The Heretik Appreciates Edward Hopper's "Chop Suey"

Hopper Chop Suey

HOPPER IN A NEW LIGHT
Every day I See Edward Hopper in a New Light.  .  I see Hopper and women always lonely, but less lonely with each other.  Or perhaps more so.  These are women in the winter of their souls. Hopper is poetic painted contradiction, so full of emptiness, so ready to be filled.  You would think it cruel, such honesty, were it not for Hoppers’ stark, but kindly light.

Saturated colors impress here, but most because of Hopper’s planes of light.  Hopper is that master of light, of light descendant from planes above.  His painted white planes have nothing plain about them.



On the plain table stark white between the women here, nothing but a teapot.  No cups.  Between the women, an ending, a beginning, perhaps both.



Secondary figures in Hopper are often commentary on a pair elsewhere.  The solitary man in blue seems ready to pay his bill below that window of crossing blues.  Then you realize the man is not alone. His partner is a woman in a dot of a cap of red.

Hopper’s windows have a life of their own.  As we all do.

Comments

[jillian]

cool. lonely. distant. distinctly american.

[Paul]

There's a really good take on Hopper's pictures in Alain de Botton's book, The Art of Travel