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COVER IMPRESSIONS
This month's cover of JMCP features a return to an American artist who specialized in portraying the emotions of life. Following in the American art tradition, Edward Hopper frequently portrayed familiar, everyday scenes. Distinguishing his work is a stage-like quality that offers glimpses of a narrative more extensive than the actual image of the painting within its frame. Room in Brooklyn portrays a story that vividly speaks to a mental health theme.
Born in seafaring Nyack, New York, Hopper's middle class merchant parents provided for an idyllic lifestyle that included an education in private school and then in the local high school. His perspective in art seems to draw from his background, lingering on a fascination with this small-town view of human interaction. Initially trained in illustration after graduating from high school, Hopper quickly pursued his preferred education in fine arts at the New York School of Art. There he learned a genteel impressionist style that was popular at the turn of the twentieth century, but he was also introduced to a new, inventive urban-realist movement named the Ashcan school. The Ashcan school favored a harsh but revealing interpretation of contemporary city life. It was in this juxtaposition of small-town dialogue and big-city existence that Hopper originated his special view. Between 1906 and 1910, Hopper took several trips to Europe, particularly to Paris, where impressionism predominated. He relied on his illustration skills to fund his travels, though he preferred not to indulge in that commercial profession. The additional exposure to the impressionists helped him to appreciate and adopt the impressionistic emphasis on sunlight, which he would employ with startling effect in his later work. Upon returning to America in 1913, Hopper's financial restrictions again forced him to practice commercial illustration for support, but his primary pursuit remained fine art. Settling his studio in New York City at Washington Square, where he would reside the rest of his life, Hopper struggled financially for the next decade. His periodic experiments in European-style impressionism were largely rejected by critics, while his endeavors in American themes were admired but unrewarded. The next ten years of Hopper's life were formative to later success. Most significantly, he married a fellow artist from the New York School of Art with whom he would remain inseparably partnered. Jo, his wife, was crucial to Hopper's progress: she was his muse, his promoter, and manager of his work, as well as the sole female model for his entire catalogue of paintings. Experimenting first with etching and then with watercolor, Hopper developed the aspect of solitude and mystery in his composition that would become his signature palette. By the middle 1920s, Hopper had gained meteoric success with shows at the Brooklyn Museum and various New York City galleries. Hopper's mature style was eventually realized in oil painting. Drawing on his illustration training, Hopper adopted an approach that focused on a realistic portrayal of ordinary figures and subjects, including city dwellers, hotel lobbies, gas stations, homes, and lighthouses. His compositions often captured the unsettling changes that occurred in the American landscape in the time surrounding World War II, especially the alienation of the individual within the growing city and the desolation of the countryside. His technique typically relied on a frontal view parallel with the plane of the picture, a perspective from above, and a subject placed on a diagonal that plays into the picture's depth. This work is exemplary of Hopper's unique power and imagination.
Room in Brooklyn explores the effect of a city's expansion on its inhabitants. Hopper's introspective approach highlights the unforgiving quality of urban life rather than its exuberance. The painting's poignancy originates in the subject's vulnerability; both artist and viewer coldly observe the figure, who is unaware that she is being watched by strangers. The oblique treatment of light emphasizes a stark mood, and the subject's withdrawn solitude is in direct contrast to the multitudes suggested by the cityscape beyond the window. The tidy flourish of the brightly illuminated floral arrangement seems unable to penetrate the shadows that prevail in the room. The scene vividly depicts the disturbances that we frequently must treat with our health care system.
Robert W. Baran
Cover Credit Edward Hopper (1882-1967) Room in Brooklyn, oil on canvas, 1932. Copyright � 1998, The Hayden Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA. All rights reserved.
Vol. 4, No. 1 January/February 1998 JMCP Journal of Managed Care Pharmacy |
