from the online artnet news jan 20......
A New Exhibition Decodes His Tricks.............
How Did Edward Hopper Manage to Turn a Plain Country Road Into a Psychologically Charged Drama?
A new exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland delves into the American artist's landscapes. The show explores how Hopper used the same canny techniques to evoke a sense of uncertainty and heavy pathos in his landscapes and city scenes alike.
And while you're at it won’t you explain the sly secret of how Hank Williams made his music sound so lascivious and bawdy or why Janis Joplin songs evoke such tragedy, also unravel the illusion of Brando’s self-destructive incandescence -- shameless tricksters all in the eyes of an astute art critic. Art experts of all stripes, curators, critics, and academics scholars, the phalanxes of sheltered and supported art professionals who never make any, not since art school, and who likely don’t own much either, prints work fine, please step overboard. You're a dead weight on art, a suffocating conspiracy of self-appointed parish priests always writing goofy commentaries and publishing them in national media for bleating sheep -- the state of art these days.
So, ‘How did Hopper manage to evoke this sense of foreboding and mystery in his work, regardless of the subject? Often by creating a tightly cropped composition that suggests more action is taking place outside the picture plane, or by including people who are looking at something that is invisible to the viewer.’ Theatrical stage-craft so clever, these painters pretending to pour their guts out for the sake of a buck and a bit of notoriety, so similar in motive to art's insiders, critics and experts, by strange coincidence. No, you morons, Hopper painted that way to represent himself, to stake his claim on existence, and to make the best painting he could make. He didn’t give a second thought to stirring your unease, that’s on you, although actually almost anyone lucky enough to see his original paintings feels something. They have an uncanny magnetic presence.
It’s not a trick, it’s real -- that’s the part that fools you. It’s very possible Ed Hopper will turn out to be the most revered painter of the twentieth century somewhere down the line, a realist working in the realm of shared perception who managed to convey, not unlike Picasso, that he didn’t long to be popular, and that in the end he respected both himself and the viewer. To a modernist sensibility that might come across as unsettling but it's good for you. Artists can’t help it, can't alter it, their character is there encoded on canvas long after they depart, and even art experts can learn something by seriously looking at their work.
A New Exhibition Decodes His Tricks.............
How Did Edward Hopper Manage to Turn a Plain Country Road Into a Psychologically Charged Drama?
A new exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland delves into the American artist's landscapes. The show explores how Hopper used the same canny techniques to evoke a sense of uncertainty and heavy pathos in his landscapes and city scenes alike.
And while you're at it won’t you explain the sly secret of how Hank Williams made his music sound so lascivious and bawdy or why Janis Joplin songs evoke such tragedy, also unravel the illusion of Brando’s self-destructive incandescence -- shameless tricksters all in the eyes of an astute art critic. Art experts of all stripes, curators, critics, and academics scholars, the phalanxes of sheltered and supported art professionals who never make any, not since art school, and who likely don’t own much either, prints work fine, please step overboard. You're a dead weight on art, a suffocating conspiracy of self-appointed parish priests always writing goofy commentaries and publishing them in national media for bleating sheep -- the state of art these days.
So, ‘How did Hopper manage to evoke this sense of foreboding and mystery in his work, regardless of the subject? Often by creating a tightly cropped composition that suggests more action is taking place outside the picture plane, or by including people who are looking at something that is invisible to the viewer.’ Theatrical stage-craft so clever, these painters pretending to pour their guts out for the sake of a buck and a bit of notoriety, so similar in motive to art's insiders, critics and experts, by strange coincidence. No, you morons, Hopper painted that way to represent himself, to stake his claim on existence, and to make the best painting he could make. He didn’t give a second thought to stirring your unease, that’s on you, although actually almost anyone lucky enough to see his original paintings feels something. They have an uncanny magnetic presence.
It’s not a trick, it’s real -- that’s the part that fools you. It’s very possible Ed Hopper will turn out to be the most revered painter of the twentieth century somewhere down the line, a realist working in the realm of shared perception who managed to convey, not unlike Picasso, that he didn’t long to be popular, and that in the end he respected both himself and the viewer. To a modernist sensibility that might come across as unsettling but it's good for you. Artists can’t help it, can't alter it, their character is there encoded on canvas long after they depart, and even art experts can learn something by seriously looking at their work.
