“Great art is the outward expression of an inner life of the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm.” Edward Hopper (1882-1967)
The Fondation de l’Hermitage is currently holding an extensive exhibition on American artist Edward Hopper, and last week I went to see it with a friend.
I knew little about Hopper’s artwork except the landscapes, lighhouses and house fronts of coastal New England he painted on so many occasions.
It never struck me before how strange and haunting Hopper’s world was! There’s something impregnable in his paintings. Hopper’s style is quite austere – what he tried to capture seems to have been the loneliness of the inside world. His subjects are often depicted alone in a bare room with quasi-systematically a big-windowed wall and lost in thought. When they are grouped, Hopper shows them isolated from each other. A sense of (almost oppressive) silence and solitude. Each element of the composition reinforces a bit more the lonely mood of Hopper’s subjects: their gaze, their posture, their isolation, the use of dark, light and shadow with those big windows… They look like lonely souls debating life’s saddening plight, sinking deeper into their depressive melancholic mood. I found it very disturbing, and terribly sad.
If you find yourself in Lausanne these days, go and meet Mr. Hopper and share his reflection on modern life if only for the time of an exhibition.
