Edward Hopper essays

Edward Hopper essays Edward Hopper was a painter, who depicted life in America in the 1920's, and the influence of the events of those times on people. Hopper inspired other artists, after his time, to paint in his style. The paintings he did showed the reaction of americans to events happening in the 1920s. By looking at his work, one can feel the emotions that people felt during these years, and the atmosphere in America all together. Hopper was a ground breaking artist of his time, and created new aspects in art, while influencing others. Edward Hopper was able to depict the scenes of the times, because he had an extreme good background in painting and drawing. He got involved with art as a child, and then attended the New York School of Art, from the years 1900 to 1906, while being trained by Robert Henri, one of the fathers of American Realism - a man whom he later described as 'the most influential teacher I had' (qtd.in Lucie-Smith 67) . From the years 1913 to the year 1923 he worked as a commercial illustrator to support himself, but it was not his real interest (Craven 435). Between the years 1906 and 1910 he made three trips to Europe, but these seemed to have very little influence on his style (ibiblio.org). After these years, Hopper started to concentrate more on the art that made him gain widespread recognition as an "American Scene painter". These are the works that are most known, and used to represent life in the US. Though his works were always interpreted in this way, the artist himself claims " I don't think I ever tried to paint the American scene; I'm just trying to paint myself" (qtd.in ibiblio.org). And technically this is exactly what the painter did. All the models used for his paintings were images of himself and his wife Jo (Beckett 136). He believed that people in the 1920s acted as if clones, and therefore the same image, of himself as the typical american, were used in the paintings. The perfectly proportionate...