Edward Hopper

by Sheena Wagstaff, David Anfam, Brian O'Doherty

Edward Hopper (1882-1967) made the visual iconography of the American city his own. All-night diners, filling stations, motel rooms and office interiors take on the foreboding atmosphere of abandoned stage sets, onto which his isolated human protagonists seem to have wandered.
Fully illustrated in colour, with oils, etchings, drawings and watercolours from throughout his career, and with essays by leading authorities on American art, this is a comprehensive survey of one of the iconic artists of the twentieth century.

Genres: Art

256 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2004

Reviews

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book and compilation of one of the twentieth centuries best painters, Edward Hopper.

[Dylan Kiewel · Rating 5 out of 5]

i love edward so much

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

The art criticism started out in a useful vain, for about a quarter of the but, then launched off into the wild blue yonder where art criticism seems to sometimes be drawn to go... In my opinion many of the later statements made about Hopper's work were sheer fiction and mainly used to promote the individual interests of the critic but took off on such wild tangents that I could see none of the validity in many of the statements made.

All of that said, the large format volume seems a perfect way to see many of these images if it is not possible to see them in person. The effort put into the color reproductions seems to pay off well, the black and white images of color works, not so much. And many paintings reviewed in the text are not pictured in any fashion, thumbnails or otherwise. Rather a pain to have to chase them down on the Internet in order to keep the train of thought going.

This volume adds substantially to the facts of the artist's life, in addition to the large book on his water colors I recently read, which provided a general framework. Many of the people (mainly women) in this book were very cold and distant. One wonders if his strict religious upbringing could have so profoundly effected the artist, that he was incapable of having a warm and communicative relationship with a woman.

All in all, I would have liked this book better without the off-the-cuff pseudopsychoanalysis of many of the art critics, more images related to the text narrative, and more color rather than nearly useless many black and white images. Discussions of how Hopper related to other artists and writers working at the same time, as well as artists groups he decided (and those he decided against) are equally interesting food for thought. The biggest omission I saw in the book (and verified in the biography of Andrew Wyeth) was his relationship and friendship with "realist" painter Andrew Wyeth, with whom Hopper corresponded regularly, and each greatly admired the other's work.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exhibition at the Tate Modern, 2004. It was miraculous.

[Chris Gager · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another local library book. I like EH's watercolors more as paintings. The more famous stuff has great mood but show him to be not such a great painter technically.

[Gianfranco Gentile · Rating 5 out of 5]

The memory of that Tate Modern exhibition will never cease to haunt me. Major epiphany.