Edward Hopper Comes to Virginia

We recently drove down to Richmond to attend the opening of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' major exhibition Edward Hopper and the American Hotel. For anyone who has been moved by Hopper's work it's a must-see. Leo Mazow, the Museum's Curator of American Art told me he's been working on the show for seven years. It paid off with loans of major pieces from museum all across the globe.

Art historically Mazow points to how Hopper was one of the first to sense an important change in the country during his career- the dramatic rise in travel, tourism and hotels and motels. Prior to this show I'd never given this much thought but the exhibition makes a convincing case. Hopper was onto something new happening before most of the rest.

As an artist myself who was critically inspired by Hopper's art early in my career to switch from painting abstractions to working as a realist, I'd like to approach just a few of the pieces in the show from a painter's point of view. In a few days I'll post a few more images, but let's start with a single painting, Morning in a City, an oil from 1944 that's loaned from the Williams College Museum of Art.

It's a Hopper I'd never paid that much attention to before. In the Richmond show I had at first walked by it but somehow felt pulled back to stand before it again. On my second look it quietly swept over me. Hopper gets a mysteriously engaging quality because he's a master of telling his story through a visual language that's non-verbal. 

In a room painted with almost chilly hues a  woman rises from her bed and gazes out into a brilliantly sunny morning. She seems lost in thought, perhaps thinking of the day ahead or in some reverie of the past. She stands half way between the warmth outside and the melancholy cool grays and gray-greens of the interior. She seems a little bit caught in the middle. Holding a pale cool gray towel, 

part of her seems to belong in the moodier cool colors of the room. Yet the warmer parts of her skin and definitely her hair suggest she's already been drawn to connect with warmth and energy of the world outside.

Hopper ties the woman to the outside world through his inventive composition. He juxtaposes her figure with the the orange window curtain. Held open with a sash the curtain suggests a falling diagonal movement that is picked up in the bottom the towel, a pillow on the bed and even in shadows on her thigh. He brightly highlights  prominent forearm that echoes that same diagonal thrust (my blue dotted-line additions to the detail aren't elegant, but you get the idea).

I urge people to go see this Hopper exhibition in person. It's a rare chance to see for yourself his amazing playfulness as a colorist- for example check out that pink window frame! 

The exhibition catalogue is excellent as well. The show continues in Richmond through Feb. 23, 2020.