Even in his compositions featuring multiple people, he somehow managed to demonstrate that at the end of the day we are all alone. His paintings represent introversion and solitude, exposing the scenes of the everyday life of lonely individuals. However, the sense of loneliness and alienation within his works is undeniable. Some argue that this is not the case that Hopper’s paintings show people who choose to be alone, rather than those who must be alone.
NIGHTHAWKS BY EDWARD HOPPER FULL
In recent times, his work has received more popularity as it emulates living in a COVID-19 world, full of self-isolation, social distancing, and being alone. In their time, these works were successful at depicting the emotions of Americans during both the World Wars and the Great Depression. Hopper’s paintings highlight themes of isolation and loneliness. Many times, his compositions feature only one person. His work can be found in many major museum collections in the United States.Įdward Hopper’s Paintings Exemplify Social Distancing Morning Sun by Edward Hopper, 1952, via Columbus Museum of ArtĮdward Hopper’s paintings examine and addresses the relationship between environments and the human figure (or lack thereof).
Like many artists, his work was more celebrated after his death than during his life, despite his relative success. Hopper died on May 15, 1967, in his studio in Washington Square in New York City.
His work began to gain traction when he married his wife, Josephine. He initially struggled with making well-received work, having to take up other occupations to get by. He was frequently inspired by his professor Robert Henri. He attended the New York School of Art and Design where he studied for six years. He had a comfortable life growing up and received encouragement from his parents to pursue the creative field as a career. (The red-haired woman was actually modeled by the artist’s wife, Jo.) Hopper denied that he purposefully infused this or any other of his paintings with symbols of human isolation and urban emptiness, but he acknowledged that in “Nighthawks” “unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.Edward Hopper’s Biography Edward Hopper, New York artist by Harris & Ewing, 1937, via Library of Congress, Washington D.C.Įdward Hopper was an American artist born in 1882 in the small town of Nyack, roughly forty minutes north of New York City. The four anonymous and uncommunicative night owls seem as separate and remote from the viewer as they are from one another. Hopper eliminated any reference to an entrance, and the viewer, drawn to the light, is shut out from the scene by a seamless wedge of glass. Fluorescent lights had just come into use in the early 1940s, and the all-night diner emits an eerie glow, like a beacon on the dark street corner. Hopper’s understanding of the expressive possibilities of light playing on simplified shapes gives the painting its beauty. One of the best-known images of twentieth-century art, the painting depicts an all-night diner in which three customers, all lost in their own thoughts, have congregated. Edward Hopper said that “Nighthawks” was inspired by “a restaurant on New York’s Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet,” but the image-with its carefully constructed composition and lack of narrative-has a timeless, universal quality that transcends its particular locale.
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