Waiting game
Andrew Lambirth
Edward Hopper Tate Modern, until 5 September (sponsored by American Airlines)
Fm. the first time in more than 20 years, we have in Britain the chance to see a comprehensive retrospective of the enigmatic paintings of Edward Hopper (1882-1967). Long thought to be the star of American realism, he is immensely popular for his strange cinematic scenes of pensive figures in interiors, and compelling studies of light and dark. In fact, Hopper owes a great deal to the tradition of European realism, and particularly to Degas. He is as idiosyncratic a painter as L.S. Lowry, and wide popularity has done the same for both of them, convincing people that they are simple, straightforward artists, when really they are very complex. Hopper's paintings do not simply hold up a mirror to the American way of life, they are carefully staged and constructed to reveal a particular fall and play of light that interested him.
Of course there is an element of social observation to be found in Hopper's work — he is, for instance, rightly praised for his depiction of American vernacular architecture — but this is not the mainspring of his very particular vision. Hopper is a great deal more oblique. This exhibition, brilliantly put together by Sheena Wagstaff, head of exhibitions and displays at Tate Modern, starts in no uncertain terms, with a picture that at once establishes the dominant tone of Hopper's work. It's called 'Solitary Figure in a Theatre', it dates from 1902-4, and it depicts the back view of someone in otherwise empty stalls. Brushy and expressive in application, it is really a monochrome study of light and dark, an odd subject but a telling one. Other examples of early work here include flights of steps and roof-scapes painted during his three trips to Paris (between 1906 and 1910), which he was encouraged to visit by his teacher at the New York School of Art, Robert Henri. Here, too, in these early rooms of the exhibition, are a number of etchings Hopper made in the 1920s, with the familiar subject matter beginning to emerge: street scenes and figures in interiors, the occasional landscape_ For 16 years he made a living from commercial illustration, a job he found degrading. It was not until 1924, after his first solo show, when he was 42 years old, that he was able to devote his energies full-time to his painting.
This slow development perhaps intensified his response to a subject. It might also account for the slightly depressing nature of his scenes, the pervading aura of melancholy. Throughout this exhibition of some 70 works (including watercolours and drawings) there recur images of great and often mysterious power, imbued with potential drama and concentrated states of mind, and yet not one is a celebration of a light or optimistic mood. A scene might have an erotic or voyeuristic charge, but the depressive streak is overpowering. Perhaps this is less obvious in the landscapes, but then Hopper's wife Jo — with whom he had a wild and difficult relationship — called even his paintings of lighthouses self-portraits, perhaps for their very solitariness.
Among the key early paintings is 'Eleven a.m.', a bizarre image of a young woman naked but for her shoes, sitting forward in an armchair and peering through a window. What, if anything, is about to happen? You can play the game of cryptic narratives for ever with Hopper, and get nowhere. In some respects it's better to consider the painting as a sensitive study of the fall of light through and outside an urban window. Far better to enjoy the deli
cacy of Hopper's paintvvork, the subtlety or sudden stridency of his creams and blues and greens. Then there's the brooding introspection of 'Automat' (1927), the litup frontage (proudly proclaiming Ex-Lax) of Silbers Pharmacy in 'Drug Store' of the same year, and the mild voyeurism of 'Night Windows' (1928). All really studies of light.
The landscapes in Room 4 are a welcome relief, gentler in mood than anything else in the exhibition, despite the imposing lighthouses and the railway line that cuts across the otherwise pastoral 'Hills, South Truro'. I still find 'Office at Night' (1940) disturbing, with its green flesh tones and furtive sexuality, and it is highlighted here in a room on its own. There's a strong whiff of Magritte and de Chirico in some of the lit facades of houses — look at 'House at Dusk' (1935) or 'Cape Cod Sunset' (1934) — though differently dreamlike, and perhaps less hallucinatory.
The great familiar paintings keep coming: 'Nighthawks' (1942), showcased on its own apart from seven conte studies for it, still so abrupt in its cropping, so poignant in its livid greens; the blowsy broad in 'Summertime' (1943); the woman austerely taking the air from the jutting corner window of the clapboard house in 'Cape Cod Morning' (1950). Among the big statements are such intimate delights as 'Stairway' from 1949, a strong study of the threshold between interior and brute nature. Hopper got better and better at putting on the paint. Look at the almost abstract right-hand side of 'Hotel by a Railroad' (1952), or the wall textures in the eminently filmic 'Office in a Small City' (1953). The seemingly wooden and inaccurate drawing in 'Excursion into Philosophy' (1959) is really irrelevant in a picture which is about the fall of light on a hedge-top, as much as on the man's face or the floor of the room. The distortions of 'A Woman in the Sun' (1961) are even more obvious in the hugely elongated figure, but the painting is beautiful for other reasons — principally the movement of the curtain at far right billowing in the wind.
Such things show what a great master Hopper was, a painter of undimmed originality and increasing minimalism. (Look at the tremendous 'Sun in an Empty Room' from 1963.) The Tate should be congratulated for mounting a superb show, though I do have slight reservations about the hang, which is sparse almost to the point of having a David Sylvester one-painting-oneroom feel to it. This does tend to emphasise the abiding theme of loneliness which permeates Hopper's work (though he thought that people paid too much attention to the alienation thing), but it doesn't bring out the best in the pictures, which can get a little lost in Tate Modern's rather drear galleries. Hopper's pictures work well together, as can be seen in the larger spaces, allowing us to make interesting cross-references and comparisons. Above all, this show demonstrates how important it is not to rely on reproductions for a knowledge of his work. It is Hopper's supreme mastery in the manipulation of paint which sings out from the walls of this impressive exhibition.
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