Edward Hopper: “If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint”

Edward Hopper

In the Mind of Great Artists

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“If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.”
Edward Hopper

A conceptual phrase which would surprise us, if it had not been uttered by Hopper: a painter of silences, someone obsessed with the incapacity of the human being to communicate.

His paintings show us the loneliness of the modern man, his difficulty to ask for help in face of the emptiness and the existential angst.

Hopper painted almost deserted scenes even cities that are deserts. Real spaces that turn into mysterious, disturbing dreams, the climate of metaphysical painting. The achievement of this climate has a lot to do with his talent to handle light. A light that sometimes seems artificial, cold, which gives a bigger sense of anguish.

And he has his way of stressing the desperation effect with strong contrasts, generating chiaroscuros. A resource the Baroque painters used to achieve drama, which gave their paintings certain “theatricality,” which can also be observed in the works of Hopper.

To sum up, Edward Hopper painted silences because words are not enough for the human being to stop being alone. He painted because it was impossible to explain with words what, in addition, nobody would ever listen to. He did in a desperate attempt to communicate.

Image: Eleven AM (1926).

Recommended links:

Hopper and Loneliness in the Modern World.

Timeline: Moments of Edward Hopper.

Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting: Nighthawks, Edward Hopper.

Cristina’s World (1948), Andrew Wyeth.

American Gothic (1930), Grant Wood.

Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting: Mont Saint-Victoire, Paul Cézanne.

Stories behind Works of Art: Guernica.

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