A Study of the Post-war American

A Study of the Post-war American Social Psychological Reconstruction Value in Edward Hopper’s Paintings (FINAL THESIS FOR ACADEMIC ENGLISH WRITING - II @ SCU)

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Author: Glenn Chentianye Xu

Date of Completion: June 14th, 2021

Abstract: Edward Hopper is one of the most important realist painters in the United States in the 20th century. People’s researches on Edward Hopper mainly focused on his own growth experience and the background of his works, the language of painting, and the theme of expression. Few scholars have done researches from the perspective of the social value of his paintings’ post-war psychological reconstruction function. Since China nowadays is undergoing similar transformation to the USA in the 20th century, researches on Hopper’s paintings’ social value may give contemporary artists a good enlightenment on their artistic responsibilities. To explore the psychological reconstruction social value of Hopper’s paintings, based on the analysis of Hopper’s representative works which was chosen under the criterion given by a well-known Hopper researcher and Wolfflin’s formal analysis method, this paper revealed their social value from three aspects: image selection, geometric composition, and the use of light and shadow, explaining how his paintings’ empathy effect appears and how this empathy effect helped post-war American social psychological reconstruction, and finding that the use of windows, sharp shapes and bright light together contributes to his paintings’ empathy effect. These findings have a good enlightenment to the artistic responsibilities of artists and the construction of Chinese social psychology under the current urbanization transformation.

Keywords: Edward Hopper, social value, psychological reconstruction, Wolfflin’s formal analysis, urbanization transformation

Introduction

Edward Hopper (1882 ~ 1967) is one of the famous realist painters in the United States in the 20th century and one of the painters who have had the most profound influence on the world. In Hopper’s era, American art was deeply influenced by European art; abstract and impressionist paintings became rather popular. However, Hopper, taking advantage of realism paintings, paid more attention to the living conditions of the people at the bottom of the social rank under the hustle and bustle of industrialized cities, showing the deep spiritual outlook of people at that time, and is known as the descriptor of loneliness (Fan, 1996).

Hopper was in an era when American society was undergoing tremendous changes. After the First World War, the United States gradually became the economic and cultural centre of the world, and rapidly developing cities gradually replaced traditional villages. On the fast-moving train of the times, the ever-changing scene made people at a loss what to do. With the rapid urbanization of American society, American citizens had also lost their own traditions and beliefs because of rapid progress, and thus paid the price of spiritual scarcity, and people are in a huge vortex of loneliness. The ensuing Great Depression can be said to have worsened the situation. The pressure on American citizens’ lives has increased, and the hustle and bustle of industrialized cities permeated the atmosphere of despair and loneliness. As a painter with a strong sense of social responsibility, Hopper keenly captured this social phenomenon. He used his unique painting language to depict American civil society in the first half of the twentieth century: empty cities, cold streets, lonely men and women. He preferred to use residences, hotels, and street scenes as themes to express the living conditions and spiritual world of American urban citizens --- a sense of loneliness that seems full of despair. But the loneliness described by Hopper is not a kind of negativity or compromise to society, but a kind of hope, full of expectations for a better future. Hopper’s paintings have undoubtedly played a vital role in the psychological reconstruction of the American people whose spiritual world were barren due to rapid urbanization after the First World War, reflecting the author’s unique humanistic care, which, in today’s context, is still worth exploring.

The Literature Review on the Value of Edward Hopper’s Paintings

Perhaps because of what the researcher has mentioned above, previous researches on Hopper and his paintings often focused on loneliness, paying more attention to the analysis of the background of the times, personal experiences, expression themes, and painting language of Hopper’s works. More attention has been given to their art value. The literature in this domain can be divided into two categories by topics: the analyses on the causes of Hopper’s art style and the analyses on the artistic techniques in Hopper’s paintings.

The Analyses on the Causes of Hopper’s Art Style

In Edward Hopper: The Art and the Artist (Levin, 1999), Gail Levin introduced Hopper’s growth experience, the causes and influences of his art style, and its connection with impressionist paintings in the form of biographies, providing us with richer information about Hopper’s early life and work. The researcher reached the conclusion that Hopper’s early years of struggle, his obsession with loneliness and guidance from his teacher --- the artist Robert Henri had together contributed to his art style which featured by loneliness, which Hopper had always employed in his paintings to show people at that time the true situation they were in.

In Edward Hopper (in Acq) (Lyons, 1995), Lyons analysed Hopper’s diary, which recorded Hopper’s artistic creation experience in detail, and even described the materials and colours used in Hopper’s paintings, as well as the creative themes of some works and some interesting things in Hopper’s personal life, etc. It is very helpful for fully understanding Hopper’s life. By analysing Hopper’s diary, the researcher find that Hopper’s success is inseparable from his seriousness and even paranoia for art; what’s more, Hopper’s wife had a great influence on Hopper’s painting style, allowing his works to embody gentleness in loneliness and have the function of heart healing. His wife was not only the source of inspiration for his creation, but also the unignorable cause of loneliness in his paintings.

The Analyses on the Artistic Techniques in Hopper’s Paintings

In Hopper (Strand, 2011), Strand selected Hopper’s 30 most representative paintings, organized them by the chronological order of their creation and employed the poet’s perspective to appreciate and explain them in turn. The length of each commentary varies, but are mainly from the aesthetic point of view, paying more attention to the paintings themselves. The researcher concluded that Hopper was good at mixing light and shadow, and balancing relations between colours, space and other elements to express themes of paintings, contributing to these paintings’ great visual impact and the ability to cause empathy.

In “Research on Painting Style of Edward Hopper” (Zhang, 2015), the researcher analysed the use of colour in Hopper’s paintings and explored the colour-compensation effect and its function of laying the foundation for showing the emotion surrounding in Hopper’s paintings. The researcher found that although Hopper’s works were influenced by the impressionists, he integrated his own observation and imagination, and used his original painting language to create images that were deeper than reality, thereby expressing the strong loneliness and setting viewers thinking deeply about the times.

Summary of Literature Review

The researches mentioned above have yielded productive results. They not only analysed the cause of Hopper’s art style, but also the artistic techniques used by Hopper in his paintings, helping us understand Hopper’s personal growth experience, the characteristics of his painting style, and the theme of his works. According to these researchers, the era Hopper was in contributed to the alienation and loneliness in Edward Hopper’s paintings, which could cause empathy of his contemporary viewers.

However, a close look at the literature reveals the deficiencies existing in current researches. Firstly, Lyons (1995) and Levin (1999) only focused on the personal life of Edward Hopper, but the relevant analysis of his paintings was insufficient, lacking deep analyses on Hopper’s paintings in his different life periods. Secondly, Strand (2011) and Zhang (2015) only focused on the creative elements of the works, but failed to explain why Hopper employed the artistic skills and what contributed to his art style. What’s more, although all the researches have talked about the relationship between Hopper’s paintings and the era he was in more or less, none of them deal with the social value of Hopper’s works. Were Hopper’s works just to express his personal loneliness? Why do so many different people are moved and feel healed when appreciating Hopper’s works? These researches failed to explain.

The researcher holds that a research on the post-war American social psychological reconstruction value in Edward Hopper’s paintings will help us deepen our understanding of Hopper and his works. Simultaneously, the current social environment in China has many similarities with the era Hopper lived in. With the increasing degree of urbanization, people are coming to live and work in cities in pursuit of better opportunities and a brighter future. They are in the hustle and bustle of cities, but their souls become more and more anxious and lonely. How today’s artists should assume the responsibilities given by the times, how the art works can reflect the truth of life, and how they can serve the public and soothe the people are also topics of great contemporary significance worth deeply exploring.

This study will probe into the post-war American social psychological reconstruction value in Edward Hopper’s paintings, based on analyses of several Hopper’s representative works. Wolfflin’s formal analysis method will be adopted as the main research method.

To help the research better performed, two research questions are posed about Edward Hopper’s paintings. First, three perspectives --- image selection, geometric composition, and use of light and shadow --- which is commonly dealt with in formal analysis, are analysed in Edward Hopper’s works.

RQ1: How does the paintings’ ability to cause empathy manifest from the perspective of image selection, geometric composition, and the use of light and shadow?

Then based on the analysis of how the paintings’ ability to cause empathy appear, how the paintings contributed to post-war American social psychological reconstruction is probed into.

RQ2: How did the empathy help with post-war American social psychological reconstruction?

Method

How does Edward Hopper’s paintings fetch the magical ability to cause empathy? How did this empathy help American people back then reconstruct their minds? This study explores Hopper’s paintings’ value of helping American people reconstruct their minds after the second world war. In this research, the researcher adopts Wolfflin’s formal analysis method as the main research method to get an understanding of the meaning of Edward Hopper’s works.

Wolfflin’s formal analysis is a specific type of visual description. Unlike ekphrasis, it is not meant to evoke the work in the reader’s mind. Instead, it is an explanation of visual structure, of the ways in which certain visual elements have been arranged and function within a composition. Since the goal of a Wolfflin’s formal analysis is to explain how the formal elements of a work of art affect the representation of the subject matter and expressive content (Barnet, 2008), this method is suitable for the research, for it tries to explore Hopper’s works’ empathy effect through analysing his paintings’ formal elements.

To conduct the formal analysis, the researcher picks several Edward Hopper’s representative paintings for analysing from the perspective of image selection, geometric composition, and use of light and shadow, which are three commonly used aspects in formal analysis. To be detailed, this research chooses Nighthawks (1942) for analysing Hopper’s paintings’ image selection, Office in a Small City (1953) and Second Storey Sunlight (1960) for analysing Hopper’s paintings’ geometric composition, and Dawn in Pennsylvania (1942) for analysing Hopper’s paintings’ use of light and shadow. Such selection is based on the analysis on all Hopper’s paintings’ composition and art skills given by Strand (1994), which is widely agreed by many Hopper researchers. He held that these paintings mentioned above were Hopper’s most representative works in terms of image selection, geometric composition, and use of light and shadow.

As for each work, the researcher conducts Wolfflin’s formal analysis on them one by one, to find the cause of Hopper’s paintings’ empathy effect from the aspects of image selection, geometric composition, and the use of light and shadow.

Findings

The researcher employs Wolfflin’s formal analysis to analyse several Hopper’s works and find the causes of their empathy effect from the perspective of image selection, geometric composition, and use of light and shadow, and then analyses why such empathy played a role in post-war social psychological reconstruction in the USA. In this part, the findings will be given in the order of image selection, geometric composition, and the use of light and shadow, and in each subpart, research question one and two will be answered in turn.

Unique Image Selection

Window is an icon in Hopper’s works, and it is also his unique way of expressing loneliness. Under Hopper’s pen, the window is not only a part of the room, but also a medium of communication between the painter, the characters in the painting, and the viewers. In other words, the window has changed from a concrete thing in daily life to a schematic symbol deliberately set by the painter. Hopper skilfully used the image element of the window in the paintings to organize and arrange the picture carefully, thus forming a special aesthetic feeling.

Nighthawks (1942) is Hopper’s most famous masterpiece. Hopper deliberately removed redundant details, allowing the huge glass windows of the restaurant to lie across the canvas, which occupies most of the space, giving people a strong visual impact, but the horizontal composition of the windows makes the scene look peaceful. Through the huge glass windows, the viewers can clearly see that there are four people in the restaurant: a waiter and three guests. The couple on the right faced the viewers and talked to the waiter casually, each with a cold and rigid expression. The man on the far left turned his back to the audience, and his lonely back made him seem even more lonely against the other three. The light in the room was projected on the empty street through the huge glass windows. The bright light and the deep night set off each other, once again rendering the quiet atmosphere. Here, the perspective of people standing outside and looking indoors is adopted, and the windows play a dual role of display and isolation in the painting. The whole picture is filled with an atmosphere of loneliness under the influence of the glass window. Nighthawks is Hopper’s representative work reflecting loneliness, and the huge window and quiet light in the painting have become its obvious signs.

Nighthawks 1942

Hopper’s works are almost inseparable from the image of the window. There are three main ways of framing the picture through the window taken by him. Firstly, the window is like a picture frame, which sets off the characters, focusing the viewer’s sight on the things inside the window; at the same time, Hopper takes advantage of the transparency of the window to extend the space of the picture outside the painting. The window not only serves as a foil, but also implies the space outside the painting. Secondly, Hopper defines the position of the subject in the painting through the special shape of the window, and the window enhances the sense of space of the picture. The painter can portray the scene inside the window as well as the things outside the window. The space inside and outside the window interacts with each other. Thirdly, the window determines the final composition and layout of the picture. Hopper uses the characteristics of the window itself to make the picture appear geometrical division, with the characteristics of simplicity and purity.

Hopper had an extreme preference for windows and carefully planned the layout in his paintings. He used windows, especially glass windows, to symbolize modern cities, implying the tremendous pressure that urban life brought to people. Under Hopper’s brush, windows of various shapes are not only a passage to loneliness, but also a medium for breaking loneliness. The window is not a wall, it can project the sight and let the light in. Windows confine people indoors, but windows also facilitate communication between people and the outside world. People seek a moment of peace in the window, but also look forward to the world outside the window. Hopper sublimated this characteristic of the window, suggesting that people with poor spirits look forward to communication. Therefore, the unique image selection of the window makes Hopper’s paintings have a psychological reconstruction and spiritual soothing effect on the viewers in the hustle and bustle of urban life.

Novel Geometric Composition

Hopper was good at capturing the most familiar and disturbing urban wasteland scenes in modern society, such as standing buildings, empty streets, quiet restaurants, sunlit rooms, etc., which makes his paintings present a vivid sense of geometry.

Still taking Nighthawks as an example, when we appreciate this work, except for being shocked by the strong lonely atmosphere exuded in the painting, we are also attracted by its simple and detailed geometric composition.

The visual centre of the picture is the long glass window, which presents us the entire restaurant. The window occupies two thirds of the picture, forming an equilateral trapezoid, giving the main body of the picture an invisible thrust, pushing the line of sight to the disappearing street. The parallelogram formed by the buildings and streets in the distance constitutes another visual space, leading our eyes to it. We seem to be on the scene, feeling that we are not the viewers of the painting, but the nocturnal walkers; our eyes are not fixed on what we see in the painting, and the strong sense of geometry guides our sight and forces us to move forward, and forced us to stay again.

Office in a Small City 1953 Second Storey Sunlight 1960

Next take Office in a Small City (1953) and Second Storey Sunlight (1960) as examples. From the compositional point of view, the similarity of the two works lies in how to express the space, which is mainly reflected in the overlap of the houses, which has both the visual centre, and elements that balance the picture. The overall composition is horizontal and vertical, and the style of the entire picture is determined to form a main stable pattern, which can also reflect the dignity of the atmosphere. In many Hopper’s paintings without figures, the atmosphere created by the flat structure of the entire picture gives people a sense of loneliness. But when there are characters, the viewpoint changes, and the characters in the whole paintings become the first part to be watch. The adults in Hopper’s pictures have no exaggerated movements, only a melancholy expression. Everyone is in this cold city, thinking about their own lives.

In addition to squares and rectangles, there are many triangles and a few circles. The triangles in Hope’s paintings all have acute angles, which express a kind of sharpness emotionally, making people nervous and letting them enter a state of anxiety. Under the calm surface of the buildings, there are many sharp angles of light and shadow, suggesting that a peaceful life is just a surface look, and what lurks in the depths is anxiety.

In Hopper’s works, geometry helps establish the spatial hierarchy of the picture, making our sights go further, and promptly summons us to return, so that his sense of geometry is never boring, and never loses rich expressiveness. Loneliness is Hopper’s ontology, and the geometric spirit of the images is a necessary factor to balance this emotion. The geometric space seems to be flowing, the light is shuttled, and the sight is wandering. This novel geometric composition makes the viewers feel the sadness of the work, but does not make the viewers themselves sad, because this is the brightest kind of sadness, pointing directly to the untouchable position in the viewers’ heart, which makes people feel quiet and warm. This seemingly simple geometric composition allowed viewers who were deeply lonely in the hustle and bustle of the post-war society to obtain a kind of spiritual comfort from it, which was conducive to the psychological reconstruction of the citizens.

Clever Use of Light and Shadow

In Hopper’s paintings, light and shadow are not only an objective existence, but also a means of expressing emotions and a tool for organizing the picture. His use of light and shadow is more subjective, forming his own unique painting style.

The light in Hopper’s painting is like a spotlight, focusing the viewer’s attention on the subject. The viewers’ sight moves on the picture with the change of light, feeling the different colours, volumes and textures of each object in the painting.

Hopper not only used light to highlight the subject, but also transformed the light in the paintings to give it a unique image. Hopper rarely made the edges of light softer. The edges of the light in his paintings are sharp and rigid. The picture exudes a calm and monotonous atmosphere, and the objects form various regular projections under the monotonous light. Dawn in Pennsylvania (1942) shows the scene of a train station in Pennsylvania, and the buildings in the shadows in the distance are empty and dreamy. The light divides the picture into two parts: the bright part and the dark part, and the strong darkness and brightness contrast produces a quiet effect.

Dawn inPennsylvania (1942)

Hopper was also good at using messy dazzling light spots to express inner chaos. In his Summer in the City created in 1949, light shines through the windows and spills on the floor and walls. The restless light on the wall contrasts with the calm light on the floor, suggesting that the protagonist is angry but appears helpless when facing reality. This painting shows Hopper’s use of intricate light and shadow effects to express the anxious and helpless emotions of the characters. Through the clever use of light and shadow, Hopper succeeded in conveying the implicit emotions in the paintings to the people watching before the paintings. Light enters through the window, and the light refracts into a shadow with the objects. The illuminated place seems to have been enchanted.

Unlike painters who are good at putting the characters in the dark to express a lonely atmosphere, Hopper also liked to put the characters in the painting under bright light. However, the characters under the light appear extremely indifferent, and they don’t care about the surrounding environment. The surrounding light forms a strong contrast with the coldness of the body, which can make the audience feel the deep loneliness of the characters in the painting. But at the same time, the bright light also plays a role of balance and comfort invisibly, making the viewers have expectations on  the reality.

Summerin the City 1949

Sometimes watching Hopper’s paintings can give people a feeling that the characters in the paintings are not the protagonists, and the ubiquitous light and shadow are the real protagonists in Hopper’s mind. Indeed, if the characters in Hopper’s paintings are removed, the atmosphere of the work is still obvious, and the emotions the painter wanted to express are still empathetic. “Hopper loved sunlight, and it’s shined by a big sun. He thought sunlight was life, and he valued it far more than ever.” (He, 2005, p. 93).

Light is the spiritual symbol of Hopper, and the spice of his depressed life. The seemingly ethereal form of light contains rich content, and there are a lot of spiritual metaphors behind Hopper’s lonely light. Hopper found tranquillity in the light to obtain hope, and transmitted the deafening sound to the viewers through the light, inspiring people to withdraw from the chaotic state of the city, thereby obtaining inner peace. In this sense, Hopper’s works do have a healing effect for American citizens whose hearts were barren due to rapid urbanization after the First World War.

Discussion

The researcher adopts Wolfflin’s formal analysis method to analyse Hopper’s representative paintings one by one, and finds that Hopper’s creation, through unique image selection, novel geometric composition, and ingenious use of light and shadow, has constructed a lonely spiritual world for viewers, and at the same time awakened the numb citizens who are struggling with life. The loneliness in Hopper’s works is not to bring despair to the viewers. His ultimate goal is to let people stop their busy pursuits through his paintings and leave some time for themselves to examine themselves. When the viewers stop in front of his paintings, the loneliness in the paintings can evoke ripples in their indifferent and numb heart. After a gentle sadness and sigh, people’s introspection will make them feel a sense of life in their hearts, thus completing the psychological reconstruction. Just like the window and light in Hopper’s paintings, although the window separates people from the indoor and outdoor spaces, and the light confines people in the space where it can shine, the window and light are also channels to communicate with the outside world and the viewers’ souls.

Hopper’s works reflect social crisis and people’s living conditions under the urbanization of the United States. Appreciating Hopper’s paintings, the viewers can find their own sadness and loneliness, and realize that they are not alone in the torment and distress of these emotions. Indeed, when we are sad, sad books can best comfort us; when we are alone, Hopper’s paintings can best comfort us. Hopper’s paintings depict a desolate scene, but the painting itself does not appear to be desolate. Instead, it allows the viewer to feel the sadness in the character’s heart, triggering resonance, thereby alleviating the pain in the heart and getting rid of the entanglement of troubles.

From this point of view, the almost desperate sense of loneliness in Hopper’s works is full of deep concern for the living conditions and spiritual plight of Americans back then. Therefore, Hopper’s work is not only to express personal loneliness, but an artistic expression of big feelings that transcends the self. He used enthusiastic mind and calm observation to describe American modern society, and gave a new definition and life to “loneliness”. Its role of comforting loneliness with loneliness has a great impact on the United States after the First World War, especially after the Great Depression. The psychological reconstruction of citizens has positive social significance. For Hopper, we can say that he is not only a hero with a strong sense of social responsibility, but also an explorer who has the courage to pioneer in the field of art.

The social value of his works, which travels through time and space, still has a soothing significance for the lonely people in our current cities, and it also has a certain enlightening effect on our current literary and artistic creation.

Conclusion

This paper explores the social value of Hopper’s works, mainly using Wolfflin’s formal analysis method, and analyses several representative works of the painter, finding that the use of windows, sharp shapes and bright light together contributes to his paintings’ empathy effect, which had the function of soothing souls through setting viewers thinking, and filling in the gap that previous researches mainly focused on Hopper’s personal experience and painting skills, but lacked the analyses on the social value of Hopper’s works. These findings have a good enlightenment to the artistic responsibilities of artists and the construction of Chinese social psychology under the current urbanization transformation. However, the coverage of paintings is not wide enough. Future researches on this topic can increase the number of paintings analysed, and their conclusions may be more scientific and accurate. In addition, comparative analysis method can also be used. For example, compare Hopper’s early works with his later works, or compare Hopper’s works with the works of other famous artists. What is the difference between Hopper’s early works and later works, and how is he different from his predecessors and contemporary painters? In this way, we can more clearly discover and highlight the great social value of Hopper’s works in psychological reconstruction and spiritual soothing.

References

Barnet, Sylvan. (2008). A Short Guide to Writing About Art. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Fan, X. (1996). The Sound of Silence: A Brief Analysis of American Painter Edward Hopper. New Art, 4, 18-18.

He, Z. (2005). The Works of World Famous Painters: Edward Hopper. Hebei: Hebei Education Press.

Levin, G. (1999). Edward Hopper: The Art and the Artist. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Lyons, D. (1995). Edward Hopper (in Acq). New York: W. W. Norton, Incorporated.

Strand, M. (2011). Hopper. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.