Edward Hopper’s Drawings

Abstract

Edward Hopper’s Drawings Carter E. Foster (bio) Those who confront the awkwardness, illogic, and irrationality common in the figures and spaces of Edward Hopper’s paintings sometimes read such qualities as evidence of a lack of skill. Though praising him, critic Clement Greenberg famously called him a “bad painter,” a moniker that his reputation has never fully shaken, even among some who admire his art. But the evidence of Hopper’s drawings, which are relatively little-known, argues differently (as does close attention to his actual painting technique). On paper, his abundant skill is directly apparent, particularly in his virtuoso ability to tease subtle tonal effects from chalk and charcoal. The groups of related drawn studies that exist for many of his painted compositions reflect the long gestation period typical for a single oil—the drawings a partial record of a thought process, much of which also occurred intangibly in Hopper’s mind. The subtle anxiety and the narrative and social tensions that are hallmarks of Hopper’s achievement are qualities he worked out carefully in drawing; he arrived at formal disjunctions, strange torsions, and artificial spaces to underscore and enhance his taut psychological confrontations and atmospheres of disquietude. One need only look at the evolution of his subjects in drawing to see how aware Hopper was of what he was doing. It is far more useful to consider the precise nature of Hopper’s subtle expressionistic distortion, deployed with keen and precise control. It is astonishing how much of Hopper’s full artistic personality is here in this very early sheet (Figure 1), drawn at the New York Academy of Art when he was barely out of adolescence. He makes [End Page 206] life class more than that, setting up tension and voyeuristic frisson by aligning the spectator’s view with that of a classmate’s, the female nude model in between. Hopper’s supreme ability to create mood and atmosphere with light is fully evolved already, his manipulation of charcoal and exploitation of paper texture a means for extraordinarily subtle tonal effects. Hopper’s first trip to Paris over the winter-spring of 1906–7 yielded at least two sketchbooks, filled with rapid, fluid pen and ink observations of cafe and street life (Figure 2). The intermingling of accurate observation and caricature shows the artist’s interest in nineteenth century graphic art. His sharp, quick capturing of essences is appropriate to this medium—pen and ink resists less than chalk or charcoal and requires more certainty, as it cannot be changed. Hopper would never use pen and ink extensively as he got older, favoring black chalk and charcoal almost exclusively. Between 1920 and 1925, Hopper regularly attended life class at the Whitney Studio Club, focusing on the posed nude model and producing hundreds of drawings in the genre (Figure 3). He never again returned to studying the nude human figure with such consistent attention. Perhaps this self-imposed, concentrated self-pedagogy in the human form solidified a comfortable mastery in how to best deploy nuance of pose and gesture, a skill he mined for the rest of his career. Hopper made a clear conceptual distinction between working from direct observation—“from the fact,” and creating imagined scenes—”improvising.” His watercolors were always in the former category, directly executed outdoors from scenes Hopper carefully chose, and a group of finished chalk and charcoal drawings form a striking, monochromatic parallel in drawing. With its classical balance of verticals and diagonals and industrial subject, in this sheet (Figure 4) Hopper comes as close as he ever would to the American movement known as Precisionism; this drawing strikingly anticipates aspects of Charles Sheeler’s definitive industrial-themed canvases from the early 1930s. [End Page 207] Though seemingly slight, Hopper’s fire hydrant deftly records nuance of light and texture through the careful balance of blended, blurred chalk marks pushed into the paper support underneath crisply applied, sharper strokes (Figure 5). The artist adapted the hydrant into a symbolic protagonist in the painted masterpiece with which this is associated, a work devoid of people but rich with anthropomorphic allusion. In these three studies for New York Movie (Figure 6, 7, 8) we...