosophy of space,<br />
which he studied under Hiroshi<br />
Hara, and was also taught by<br />
Fumihiko Maki and Tadao Ando.<br />
He created several solo art<br />
performances and exhibitions in<br />
Tokyo while completing master and<br />
doctorate degrees in architecture.<br />
Teaching<br />
Nadim Karam taught at the<br />
Shibaura Institute of Technology in<br />
Tokyo in 1992 with Riichi Miyake<br />
and then returned to Beirut to<br />
create his experimental group,<br />
Atelier Hapsitus. The name, derived<br />
from the combination of Hap<br />
(happenings) and Situs (situations),<br />
comes from Karam's enjoyment of<br />
the fact that the encounter of these<br />
two factors often gives rise to the<br />
unexpected. He taught<br />
architectural design at the<br />
American University of Beirut<br />
(1993-5, 2003–4), and was Dean of<br />
the Faculty of Architecture, <strong>Art</strong> and<br />
Design at Notre Dame University in<br />
Lebanon from 2000–2003. He cochaired<br />
in 2002 the UN/New York<br />
University conference in London for<br />
the reconstruction of Kabul and<br />
was selected as the curator for<br />
Lebanon by the first Rotterdam<br />
Biennale.From 2006–7 he served<br />
on the Moutamarat Design Board<br />
for Dubai and regularly gives<br />
lectures at universities and<br />
conferences worldwide.<br />
20
Urban art projects<br />
With Atelier Hapsitus, the pluridisciplinary<br />
company he founded<br />
in Beirut, he created large-scale<br />
urban art projects in different<br />
cities including Beirut, Prague,<br />
London, Tokyo, Nara and<br />
Melbourne. His project for<br />
Prague's Manes Bridge in the<br />
spring of 1997 was both a<br />
commemoration of the city's postcommunist<br />
liberalization and an<br />
echo of its history, with the<br />
placement of his works in parallel<br />
to the baroque sculptures on the<br />
Charles Bridge. The post-civil war<br />
1997–2000 itinerant urban art<br />
project he created for central<br />
Beirut was one of five worldwide<br />
selected by the Van Alen Institute<br />
in New York in 2002 to highlight<br />
the role they played in the<br />
rejuvenation of city life and<br />
morale after a disaster. In Japan,<br />
'The Three flowers of Jitchu'<br />
realized at Tōdai-ji Temple in Nara<br />
in 2004, was a temporary<br />
installation commemorating the<br />
achievements of a Middle Eastern<br />
monk, Jitchu, whose performance<br />
is still enacted yearly since the<br />
year 752 in the temple he<br />
designed for it. Karam's project<br />
took 20 years to gain acceptance<br />
from the Tōdai-ji Temple<br />
authorities. His 2006 Victoria State<br />
commission'The Travellers' a<br />
permanent art installation of ten<br />
sculptures which travel across<br />
Melbourne's Sandridge Bridge<br />
three times daily, tells the story of<br />
Australian immigrants and creates<br />
an urban clock in the city.<br />
Selected public art installations<br />
2017 Trio Elephants- Lovers’ Park,<br />
Yerevan, Armenia<br />
2017 Wheels of Innovation- Nissan<br />
Headquarters, Tokyo, Japan<br />
2016 Stretching Thoughts:<br />
Shepherd and Thinker- UWC<br />
Atlantic College, Wales, UK<br />
2014 Wishing Flower- Zaha Hadid's<br />
D’Leedon residential project,<br />
Leedon Heights, Singapor<br />
Architectural work<br />
Nadim Karam is mainly known for<br />
his conceptual work, like 'Hilarious<br />
Beirut', the 1993 post-war antiestablishment<br />
project for the<br />
reconstruction of Beirut city centre,<br />
and 'The Cloud"a huge public<br />
garden resembling a raincloud that<br />
stands at 250m above ground..
Inspired by the city of Dubai, it<br />
proposes a visual and social<br />
alternative to the exclusivity of<br />
the skyscrapers in Gulf cities.<br />
Karam's signature un-built<br />
projects include the 'Net Bridge' a<br />
pedestrian<br />
bridge conceived as a gateway to<br />
Beirut city centre from the marina<br />
with five lanes that playfully<br />
intersect and interweave.<br />
Similarly, his winning design of a<br />
competition<br />
for the BLC Bank headquartersfor<br />
Beirut features the new<br />
headquarters straddling the old.<br />
Karam collaborates closely with<br />
Arup Engineers in London, who<br />
give structural and technical<br />
reality to his most unusual ideas.<br />
Ongoing projects<br />
The Dialogue of the Hills is an<br />
urban art project conceived to<br />
invigorate the historic core of<br />
Amman through a series of public<br />
gardens and sculpture for each hill<br />
community. The sculptures are<br />
designed to create a dialogue with<br />
the others on the surrounding hills<br />
of the city, physically and visually<br />
linking diverse socio-economic<br />
communities. The Wheels of<br />
Chicago is a project inspired by the<br />
city where the Ferris wheel was<br />
invented. An iconic project for the<br />
city shoreline, through several<br />
wheels, symbolizes the different<br />
city communities and harnesses sea<br />
breezes to provide energy for the<br />
surrounding parklands
http://www.aziz-anzabi.com