LOST ART: The Heretik Appreciates the Light of Edward Hopper

EDWARD HOPPER: THE MASTER OF LIGHT AND OBVIOUS SURFACE
worked such gifts to reveal an inner darkness and fathomless depth in everyday scenes of day and common place occasions of endless night.  This tension is a spring for the viewer’s imagination.  Even as people with a memory of Hopper’s time and period succumb to time’s inevitable march, Hopper’s poor blank faces will remain rich portraits of an era and his landscapes will have life.

Edward Hopper was born in Nyack, New York. His possibly most famous oil on canvas Nighthawks was completed in 1942.  Nighthawks now rests peacefully in the possession of The Art Institute of Chicago, one good reason to visit the Second City.

When I look at Nighthawks, I see a time when women wore hats and men did too, a time when wool was worn in summer suits, and people were worn out in winter.  I see my grandparents in their Sunday best on the Brooklyn Promenade and my mother in her starched white nurses cap.  Hopper’s anonymous Nighthawks diner was once a real place on a corner of Greenwich Avenue in the West Village, a small town in a great city called New York.

I should have known.  New York is nothing but a collection of small towns.  Bay Ridge and Boerum Hill.  Queens Village.  Village East and Village West.  I lived in more than most.  Such is the fate of a boy with dreams not yet a man of money.

I have a claim to the West Village as all true New Yorkers will tell you they do.  True New Yorkers need not be born there. The West Village has its claim on me. Yes, my children both were born there. As were all my brothers and me.  My mother was a nurse at Saint Vincent’s on Seventh Avenue in the vicinity of Eleventh.  She worked with women in their labor and saw many a child and a new child’s parents spring to life.  Between the time my mother had my brother and my mother had me, she had the  misfortune of a miscarriage, the still born child Mary who ever lived sadly in my mother’s heart and though unmet, my sister Mary somehow yet lives in mine.

More than any man will know, a woman’s life is ever pregnant with tragedy.  I see such tragedy in the silent faces of Hopper’s Nighthawks, tragedies of the past and tragedies yet to be, all held gently in the artist Hopper’s loving hand.


Is there an artist today, living or dead, who moves you?  What do you like? Does some particular artist make a difference in your life today? Please share your comments freely.  Thanks.

Comments

[pissed off patricia]

I would truly like to see a larger image of the painting. Is there one on the internet? Sweet Heretik, women can have lives filled with love, joy and happiness. It isn't all sad unless we allow ourselves to fall into the pit of sadness. Many of us have experienced tragedy, but it is a moment in time and then we move forward as much as we can. We may stay in that moment or we can leave it behind as we go ahead with some lesson learned. Sadness tests us and it's up to us whether we pass or fail.

[Agitprop]

I love the surrealist oddity of Salvador Dali. He was psychedelic long before the Sixties. I dig the contorted shapes of clocks melting in the mid-day sun, time oozing by ever so slowly.

[fade2bluz]

Hey, Joe…love your blog, Night Hawks…and

louise bourgeois

Form follows function.

[Lizzy]

Hmmm...what shall I call you?? An artist that moves me...why Georgia O'Keefe will always take away my sadness. I remember seeing her exhibit in DC.

Women are sad when their very soul is pierced.

And the happiness comes when I watch my daughter develop her talent in art and receive "Distinquished" in an Art Competition for NY State.

[oldwhitelady]

That painting is very nice. I really like it. As far as favorite painter, I sure don't know the names of them. Of course the truly famous are always remembered. However, there was a painting that my parents had, when I was growing up. We don't know what the name of it was - I'm sure it was just a reproduction, but it was lost when the house burned down.
It was of a young girl infront of a row of bushes or trees - I think they were flowering, but can't be sure. I think she had a bow in her hair. Does this strike anyone? Would you know the name of the artist or painting?

[LJ/Aquaria]

I'm an abstract expressionist fan myself (Kandinsky, Rothko, Klee, etc.). But if I must list a represenatational artist (zzz) whose use of light I admire, I would have to go with Fragonard's The Swing. I love that painting. Just look at how the light pours in on that sweet, frothy, but naughty girl kicking off her shoe at her lover, petticoats flying and exposing enough leg to be a bit shocking, but not too shocking. When I get that question of who I see in my mind when I think of myself, I'm always the girl in the swing,

[samuel]

Your comments on Hopper are catching and your point on the eternal suffering of women is touching. I see this too in my everyday life. Sensing my mother's heart cringing at the pain of her 9-5, and her lack of credentials always overshadowing her experience. I feel like I'm living for her sometimes. Just so she can feel like it was all still worth the suffering. I agree with Patricia in that we can experience something other than than an irrestibable melancholy but I disagree in that we should leave it behind. I see it differently, those harsh obstacles we encounter should always be overcome but we must also take those painful moments with us, so we never forget them. They become who we are.