jedioffsidetrap’s Reviews > Hopper > Status Update

New York Movie, 1939 (MoMA NY)

On one side… stands an usherette absorbed in thought. On the other, a scattering of barely visible moviegoers…The sides are separated by a heavy vertical—the end of the wall & an engaged column…

Instead of watching a drama of what geometry wills& what narrative proposes, as we do in other Hoppers, we experience the two working together.

Automat, 1927 (Des Moines Art Center)

…a woman, near a door & in front of a plate glass window, sits alone at a round table.

Chair Car, 1965

…a progression of yellow blocks of light on the train car floor, flanked by windows & chairs, leads to the end of the car…

It is a fairly consostent pattern in Hopper that a pictorial geometry should demand an action contrary to what the narrative wills.

Cape Cod Morning, 1950

The object of her attention, like the source of the light, is b/y the picture. We can only witness its effects… In Hopper it seems there is always sthg “beyond” that works its influence on those w/in the picture.

Nighthawks, 1940, Art Inst

There is nothing menacing about it, nothing that suggests danger is waiting around the corner…It is as if the light were a cleansing agent, nowhere are there signs of urban filth. The city, as in most H’s, asserts itself formally rather than realistically…The diner is an island of light distracting whoever might be walking by…trapezoid pull of pntg to left v a light place to stay

Gas, 1940, MoMA

…the shadowy woods seem poised, ready to absorb the viewer as well as (any travelers)…(But) It is the station..that gathers our attention. It forms a corridor that leaves us little doubt where we—travelers & viewers alike—are headed. The illuminated sign…w/its small red winged horse only underscores w/ironic detachment, the impossibility of escaping what seems like our mortal destiny.

People in the Sun, 1960, Natl Am Art

…a mixture of the comic & forlorn…But are they there to get sun? If they are, why are they dressed for work, or as if in a doctor’s waiting room?…And what are we to make of the young man reading, who sits b/h the file of four? He appears to be more absorbed in culture than nature, yet he is out there w/the others…looking ahead…into a wide field extends to row of hills

In H’s pntgs there is a lot of waiting going on. H’s ppl seem to have nothing to do. They are like characters whose parts have deserted them & now, trapped in the space of their waiting, must keep themselves company, w/no clear place to go, no future.

H’s pntgs are short, isolated moments of figuration that suggest the tone of what will follow just as they carry forward the tone of what proceeded them. The tone but not the content. The implication but not the evidence. They are saturated w/suggestion. The more theatrical or staged they are, the more they urge us to wonder what will happen next; the more lifelike…urge us to construct narrative of what came b/f