"The El Station," Edward
Hopper, 1908. Oil on canvas from the collection of the Whitney
Museum of American Art, New York City.
SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. - The Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA)
will present an exhibition of one of America's quintessential
realist painters, Edward Hopper (1882-1967), on view May 11
through September 15. "" highlights early works by Hopper against
a general overview of the realist tradition from the early part
of the century to the apex of its popularity -- the establishment
of the American Scene movement in the Thirties.
The exhibition, which includes approximately 50 paintings, has
been organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York,
and features works from their collection and the Santa Barbara
Museum's Preston Morton Collection of American Art.
"Edward Hopper and Urban Realities" includes more than 30 artists
who were working in New York and were originally associated with
the influences of Robert Henri and the Ashcan School -- George
Luks, John Sloan, Everett Shinn and George Bellows, among others.
Although Hopper's work eventually evolved into the style with
which he is associated today, his early works reflect the
teachings of Henri who encouraged his students to paint urban
life as they saw it around them to break with the sentimental
idealism of academic art. He urged them to find new subjects and
socially minded themes that would make their art relevant to the
new age and the common man.
This revolutionary approach to art was a radical departure from
the genteel estheticism that had dominated late Nineteenth
Century American taste in the visual arts. The group's often
somber palettes and realistic representations of urban life --
alleys, tenements and working class people -- led to labels such
as "Apostles of Ugliness" and "the Ashcan School." The style of
the group had much in common with the earnest human dramas of
such earlier European masters as Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Diego
Velásquez and Francisco Goya -- a direct result of Henri's
personal interests. Contrasting with the polished techniques
taught in the American art academics of the period, Henri
advocated loose, vigorous brushstrokes often thickly applied.
His influence can be easily seen in many of the exhibition's
works such as John Sloan's "Backyards, Greenwich Village,"
William J. Glackens's "Parade, Washington Square" and George
Luks's "The Little Gray Girl." The efforts of these artists to
capture the gritty reality of urban life mark the beginning of a
revitalization of the realist tradition in this country that
would continue well into the 1940s. But it would only take one of
his students, Edward Hopper, to lead the way to a new American
art -- one that viewed itself from the inside out, instead of the
outside in.
Hopper was born to a middle-class family in the little town of
Nyack along the Hudson River in New York State. Although he was
well loved by his parents, he had trouble fitting in at school.
Throughout his adolescence, he was often mocked by his classmates
because of his tall, skinny frame, reaching more than six feet by
the age of 12. This painful judgment by his peers may have been a
major factor in shaping both the personal and artistic aspects of
his life.
Early on he withdrew from society and spent most of his free time
painting and drawing for which he showed an innate talent.
Because he was so gifted, his parents agreed to send him to study
art in New York City, and then to Paris. Hopper's years of study
with Robert Henri at the New York School of Art, 1900-06, were
most influential and are credited with his allegiance to a purely
American style in spite of his European travel from 1906 to 1910.
Hopper painted American landscapes and cityscapes -- hotels,
houses, bridges, stations and highways. He also liked to paint
the public and semipublic places where people gathered:
restaurants, theaters, cinemas and offices. Yet almost everything
that characterizes daily city life is missing in Hopper's
paintings: the soaring skyscrapers, the crust of traffic, the
bustle of crowded sidewalks, the frantic pace and twitchy
rhythms, the noise.
Compared to artists such as John Sloan whose brightly colored
"Sixth Avenue Elevated at Third Street" depicts people talking
and walking together, Hopper's urban scenes are deserted or
scarcely populated. His empty streets, storefronts and isolated
figures evoke such a powerful sense of mystery and alliance that
they seem to transcend their particular time and place. In the
"El Station," for example, ghostlike figures blend in the
darkness of a deserted train station creating an eerie sense of
emptiness that is enhanced by the blunt shapes of the buildings,
the closed-off windows, and the stark play of light and shadow.
It is not only the people who appear lonely in Hopper's works.
Through his choice of color and surroundings, Hopper was able to
extend the sense of loneliness and isolation to the architecture
in his art. The looming "Queens-borough Bridge" offers an early
example of the elements of composition that Hopper will retain
throughout his career: simple large geometric forms, flat masses
of color and the use of architectural elements in his scenes for
their strong verticals, horizontals and diagonals.
Hopper painted American urban life with a disturbing truth,
expressing the world around him as a chilling, alienating and in
Hopper's own words "a place of sad desolation." One of the most
significant artists of the Twentieth Century, Hopper was
brilliant at giving a visual form to the universal feelings of
loneliness and isolation, not only of city life, but in a greater
sense, of the human condition as well. Edward Hopper died May 15,
1967, in New York City.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art is at 1130 State Street.
Museum hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm, Sunday,
noon to 5 pm, and Friday 11 am to 9 pm. Docent-led tours of
special exhibitions are held daily at noon, docent tours of the
permanent collections are offered daily at 1 pm. For information,
805-963-4364 or visit www.sbmuseart.org.
