{"id":3402,"date":"2025-07-22T08:00:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T12:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3402"},"modified":"2025-07-21T06:52:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T10:52:14","slug":"happy-birthday-to-edward-hopper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3402","title":{"rendered":"“If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.” — Edward Hopper"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nIt’s his birthday today. <\/p>\n

I wrote about Edward Hopper quite a bit in my Present Tense column at Film Comment<\/i>, detailing the Hopper-y vibe of Tom Noonan’s great film about urban loneliness, What Happened Was…<\/i><\/a> In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that Karen Sillas’ deep-rose-colored dress might be inspired by this painting. Her apartment is all windows, too, in the movie. <\/p>\n

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I love the loneliness in Edward Hopper’s work. The insomnia. The urban midnights. The voyeurism. The emptiness. If you’re heartbroken, Hopper is your kindred spirit. I find his paintings very sad, sadness you can wallow in. Many (most?) people do what they can to avoid loneliness. I have never been able to pull it off. All the lonely people, where do they all come from?<\/p>\n

Living in a major metropolitan area, you are constantly up against other people’s lives. People have private moments in public. You can peek into people’s windows as you walk by. You give each other privacy as best you can. People can weep on the subway, and nobody freaks out. Everyone clams up, goes into their own private head-space, and the weeping person may as well be in her own room for all the attention she gets. Believe me: having been that weeping person, there’s a comfort in anonymity. There is nothing quite like the freedom to be left alone<\/em>. <\/p>\n

At the same time, there is the sense of being privy to other people’s secrets. There are just so many damn windows. How do other people live? How are they<\/em> managing? <\/p>\n

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\nSometimes, if you’re alone, and feeling your alone-ness acutely … seeing glimpses of other people living their lives, through windows, connects you to something human. Reminds you you are a human being, you are real. It doesn’t eradicate loneliness. The kind of loneliness I’m talking about can’t be eradicated. I wonder if there are some people who have never felt loneliness like that. Loneliness that literally wakes you up at nights. Like Laing writes in her great book The Lonely City<\/i>, where Edward Hopper is featured prominently, loneliness like that is like being hungry.<\/p>\n

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I found a really wonderful article about Edward Hopper’s paintings of movie theatres<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Hopper evokes a world gone by, and yet not all that unlike our own. People are people, no matter the era. <\/p>\n

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\nI have been all of these women. <\/p>\n

Even when Hopper moves out into the country, the loneliness follows him. Or maybe this is just me projecting. That’s the power of his work. There’s a blankness there somewhere, a nothing-ness, giving great permission to the viewer to place herself into the painting, to see her own life there. Or not. I grew up in a beach town. My first kiss was on a foggy beach. The ocean is the background to most of my childhood memories. So I look at these two, and yes, I wonder what they might be talking about, but I also wonder if they aren’t talking at all, if they are just listening to the sound of the lonely surf breaking on the beach below?<\/p>\n

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“Maybe I am slightly inhuman … All I ever wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.” — Edward Hopper<\/h2>\n

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\nTerrence Malick knew his Hopper, that’s for sure. <\/p>\n

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\nSo does Tommy Lee Jones. <\/p>\n

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\nOnly Edward Hopper could turn a gas station into an image piercingly sweet and sad. Pungent and poetic. I don’t feel like analyzing why. These are feelings that hurt, not particularly pleasant, but they’re familiar. I’ve had them since I was very very young, before I understood anything about love and loss. It’s a human-inheritance kind of thing. <\/p>\n

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As I observed in the article linked at the top: one thing to note about his most famous painting: The diner has no door. No way in, no way out. <\/p>\n

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\nLoneliness is not pleasant. People go to mad extremes to avoid being lonely; it’s that excruciating an experience. Loneliness has ruined long stretches of my life. I look back and wish to spare myself. But at least I had some company. Edward Hopper had already been there. <\/p>\n

Last year, Allison and I went to the stunning Edward Hopper exhibit at the Whitney. I had been hearing about it for months and watching enviously as friends attended (via their Instagram feeds). Allison and I finally went. And we lost ourselves to the world. What an AMAZING exhibit. Edward Hopper’s New York. It was not just the usual suspects, although I got to see those too. It dug into his early advertising work, lots of that on display – so different! – his sketches – the sketches of “Nighthawks” – and also his relationship with movies\/theatres. We wandered around, sometimes together, sometimes alone. There were so many people there, which – after the last couple of years we had – did my heart good. People clustering before famous paintings. Edward Hopper’s paintings are stories. You can “read into” them. I ended up talking with two other women about one of the paintings. We talked about what we saw. We read into the behavior. It was so awesome. <\/p>\n

Allison and I both saw some Hopper-in-real-life visuals DURING our time there. We weren’t together when we saw these things, but we both noticed and both took pictures, of the exact same thing. We are kindred spirits. See if you can spot them.<\/p>\n

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\nI was so excited I got to see that one. ^^<\/p>\n

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\nI got full-body goosebumps when I saw that one in person. ^^<\/p>\n

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\nThank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account<\/a>. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0<\/a>, if you’d like to subscribe.<\/em> <\/small><\/p>\n