By Heloise Pinto

I was prompted to revisit some paintings by the 20th century American painter Edward Hopper recently after I came across his 1952 piece, ‘Morning Sun’, online. I found, along with a few other people, that I recognised the scene. This is how the summer months of this year looked for so many of us as a result of the national lockdown in the UK. Its tone is ambiguously desolate and acutely comparable to our own experiences of physical isolation during the long summer. Hopper describes the barren tranquility that an alienation from ordinary and routine social interaction can bring to a morning like this. His striking use of crisp and direct realism leaves out abstraction and allegory and instead provides bleak confrontation with a type of loneliness which it is easier to empathise with now than any other decade following the painting’s completion.

Hopper uses pattern in the repetition of dark windows on the red brick building outside, suggesting unmistakably that this monotony and dullness is reflective of the subject’s state of mind. The sunlight coming through the window is bright and radiant however – it illuminates her room and the blank wall behind the woman. On one level this highlights the emptiness of the bedroom and the feeling of loneliness that it implies, but it also bathes the figure in what can be seen a cheerful or hopeful light. This simultaneously gives the painting a different tone– one of patience, of expecting that things will eventually improve: a feeling I think we can all comprehend, perhaps now more than ever.

Hopper is probably most well-known for his remarkably atmospheric Nighthawks of 1942, in which three apparently unconnected customers sit alone together at a bar late at night. The painting has been interpreted both cynically – as a description of the loneliness of city life, where the detachment from others depicts the dichotomy between physical closeness and emotional connection – and trustingly. There is a little warmth to the scene; these three individuals – four if we include the bartender – have all wound up here at the same time and this gives a sense of serendipity. This is also hinted at by the apparent absence of a door to the bar; it seems as though the artist has trapped the ‘Nighthawks’ together until an interaction takes place.

This more optimistic tone is also discernible in Hopper’s ‘From Williamsburg Bridge’ of 1928. The painting features the artist’s frequently used cropped composition and cinematic viewpoint to describe the austere facades of city architecture and the bleak atmosphere they can create. There is no reference to noise or motion which, once again, delivers the overpowering silence typical of Hopper’s paintings. As in ‘Morning Sun’, the subject is a solitary female figure, this time seen from outside the building from which she looks out at a top story window. Anonymity and alienation pervade the scene. The view from the bridge focuses on the transportation of people in and out of the city commenting on the transitory nature of contemporary life and travel. However, Hopper has chosen to magnify a still, personal moment within all of this, highlighting his interest in representing a moment in the life of another person. Hopper decorates the scene with the subtle pattern of the windows; the brickwork on the bridge and delicate ornamentation of the railings which he sets in warm but muted tones in an affectionate acknowledgement of the woman and an expression of an attempt to connect with a stranger. Once again, in an image of ostensible melancholy and isolation we can find Hopper’s seeming belief in a possible escape from it.

We can all contemplate these paintings alone and think about how these moments in our lives affect us individually: an experience which, in reality, brings us together. Hopper’s paintings – especially in the current climate – inadvertently serve as a bridge between people. They lost critical favour throughout the 1940s and 1950s due to national and cultural optimism and prosperity along with the emerging dominance of Abstract Expressionism; people did not like to be reminded that we are all susceptible to suffering a powerful sense of isolation. But really, I think, they offer an outstretched hand in exactly those moments, gently suggesting that others are often closer and have more in common with us than we imagine and that the barriers that isolate us are not always insurmountable.

ST.ART does not own the rights to any images used in this article.