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The Night Hawks by Edward Hopper ... Night Hawks is like a still from a gangsta movie. Waldemar Januszczak, The Art of the Night **** BBC 2011
But in the paintings of Rockwell’s contemporary Edward Hopper, those unsettling undercurrents are brought to the surface – what’s wrong with America is what his art is about. Andrew Graham-Dixon, Art of America 2/3, BBC 2011
Hopper’s most cinematic painting and his most famous is Night Hawks painted in 1942. ibid.
He captures this oceanic emptiness of modern American existence. ibid.
Edward Hopper’s oeuvre lies outside any of the movements or schools which one after the other has claimed him as one of their own. Edward Hopper and the Blank Canvas, Sky Arts 2013
Hopper’s paintings depict people who are apathetic, pensive and proud of their solitude. Automat [1927] is the epitome of silence, of contemporary alienation. ibid.
Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. No amount of skilful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.
One of the weaknesses of much abstract painting is the attempt to substitute the inventions of the human intellect for a private imaginative conception.
The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm and does not concern itself alone with stimulating arrangements of color, form and design.
The term life used in art is something not to be held in contempt, for it implies all of existence and the province of art is to react to it and not to shun it.
Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature’s phenomena before it can again become great. Edward Hopper, statement Reality journal 1953
So much of every art is an expression of the subconscious that it seems to me most of all the important qualities are put there unconsciously, and little of importance by the conscious intellect. But these are things for the psychologist to untangle. Edward Hopper, letter to Charles H Sawyer October 1939
Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. Edward Hopper
My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impression of nature. Edward Hopper
I believe that the great painters with their intellect as master have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions. Edward Hopper
Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature’s phenomena before it can again become great. Edward Hopper
Well I have a very simple method of painting. Edward Hopper
The trend in some of the contemporary movements in art, but by no means all, seems to deny this ideal and to me appears to lead to a purely decorative conception of painting. Edward Hopper