When teaching print advertising, we often tell students that the visual grabs the attention and the copy makes the argument. Of course, in the hands of mediocrities (be they students or professionals) this often results in ads where the copy is merely a caption for the visual, or for which the visual simply illustrates the copy. And while these dominate advertising, they are not the goal. The goal is where neither element is prioritized above the other – an ad in which the art and copy work so seamlessly together that the idea of the ad, the meaning, the emotion, come through without hindrance or delay.
It is fair, we think, to begin a discussion of a book about the American artist Edward Hopper with some insight about print advertising not simply because this is primarily an advertising site, but because Hopper himself paid his early bills (or dues, if you prefer) creating images for advertising – back in those dark days before Bernbach, when the artists and the writers were kept as far from each other as physically possible.
Of course, in painting, the visual must do all of the work – draw the attention as well as make the argument. Thus the challenge it would seem when discussing a great painter’s work – and we do consider Hopper a great painter – is to determine just what that argument is. Much as we might, say, with an advertising campaign. But this is a trap. Because just as the argument changes from campaign to campaign, so does it from painting to painting – despite our wishes to the contrary.
But why? Why do we wish there to be one argument, one thesis, one “point” that the artist is trying to make over and over again? Perhaps because when we look at an artist’s works, we find them evoking a feeling, we feel them transmitting to us on some consistent wavelength, and so we say to ourselves “ah, he’s trying to say X. In THIS one, he’s doing it really well. In that one, less so. And in that one over there, well, I don’t know WHAT he was thinking.” It helps us organize the work, it helps us make sense of the work, and thus make sense of our feelings about it.
That’s why people invariably ask artists “what’s this one about” and why when artists talk about art and painting, their comments are twisted and turned to form a kind of pocket manifesto, a decoder for the work.
And of course, a book like Ivo Kranzfelder’s Edward Hopper: Vision of Reality, because it provides such a wonderfully comprehensive overview of Hopper’s work – early and late, painting and pen and pencil – encourages this approach Not so much because of what Kranzfelder specifically says, as because of the nature of the overview itself. Presented with work after work after work, one’s mind can’t help but do what minds do – look for patterns and sequences and throughlines and themes, can’t help but reach for anything that will help make some sense of what we’re seeing.
So let us take two comments by Hopper that critics have – if Vision of Reality is any indication – worried over since he made them. One is that he felt he was never able to depict what he intended to depict, and the other is about how difficult it was to paint inside and outside at the same time. Put them together and you have a convenient standard by which to judge Hopper’s work. “Oh look, there’s a painting with a window; look, he’s trying to paint inside and outside at the same time, and look, he’s failing again, like he said he would.” And “Oh look, you can see that woman inside that house.” Boxes counted and checked.
And yet to do so fails to consider the most important box of all – the way Hopper’s paintings make us feel when we look at them. The tension, the longing, the loneliness, the silence, the anxiety. And more – fail to consider that we not only encounter these feelings again and again in his paintings, we seek them out. Like the pain from an old wound, as it were. Why do we do that and what the hell do those aforementioned boxes have to do with helping us understand that?
Perhaps this: when Hopper talked about “inside and outside” he didn’t mean inside buildings and outside of them: he meant inside and outside of people. He was trying to use the faces, the posture, the clothing, the surroundings outside of people to communicate what was going on inside of them. What was going on inside of them which was not even remotely being indicated outside. Look at a something like “Room in New York”, a conventional painting of a young couple; he reads the paper, she pokes at the piano. Both well dressed, well groomed, the apartment well-appointed and well-lit. And yet the tension between them is unbearable. Look at “Office at Night” where a different type of tension is at play – and yet delivered by what? What can we point to? Or look at “Hotel Room” in which there are so few tools to play with at all – you can’t even tell what is on the paper in the woman’s hands to help explain what she’s thinking. And yet you know what’s on that paper. And you know what she’s thinking.
Again and again, as Vision of Reality shows, Hopper uses the outward facing symbols, words, signs, elements and yes postures and expressions and clothing as a vocabulary to communicate that which is going on inside of the people in the painting.
And the curious thing about all of this is that, in a sense, this is what we do. We use these outward facing symbols to communicate internal emotions.
Which reminds us of a conversation with a student in an advertising class. Halfway through the semester, he suddenly had an epiphany. “Wait,” he said, “you mean, you’re trying to figure out what’s inside of people’s heads, and speak to that?” Yes, not what they say they care about, believe, want, need, desire. But what they actually do, whether they know it or not (and most of the time, they do not.)
“Whoa” he said, “That’s hard.”
Yes, we said, yes it is. In fact, often we fail to depict it at all.
But sometimes…
Edward Hopper: Vision of Reality by Ivo Kranzfelder was published by Taschen on 11/01/1998– order it from Amazon here, or pick it up at your local bookseller (find one here).
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