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Hopper
Edward Hopper (1882-1967) is considered the first significant American painter in 20th-century art. Living in a secluded country house with his wife, Josephine, he depicted the loneliness of big-city people in canvas after canvas. Probably the most famous of them, Nighthawks, done in1942, shows a couple seated quietly, as if turned inwards upon themselves, in the harsh artificial light of an all-night restaurant. Many of Hopper's pictures represent views of streets and roads, rooftops, abandoned houses, depicted inbrilliant light that strangely belies the melancholy mood of the scenes. Hopper's paintings are marked by striking juxta-positions of color, and by the clear contours with which the figures are demarcated from their surroundings. His extremely precise focus on the theme of modern men and women in the natural and man-made environment some-times lends his pictures a mood of eerie disquiet. In House by the Railroad, a harsh interplay of light and shadow makes the abandoned building seem veritably threatening. On the other hand, Hopper's renderings of rocky landscapes in warm brown hues, or his depictions of the seacoast, exude an unusual tranquillity that reveals another, more optimisticside of his character.
200 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
February 12, 2017
of the art books recently read, this has somewhat altered my appreciation- as with any works, any medium, any genre, there is a progress from knowing sort of work in general, knowing certain artists, knowing certain works by said artist. this is the case in everything from verbal to visual arts. for me, this clarifies which of hopper's work i most like, those with little or no human, narrative, anecdotal content, those haunting primarily in light, architecture, mood- but this is not all his work. this book has good reproductions, some so well known they are cliche, also good critical appreciation, drives me to find work by industrial Charles Sheeler, as i am also looking for abstract Ad Reinhardt...
July 31, 2020
I love 1940s and 50s film noir, and I love the dreamy paintings of Edward Hopper, which often resemble these films, but in vivid Technicolor. ‘The guy who created those film noir paintings of lonely, distant people contemplating in the middle of the big city,’ is how I quickly describe his work to a bemused face. It usually does the trick. Somehow, he even manages to make characters lonely and departed even when they’re actually with someone. And yet he’s so much more. A true original who ignored the current trends from the mid-twenties through to the mid-sixties, and who I truly think painted from his soul to influence painters, illustrators, film makers and writers alike the world over.
The writer, Ivo Kranzfelder, places Hopper’s oeuvre within art in general and breaks his chapters up into themes rather than following a chronology. He writes of his life and art in general – both of which underwent little change and variation in the last forty years of his life. He kept to an annual and a daily routine in life, and his paintings used the same recurring themes and use of light. I would say that it’s fortunate for us that he was a rare and awkward interviewee, and so the mystery and aura of his paintings remains intact. When he did speak, it was to make general statements like, ‘Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.’ Or he’ll say that he was a painter of light. But though his paintings begged many a question, he would never be so clear as to state what is going on, or elucidate anything on the characters. That’s for you, the viewer, to interpret. You can write essays and short stories on any one of Hopper’s paintings (it has been done), for they often feel like atmospheric character stories, key moments captured in oil.
He’s given the term ‘realist,’ which only serves to distinguish him from the underlying trend, for it’s very much Hopper’s version of reality. The lack of detail in his figures gives them a ghostly appeal, and they often stand in streets or sit in rooms contemplating - devoid of garbage and many of the details that inhabit the real world. There is very much the quality of the dream to many of his works. Ivo Kranzfelder in fact uses the phrase at one point, ‘Hopper’s pictures truly seem to be located in a twilight zone.’ Which I don’t think he was using only to refer to the light.
Though separated by a hundred years and different styles, there are similarities between Edward Hopper and another of my other favourite painters, the German romantic Caspar David Friedrich. Both were painters of light and the contemplative soul, with the visuals reflecting the nature of what lie within that soul. The unsmiling meditative souls in Hopper’s paintings could so easily be the painter himself.
The text is clear, concise and informative. The reproductions of the paintings, drawings and etchings are generally large and vividly reproduced on fine paper. Despite the author’s comment of the ‘loss of the aura’ when paintings are viewed in a different medium, I think given the solid imagery of Hopper’s work, they probably transfer better than most painters in reproduction. An exhibition book I bought on Renoir landscapes a few years back totally fails to capture the wisps and vagaries of impressionism.
He was a fascinating painter and a fascinating person. Full of mystery, full of questions. Though I stated earlier that he managed to make people who were seemingly together appear distant and alone, in one of his very last paintings (‘Two Comedians,’ 1965) he painted two characters taking their bows on stage; for once in a Hopper painting, they are actually together holding hands. It is a painting of himself and his wife. A dreamy farewell…
The writer, Ivo Kranzfelder, places Hopper’s oeuvre within art in general and breaks his chapters up into themes rather than following a chronology. He writes of his life and art in general – both of which underwent little change and variation in the last forty years of his life. He kept to an annual and a daily routine in life, and his paintings used the same recurring themes and use of light. I would say that it’s fortunate for us that he was a rare and awkward interviewee, and so the mystery and aura of his paintings remains intact. When he did speak, it was to make general statements like, ‘Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.’ Or he’ll say that he was a painter of light. But though his paintings begged many a question, he would never be so clear as to state what is going on, or elucidate anything on the characters. That’s for you, the viewer, to interpret. You can write essays and short stories on any one of Hopper’s paintings (it has been done), for they often feel like atmospheric character stories, key moments captured in oil.
He’s given the term ‘realist,’ which only serves to distinguish him from the underlying trend, for it’s very much Hopper’s version of reality. The lack of detail in his figures gives them a ghostly appeal, and they often stand in streets or sit in rooms contemplating - devoid of garbage and many of the details that inhabit the real world. There is very much the quality of the dream to many of his works. Ivo Kranzfelder in fact uses the phrase at one point, ‘Hopper’s pictures truly seem to be located in a twilight zone.’ Which I don’t think he was using only to refer to the light.
Though separated by a hundred years and different styles, there are similarities between Edward Hopper and another of my other favourite painters, the German romantic Caspar David Friedrich. Both were painters of light and the contemplative soul, with the visuals reflecting the nature of what lie within that soul. The unsmiling meditative souls in Hopper’s paintings could so easily be the painter himself.
The text is clear, concise and informative. The reproductions of the paintings, drawings and etchings are generally large and vividly reproduced on fine paper. Despite the author’s comment of the ‘loss of the aura’ when paintings are viewed in a different medium, I think given the solid imagery of Hopper’s work, they probably transfer better than most painters in reproduction. An exhibition book I bought on Renoir landscapes a few years back totally fails to capture the wisps and vagaries of impressionism.
He was a fascinating painter and a fascinating person. Full of mystery, full of questions. Though I stated earlier that he managed to make people who were seemingly together appear distant and alone, in one of his very last paintings (‘Two Comedians,’ 1965) he painted two characters taking their bows on stage; for once in a Hopper painting, they are actually together holding hands. It is a painting of himself and his wife. A dreamy farewell…
September 2, 2024
Fascinating book about the life and work of the great Edward Hopper, featuring a detailed text along with some his most famous art works. (This is the second book by the publisher TASCHEN I've read this year (the other being about the films of Stanley Kubrick), and both are truly outstanding, what a great publisher.
July 17, 2008
absolutely my favorite artist. A master at catching the moment of waiting... something is about to happen, but the moment before is the improtant thing. It's either the moment before something wonderful...or the last good moment before something awful...it's those moments where our memories start, and no one captures that moment like Hopper.
January 28, 2010
The all American artist that painted the sad and the lonely in situ. he certainly had an eye for drama, or lack of it, and alot of them are in here. Enjoy.
August 10, 2025
Early in his life, the painter Edward Hopper (1882-1967) went to Paris, which was where young artists of the time aspired to live. Impressionism and modern art were in vogue. Picasso, Matisse, and others.
I was struck reading this book that Hopper visited Europe as a young artist three times, but, uninterested or unimpressed by the avant-garde, he returned to the United States in 1910 and never went back.
Instead, he lived, married, and painted in New York City and Massachusetts and devoted himself to themes of America and unadorned realism.
The strange thing is, he did so by removing most Americans.
Reading through this beautiful book that I found at my Goodwill Outlet, I was struck by the fact that his country seems almost absent of people.
He paints theaters, cafes and restaurants, yet they are almost always empty, occupied by a lone subject usually with a far-off stare suggesting the scene before her is as empty as the room she inhabits. His city streets have no people, no cars, no street vendors.
His art reminds me of scientists who try to isolate for variables in an experiment, eliminating all the extraneous so-called noise, to get to the clearest expression of truth.
Those Americans who remain in Hopper’s paintings seem disappointed, missing out on something that makes life worth living. We see them alone with their thoughts that we’re free to imagine, but which we can’t believe are joyful. Certainly, no one’s laughing.
Perhaps Hopper appeals to me because he leaves social criticism out of his art. I prefer artists who do that. He lets details tell what story viewers would gather for themselves from each painting.
This is remarkable because in his day social criticism was viewed as what a politically aware artist should produce.
I’m a journalist. I believe facts and details, accumulated into stories, without many adjectives or adverbs, is the most powerful kind of nonfiction writing. You’re more likely to impact a reader that way. You just can’t control what that impact will be. You have to be fine with that.
Think of the difference between Bob Dylan and the folksingers he broke with shortly into his career. They wanted him to sing protest songs, the message of which was always clear. He wanted to write uncorseted.
Hopper’s painting left out the adjectives, the adverbs, figuring, I guess, that we could all interpret his art the way it occurred to each of us. Which in the end is the most radical idea — that we can each have our own version of art, of truth. That also may be why he rarely did interviews.
My copy of Hopper I found buried deep in a Goodwill Outlet bin beneath the sedimentary layers of self-help books, both secular and Christian.
But leafing through pages of Hopper’s paintings, I was struck by what his works have in common with those tomes.
Those books are artifacts of the search we all undertake in one form or another for some kind of place in the world. It’s a place we feel passing us by at times in our lives when we feel we should see the path forward more clearly, have things more resolved.
The figures in Hopper’s paintings seem filled with a similar longing. They never face us. They’re reluctant to look us in the eye. They’re always alone, lost in (often anguished) thought or engrossed by something out on the street that they observe from a sad apartment, or an empty café or office.
His paintings “reveal a human world that is no longer in a state of innocence, but has not yet reached the point of self-destruction,” writes Ivo Kranzfelder, author of the analysis of his career included in this book.
It's as if Hopper was documenting the beginnings of an American isolation that deepened and came into sharpest relief decades later with our opioid-addiction epidemic.
Our economy has a way of turning so many activities into alienating, solitary pursuits that lead to compulsion. A company has no better customer than one who is addicted to its product. Shopping, gambling, which once had to be done in public, now can be done on apps, alone. Porn does the same with sex.
Today that isolation is everywhere, intensely damaging, and giving rise to the worst symptoms of depression, mental illness, addiction, and suicide.
I spoke recently with an official of a midwestern city medical examiner’s office who said that fentanyl was falling in supply since late 2023 and opioid overdoses were therefore dropping, but that suicide was rising. “Gunshots, hangings, purposeful overdose – from kids to seniors,” the official said. Kids “don’t know how to cope, don’t know how to fail. Meth may be causing mental health issues, too.”
What would Edward Hopper make of our world of Airpods, smart phones, remote work, and whatever AI is about to bring – a world he may scarcely have been able to imagine?
Like the people in his paintings, we are as isolated in our public places as we are in our homes. I go to a gym and people rarely talk. The sounds are all metallic, machine generated. Like a factory. I write at independent cafes. They’re usually fairly quiet. I’m as much to blame. I put on my earphones and listen to music as I write. Don’t often engage in conversation, though I wish I would.
The places I know where people used to flock – Fisherman’s Wharf and downtown San Francisco and Venice Beach in Los Angeles are recently on my mind – are about as barren as Hopper’s theaters and cafes.
One difference is that the people in those places I’ve visited recently are too often captured and alone with the most tormented mental illness and addiction. Perhaps Hopper’s half-dressed woman alone in her room is no longer the reflection of our country that he imagined. Maybe, instead, it’s a homeless woman, looking out from under her street tent, her face contorted in anguish at a merciless hallucination conjured by some methamphetamine so cheap that she got it for free.
Or maybe that’s just me, like Hopper, too long taken up with one aspect of the country.
I’ve long thought that one reason meth addiction gets so little sympathy is because it reveals something deep and true about us that we’re forced to turn from it in, what?, disgust? Anguish?
It’s interesting that Hopper once said he was never able to depict exactly what he intended. I feel him. I always have a mental idea of how a story can go that is different from what I’m later able to come up with.
But that’s the most optimistic idea in Hopper’s work. Each time, he must have known that the painting he conceived would not turn out just as he had it in his mind’s eye. He did it anyway.
I think that’s the best we can do, despite feelings we haven’t figured life out the way we should have by now: Just imagine what might be possible, then take a stab at it.
Then repeat, getting closer through the practice, though never quite there.
I was struck reading this book that Hopper visited Europe as a young artist three times, but, uninterested or unimpressed by the avant-garde, he returned to the United States in 1910 and never went back.
Instead, he lived, married, and painted in New York City and Massachusetts and devoted himself to themes of America and unadorned realism.
The strange thing is, he did so by removing most Americans.
Reading through this beautiful book that I found at my Goodwill Outlet, I was struck by the fact that his country seems almost absent of people.
He paints theaters, cafes and restaurants, yet they are almost always empty, occupied by a lone subject usually with a far-off stare suggesting the scene before her is as empty as the room she inhabits. His city streets have no people, no cars, no street vendors.
His art reminds me of scientists who try to isolate for variables in an experiment, eliminating all the extraneous so-called noise, to get to the clearest expression of truth.
Those Americans who remain in Hopper’s paintings seem disappointed, missing out on something that makes life worth living. We see them alone with their thoughts that we’re free to imagine, but which we can’t believe are joyful. Certainly, no one’s laughing.
Perhaps Hopper appeals to me because he leaves social criticism out of his art. I prefer artists who do that. He lets details tell what story viewers would gather for themselves from each painting.
This is remarkable because in his day social criticism was viewed as what a politically aware artist should produce.
I’m a journalist. I believe facts and details, accumulated into stories, without many adjectives or adverbs, is the most powerful kind of nonfiction writing. You’re more likely to impact a reader that way. You just can’t control what that impact will be. You have to be fine with that.
Think of the difference between Bob Dylan and the folksingers he broke with shortly into his career. They wanted him to sing protest songs, the message of which was always clear. He wanted to write uncorseted.
Hopper’s painting left out the adjectives, the adverbs, figuring, I guess, that we could all interpret his art the way it occurred to each of us. Which in the end is the most radical idea — that we can each have our own version of art, of truth. That also may be why he rarely did interviews.
My copy of Hopper I found buried deep in a Goodwill Outlet bin beneath the sedimentary layers of self-help books, both secular and Christian.
But leafing through pages of Hopper’s paintings, I was struck by what his works have in common with those tomes.
Those books are artifacts of the search we all undertake in one form or another for some kind of place in the world. It’s a place we feel passing us by at times in our lives when we feel we should see the path forward more clearly, have things more resolved.
The figures in Hopper’s paintings seem filled with a similar longing. They never face us. They’re reluctant to look us in the eye. They’re always alone, lost in (often anguished) thought or engrossed by something out on the street that they observe from a sad apartment, or an empty café or office.
His paintings “reveal a human world that is no longer in a state of innocence, but has not yet reached the point of self-destruction,” writes Ivo Kranzfelder, author of the analysis of his career included in this book.
It's as if Hopper was documenting the beginnings of an American isolation that deepened and came into sharpest relief decades later with our opioid-addiction epidemic.
Our economy has a way of turning so many activities into alienating, solitary pursuits that lead to compulsion. A company has no better customer than one who is addicted to its product. Shopping, gambling, which once had to be done in public, now can be done on apps, alone. Porn does the same with sex.
Today that isolation is everywhere, intensely damaging, and giving rise to the worst symptoms of depression, mental illness, addiction, and suicide.
I spoke recently with an official of a midwestern city medical examiner’s office who said that fentanyl was falling in supply since late 2023 and opioid overdoses were therefore dropping, but that suicide was rising. “Gunshots, hangings, purposeful overdose – from kids to seniors,” the official said. Kids “don’t know how to cope, don’t know how to fail. Meth may be causing mental health issues, too.”
What would Edward Hopper make of our world of Airpods, smart phones, remote work, and whatever AI is about to bring – a world he may scarcely have been able to imagine?
Like the people in his paintings, we are as isolated in our public places as we are in our homes. I go to a gym and people rarely talk. The sounds are all metallic, machine generated. Like a factory. I write at independent cafes. They’re usually fairly quiet. I’m as much to blame. I put on my earphones and listen to music as I write. Don’t often engage in conversation, though I wish I would.
The places I know where people used to flock – Fisherman’s Wharf and downtown San Francisco and Venice Beach in Los Angeles are recently on my mind – are about as barren as Hopper’s theaters and cafes.
One difference is that the people in those places I’ve visited recently are too often captured and alone with the most tormented mental illness and addiction. Perhaps Hopper’s half-dressed woman alone in her room is no longer the reflection of our country that he imagined. Maybe, instead, it’s a homeless woman, looking out from under her street tent, her face contorted in anguish at a merciless hallucination conjured by some methamphetamine so cheap that she got it for free.
Or maybe that’s just me, like Hopper, too long taken up with one aspect of the country.
I’ve long thought that one reason meth addiction gets so little sympathy is because it reveals something deep and true about us that we’re forced to turn from it in, what?, disgust? Anguish?
It’s interesting that Hopper once said he was never able to depict exactly what he intended. I feel him. I always have a mental idea of how a story can go that is different from what I’m later able to come up with.
But that’s the most optimistic idea in Hopper’s work. Each time, he must have known that the painting he conceived would not turn out just as he had it in his mind’s eye. He did it anyway.
I think that’s the best we can do, despite feelings we haven’t figured life out the way we should have by now: Just imagine what might be possible, then take a stab at it.
Then repeat, getting closer through the practice, though never quite there.
May 25, 2017
great overview of the man's work. lots more than nighthawks!
February 19, 2018
An interesting insight on the man behind the iconic works. Also a great gallery of those works.
February 20, 2022
While this book does provide a refreshingly large number of Edward Hopper works to look at, the commentary is needlessly dense and distracting.
June 4, 2025
Excellent study of Edward Hopper!
This 2002 edition is one of the most beautiful Taschen books I've read.
Will gladly lend out!
This 2002 edition is one of the most beautiful Taschen books I've read.
Will gladly lend out!
August 27, 2015
Ik werd gefascineerd door de schilderijen van Edward Hopper door een video op YouTube. De sfeer van eenzaamheid die hij in zijn schilderijen weet te brengen sprak mij erg aan. Ik wilde graag meer van zijn schilderijen zien, en heb daarom dit boek meegenomen van de bibliotheek.
Ik vroeg me altijd af of kunstenaars nu echt zo veel nadenken over de filosofie van hun oeuvre, of dat ze gewoon mooie schilderijen willen maken en de achterliggende filosofie gewoon iets is dat bedacht is door kunstexperts die overal graag iets meer achter willen zien. Dit boek stipt een aantal terugkerende thema's in het werk van Hopper aan. Ik ben ervan overtuigd dat deze thematiek een bewuste keuze van Hopper geweest is, aangezien de verschillende thema's in veel schilderijen steeds weer terugkomen.
Voor een kunstleek als ik is het boek af en toe moeilijk te volgen. Er wordt heel veel verwezen naar andere kunstenaars en kunststromingen die bij mij niet altijd bekend waren. Het boek is ongetwijfeld makkelijker te volgen voor iemand die meer verstand heeft van kunst.
Een mooi boek om een beeld te krijgen van Hoppers oeuvre en de achterliggende gedachten, die in dit geval dus echt van de schilder zelf zijn en niet bedacht door de kunstexperts. Het boek bevat veel van zijn schilderijen, dus er is genoeg om te bekijken.
Ik vroeg me altijd af of kunstenaars nu echt zo veel nadenken over de filosofie van hun oeuvre, of dat ze gewoon mooie schilderijen willen maken en de achterliggende filosofie gewoon iets is dat bedacht is door kunstexperts die overal graag iets meer achter willen zien. Dit boek stipt een aantal terugkerende thema's in het werk van Hopper aan. Ik ben ervan overtuigd dat deze thematiek een bewuste keuze van Hopper geweest is, aangezien de verschillende thema's in veel schilderijen steeds weer terugkomen.
Voor een kunstleek als ik is het boek af en toe moeilijk te volgen. Er wordt heel veel verwezen naar andere kunstenaars en kunststromingen die bij mij niet altijd bekend waren. Het boek is ongetwijfeld makkelijker te volgen voor iemand die meer verstand heeft van kunst.
Een mooi boek om een beeld te krijgen van Hoppers oeuvre en de achterliggende gedachten, die in dit geval dus echt van de schilder zelf zijn en niet bedacht door de kunstexperts. Het boek bevat veel van zijn schilderijen, dus er is genoeg om te bekijken.
January 17, 2013
Many good descriptions on what Hopper's philosophy is all about, what matters to him, what are his interests in painting.
Sometimes perpahs a bit too many interpretations, but in general quite good explanations. I read the book before going to the Hopper exhibition in the Grand Palais in Paris, and I must say, I did not really learn anything new there.
Sometimes perpahs a bit too many interpretations, but in general quite good explanations. I read the book before going to the Hopper exhibition in the Grand Palais in Paris, and I must say, I did not really learn anything new there.
February 13, 2009
The quintessential Hopper gallery book.
April 15, 2016
Gelungener Bildband mit ausgewogener Zusammenstellung von Texten und sehr guten Abbildungen.
November 28, 2010
Bella edizione della Taschen, con bellissime immagini dei quadri di Hopper, artista che mi affascina immensamente.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews