Talking about Hopper & Burchfield- Delaware Art Museum

-


Edward Hopper (1882-1967), New York, New Haven, and Hartford,  oil on
canvas, 1931, Indianapolis Museum of Art

The other week I flew out to Indianapolis on my way to Terre Haute to judge the Swope Art Museum's annual 5 state regional juried exhibition. I paid a visit to the impressive Indianapolis Museum of Art. Wanted to single out one painting in their collection, Edward Hopper's oil New York, New Haven, and Hartford. 




In person the subtlety of Hopper's color mixing is exquisite. My photographs don't come near doing the painting justice. But in these detail shots just above and below Hopper's grasp of how to instill personality into a painting is clear. He depicts a broad-shouldered hillside. Yet against that he conjures up these wildly shaped spindly trees. Their irregular rhythms contrast tellingly against the solemn massiveness of the hillside.  




Hopper's trees live perhaps a more syncopated life than the stately ground from which they spring.

Looking at Hopper's strangely silhouetted trees I was reminded of his contemporary (and friend), the painter Charles Burchfield. I spent the last three years as the Artist in Residence at the Burchfield Penney Art Center absorbing Burchfield's work. 

At first glance, Hopper and Burchfield seem to differ radically- Hopper loving dramatic sunlight on massive forms while Burchfield's more caffeinated paint strokes insistently propel the viewer's eye around his composition. 

But one thing the two painters share, and it makes them both masters, is how much impact they got out of their simplest flat silhouetted shapes.


Charles Burchfield (1893-1967), Untitled (Dark red house) June 19, 1916,
watercolor, Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, NY



In Burchfield's watercolor above he creates almost unimaginable variety in his trees on the horizon. While they're completely flat forms each of Burchfield's trees seems to have something different to say. And all come together in an orchestrated chorus. I think Hopper would have felt very much at home in these woods.


Me grinning ear to ear .



Artists on Art: Burchfield and Hopper from a Painter's Perspective
Sunday, September 23, 2018, 2:00 p.m.
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE

I'm giving a gallery talk on examples of the work by Hopper and Burchfield in the Museum's permanent collection. Everyone welcome. Free with museum admission.




Popular posts from this blog

Edward Hopper- Looking Out

-
Image
Edward Hopper, Cape Cod Morning,   oil on canvas, 1950,  Smithsonian American Art Museum Above is a painting I've loved for some forty years. I'm fortunate to be able to see it often as it lives in the SAAM in Washington, D.C. . This painting contains a real clue to Hopper's art. I visit there often as it helps me learn how to see better. Often writers will talk about the loneliness of Hopper's paintings or how his figures feel isolated and rarely interact with one another. While there is some of that in Hopper's painting, it begs a question- why is Hopper's art so widely loved? I'd offer a couple of answers. First, he's one of the most talented painters and was able to invent visual equivalents for strong emotions we humans experience as we live our lives.  He saw color combining in unexpected ways and offered up generous servings of the most delicious color combinations. Yum. Usually, as in the SAAM's Cape Cod Morning above, when he paints
Read more

Ever Wonder What's in the Next Room in Hopper's Rooms by the Sea?

-
Image
Edward Hopper, Rooms by the Sea , oil on canvas, 1951, Yale University Art Gallery One of Edward Hopper's best known paintings is Rooms by the Sea that was based on his studio in Truro, MA. Its mysterious doorway leading to the ocean captivates our eye.  Did you ever wonder what the room through the painting's other doorway looked like? Last week a collector asked to see some of the drawings I made during my residencies in the historic studio so I photographed this drawing. Philip Koch,  Edward Hopper's Truro Bedroom: Afternoon  Sunlight , vine charcoal, 9 x 12 inches, 2012. To make the drawing I set up my French easel in the bedroom Hopper shared with his wife Jo for the three decades they lived in the studio. One of the room's two small closets centers the drawing. At the right is the doorway leading into Hopper's big painting room with his studio easel in the distance.  What inspired me to make the drawing were the intense patterns the afternoon sunlight made ove
Read more

Edward Hopper's Poetry of Empty Rooms

-
Image
I've just been invited by Rachael Solomon who is the Program Director of the  Edward Hopper House Art Center in Nyack, NY to have a mini solo show in one of their galleries.. We'll be showing some of my paintings of the interior of Edward Hopper's Cape Cod studio where I've had the great pleasure of enjoying 13 residencies since 1983. The Edward Hopper House Art Center is the boyhood home of the famous American realist artist. So much of what Hopper became stemmed from his early years there. So I'm excited to do the exhibit. It will be coming up in March through May of 2012.   Hopper didn't teach. Yet I learned more about how to become a good painter by studying his work than by any other single thing. Art after all is visual. Words, even beautifully and aptly spoken can get in the way. And Hopper was legendarily tactiturn. I suspect had someone asked Hopper how to paint an empty room, his terse reply would have been "Don't!".  Above is one of h
Read more