Hopper - Softcover

Kranzfelder, Ivo

4.23

760 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3822820490 ISBN 13: 9783822820490

Publisher: Taschen America Llc, 2002

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Edward Hopper - The loneliness of big-city people

Edward Hopper (1882 - 1967) is considered the first significant American painter in twentieth-century art. After decades of patient work, Hopper enjoyed a success and popularity that since the 1950s have continually grown.

Living in a secluded country house with his wife Josephine, he depicted the loneliness of big-city people in canvas after canvas. Probably the most famous of them, Nighthawks, done in 1942, shows a couple seated quietly, as if turned inwards upon themselves, in the harsh artificial light of an all-night restaurant. Many of Hopper's pictures represent views of streets and roads, rooftops, abandoned houses, depicted in brilliant light that strangely belies the melancholy mood of the scenes.

Edward Hopper's paintings are marked by striking juxta-positions of color, and by the clear contours with which the figures are demarcated from their surroundings. His extremely precise focus on the theme of modern men and women in the natural and man-made environment sometimes lends his pictures a mood of eerie disquiet. In House by the Railroad, a harsh interplay of light and shadow makes the abandoned building seem veritably threatening. On the other hand, Hopper's renderings of rocky landscapes in warm brown hues, or his depictions of the seacoast, exude an unusual tranquillity that reveals another, more optimistic side of his character.

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From the Back Cover:

"Mark Strand looks more deeply into Hopper's pictures than anyone else has before."
--Adam Gopnik

"Strand takes the poet's entrance into the silent world of Hopper with a gift of words that allows painter and poet to become partners in opening the windows of the imagination."
--Wayne Theibaud

"Strand's perceptions are intuitive and visceral. I recommend this strange and wonderful book to anyone interested in Hopper's work."
--Justin Spring, Artforum

About the Author:

Mark Strand was born in Prince Edward Island, Canada, and was the author of many books of poems, three volumes of translations, and one book of short stories. He received numerous honors and awards over his lifetime, including a MacArthur Fellowship, the Pulitzer Prize (for Blizzard of One), the Bollingen Prize, and the Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1990, he was appointed poet laureate of the United States. He died in November 2014, after being nominated for a National Book Award for Collected Poems.

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