Isolation in Hopper

Isolation in light and shadow

The painting “New York Movie” is an incredible painting with significant use of light and shadow and the contrast of warm and cool colors. It’s not just a painting of a nicely dressed lady in a theater. It’s very intense and strong. Edward Hopper defines the isolation of urbanites by the design of this painting. The arrangements of figures and settings capture the moment of “not belonging”. By the composition, contrast of colors and the use of light and shadow, it perfectly defines the loneliness and helpless, of both the individual and the public. This painting sure gives a strong first impression, but why? When we look closely, there are many surprises hidden in this painting. Only a few painters have the guts to separate a painting into two parts by putting a block right in the middle. Hopper is one of them. One is the audient in seats; the other one is the lady in the blue dress. The wall here is a symbol of estrangement of people living in the city. Even though they all live in the same city, there are always gaps between people that cause the feeling of not belonging. The lady in the blue dress here is an individual, but at the same time she’s also one of them. The empty seats here symbolize the empty space of our feelings. It’s never filled, no matter how many times we walk in a theater, how many shows we see. New York Movie contains both warm and cool colors, in order to expresses the loneliness of the lady. The best examples are the color red and blue. In this painting, the lights on the ceiling on the right are red; the curtains are red. The dress of the lady on the right is blue. The yellow- light and wall, is the transition. The reason why Hopper used primary colors here is to emphasizes two extreme feelings of human being. Most of this painting conveys a warm feeling except the blue dress. In my opinion, red and blue each represent fear and hope. These two colors freeze the moment on the canvas. At the same time when Hopper expressed the feeling of loneliness, he also released a little bit of hope here. Look at the pose of the lady. We can say that she is depressed, but we can also argue that she is looking for something- looking for someone she loves to appear, or waiting for some good news. Or she’s possibly seeing a film with her partner in the theater. She suddenly realizes how much she had suffered from reality and decided to have a moment herself. She walks to another side of the wall, standing next to a dim light and thinking about where this’s going. She has a dream, a yeaning. Her gaze really brings the viewers into the moment, which pulls us closer to her world. The most important thing that we can hardly ignore is how fascinating the light and shadow is in this painting. Edward Hopper is reviewed as poet of light. It is so expressive that it can nearly catch us right in the moment. That’s the intense part of this painting. The lady obviously is standing in the light and the other audiences on the left are in shadow. Maybe you’ll say: “Look at her fancy dress shining in the dark, wasn’t Hopper trying to make a satire of the city girls based on her?” That is possible. But at the same time, the lady in the blue dress is exposed in the light, which on the other hand describes the suffering from the reality. We are all exposed in other people’s judgments. Even each audience sitting in the dark, the shadow Hopper but them in is a symbol of empty space in our heart. Hopper painted this lady as just as a symbol of every single urbanite. We each have an inner life, with neither past nor future but dreaming of both, stuck in ideals and reality. New York Movie is a great painting that best summarizes the inner world of urbanites. It really catches the moments which pull us closer to the world of Hopper. The strong contracting of warm and cool colors perfectly expresses out the loneliness of the lady in the blue dress. The fascination with shadow and light in this painting, best shows the sadness and pain of the inner part of urban people, but not just a simply quiet and sentimental moment.

looking in, particularly in night scenes where the inside reveals itself more brightly in the surrounding darkness, or even in his famous Nighthawks diner scene where outside and inside are separated more by the presence of light than by the physical barrier of glass.
Hopper’s technique is deceptively simple, There is no great flourish of painterly display, or dazzling realist detail, he paints directly, almost brusquely, with little regard for anything but conveying the scene and, in particular, the geometry of the scene, all of the planes and angles and intersecting forms. Even his images of people are geometrically composed. A friend of mine recently remarked that Hopper paints his people exactly the same way he paints his architecture.

All Hopper's paintings stress the theme of loneliness, also in this paintings When he paints theaters they are often semideserted or, as here, he shows a few people waiting for the curtain to go up. Hopper, himself,was a frequent movie-goer. And I would start your essay talking generally about his paintings and their theme of loneliness and the fact that he loved going to the movies.
Here then are these lonely figures caught in a moment of 'not belonging', of displacement. Over time, these figures are more and more enclosed - like the self absorbed late night diners of 'Nighthawks'. The backgrounds are pared down and blocked out - when light floods in, or illuminates a building or a space, it doesn't beckon. Its harshness suggests exposure - and the figures remain somewhere between light and darkness.

They seem so like those disillusioned survivors of film noir, the characters in Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler who survive in an irredeemably hostile and corrupted world. There is no longer nature to look back to - the skyscrapers and streets between are the mountains and valleys of this new reality. When Hopper was lumped together by some critics with the group of American regionalist painters, he reacted angrily. He did not want to be associated with their nostalgia or what he called their 'caricatures of American life'.

As to the future, there is nothing in his paintings that might identify a dynamic of change and transformation. These isolated figures form part of no army of labour or grand collective. Even when they shared a confined space, as in 'Office at Night' (1940, see page 2), the two figures look away from each other - separated by that half-glimpsed piece of paper on the floor beside the desk, which suggests some secret they dare not share. His models are white, clearly middle class, and lonely.

And yet when I look at these paintings I see something else. It is in that gaze. Edward Hopper was a shy, meticulous Republican. He rarely explained what he painted and chose not to make the links with the Depression or with the alienated life of growing cities that others saw

in his work. But this is not some standard conservative vision of the world - there is no sign of any interest in the ideology of the powerful classes, nor indeed any other ideology.

But there is compassion - and a kind of hope.