Placing My Trust in Edward Hopper’s Paintings
The joy of immersing in a world that is realer than real
I recently watched a documentary about Edward Hopper, one of my favorite painters of all time. I long to wield words the way Hopper wielded a brush: every image spare yet powerful, quiet yet evocative, and never an extraneous brushstroke on the canvas.
Hopper’s best paintings set a mood; they induce a near-hypnotic state. At the same time, they ignite a desperate desire to unearth the secrets of the loners and near-empty places depicted, as if enormous, messy, life-changing dramas are about to erupt, changing everyone and everything. He could paint a wooden water tower atop a New York City building as if the tower itself were a sage withholding deep truths about life, people, civilization itself.
As for the man himself: He was not particularly friendly or outgoing. He seemed to hold onto psychic wounds of undetermined origin. His marriage to Josephine Nivison—a talented painter in her own right—was long but fractious.
We must come to grips with the artists we love who live lives full of sin; some of them querulous, disputatious, self-centered, and moody as hell.
A source quoted in the documentary shed light on that uncomfortable dichotomy—the artist’s pure genius offset by a nasty disposition. She said this of Hopper:
“There are people who are born to be what they’re going to be.”
I was struck by the inevitability evoked by this observation. Hopper was always going to become an artist, to interpret the world in ways we hadn’t seen before, to show us how things really are.
I suppose the rare few among us born into such a destiny—a calling that cannot be denied and is never even questioned—have little inclination to stew about doubts. Hopper did not find success as quickly as one might suppose; he sold one early painting and then not another one for at least a decade. Yet I don’t get the impression that he ever thought for one moment that he was meant to do something else with his life.
He was who he was, inside and out. While many of us obsess over how to grow and change, to become better people, to fix our flaws, Hopper stayed true to Hopper. He existed and he painted. He said he wished he could paint all the time, instead of doing anything else.
Is such steadfastness of mind and purpose a flaw or a feature? I wonder.
Studying his most famous painting, Nighthawks, for the umpteenth time, the documentary called my attention to an obvious aspect of this weird, wonderful, and disturbing image I’d never noticed before: There is no exterior door, no way to enter the sparse café. It’s hermetically sealed; the patrons are placed behind glass like animals in a zoo. We may look but we cannot touch. (The interior door shown looks like it leads to a kitchen, not the outside.)
Why had I never noticed this before? Perhaps because I always projected myself inside, with the people. I’m never on the outside looking in. I’m in there with them, bathed in the yellow glow, eyeing those huge coffee urns and wondering if there’s any pie left.
A painting like this (and so many others) raises countless questions—but not doubts. Hopper gives us all the information we need to get crazy busy guessing about the version of reality he chooses to share. Guessing is not doubting; imagining is not doubting.
Doubting arises when we lack trust—in ourselves, in others, in the world around us.
Hopper’s paintings may be sparse and spare, but they also create bonds of trust between painter and viewer if you’re open to joining his world—to step into the empty room bathed in sunlight, greet the lonely man or woman on the stoop or peering from a window, join the ladies lunching in smart hats.
I love the way Hopper’s paintings make me feel. And I love the luxury of trusting in the reality he creates, where doubts have no place.
Paintings in order of appearance: Chop Suey. Water Tank on Rooftop. Nighthawks.
Cape Cod Morning 1950.
Have you taken the Doubt Monster survey? You’ll learn something weird about yourself,
I promise.
Well-said! You captured the essence!