Sun in an Empty Room

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Sun in an Empty Room
ArtistEdward Hopper
Year1963
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions28.75 by 39.5 inches (73.0 cm × 100.3 cm)
LocationPrivate collection
Washington, D.C.[1]

Sun in an Empty Room is a 1963 painting by American realist Edward Hopper (1882–1967). It is a late period painting completed at his Cape Cod summer home and studio in South Truro, Massachusetts, just four years before his death at age 84. The work depicts a room, seemingly empty, except for light coming through a window, reflecting along the walls and floor. Leaves on a tree or bush can be seen just outside the window.[2]

Background[edit]

American realist Edward Hopper (1882–1967) was intensely focused on light, and it played a primary theme and subject in his work. Early in his career, after he left art school, he supported himself by working as a commercial artist, at first in an advertising agency. Tired of illustrating figures required for his paid work, he once famously remarked, "What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house."[3] This lifelong interest in sunlight is found not just in his subjects, but also in many of his titles. Morning Sun (1952), City Sunlight (1954), Sunlight on Brownstone (1956), Sunlight in a Cafeteria (1958), People in the Sun (1960), Second-Story Sunlight (1960), and A Woman in the Sun (1961) are just some examples of this shared theme.[3]

Development[edit]

By the end of his career, Hopper had produced over 800 works in total, but his output was measured and methodical. He would spend months deliberating a work before even beginning to paint. It once took him several years before he could even paint an image of a cloud in the sky.[4] By the 1960s, Hopper was slowly producing approximately two paintings a year, usually consisting of one finished work in the spring and one in the fall.[5] He began working on what would become two of his last four paintings in 1963. From March to April of that year, Hopper completed one of his largest paintings, Intermission. At the age of 81, Hopper began working on Sun in an Empty Room in October 1963,[6][5] just four years before his death at age 84.[7] Art critic Brian O'Doherty (1928–2022) and photographer Hans Namuth (1915–1990) documented the initial preparation and creation of the work at Hopper's Cape Cod summer home and studio in South Truro, Massachusetts.[6][5]

Like his painting Early Sunday Morning (1930), which once had a figure in a window but was later painted out,[8] Hopper originally had planned for a figure in an early sketch for Sun in an Empty Room, but it was also removed, as it was too big.[5] The work shares elements in common with earlier Hopper paintings, such as Summer Interior (1909), Eleven A.M. (1926) and Room in Brooklyn (1932), but is thought to be a continuation of the themes first explored in his previous work, Rooms by the Sea (1951), which also shows an empty room with light coming in.[8][α] While working on the painting, Hopper told O'Doherty that he had been curious about the idea of an empty room for some time, and had previously considered what it would be like to represent a scene with no observer. "When we were at school, [Guy Pène du Bois] and Rockwell Kent and others debated what a room looked like when there was nobody to see it, nobody looking in even."[10]

Description[edit]

Sunlight enters an empty room through a window, casting light amidst shadows on two walls and the floor, from the right to the left, taller in the center, towards a corner which casts a shadow on a back wall to the lower left, with a strip of light on the bottom wall and floor.[6] The light coming from the window takes the form of a yellow trapezoid on both walls where the light falls.[11] Outside the room, as seen through the window on the right, green foliage is visible, possibly from a tree.[12]

Interpretation[edit]

Throughout his career, Hopper said and wrote almost nothing about the meaning of his work, and from what he did say, there is conflicting information. In one letter, Hopper said he thought that art is an "expression of the subconscious",[13] and he believed that artists were unaware or unconscious of the most important aspects of their work. And yet, six years after this letter, Hopper wrote that his work "has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impressions of nature."[13] Art historian Katharine Kuh notes that Hopper refused to analyze his late work, believing that meaning was lost by talking about it. Instead, he would say "The whole answer is there on the canvas".[12] In spite of this, critics believe that the painting is the most autobiographical of Hopper's works.[12] In his personal notebook, Hopper wrote, "Sun in an Empty Room. Green bushes outside window. White light + uncompromising shadow. Stark."[6] Art critic Brian O'Doherty once asked Hopper "what he was after" in the painting. Hopper responded, "I'm after me."[14]

Style[edit]

Critics and art historians believe that Hopper's work represents more than just his personal vision, but is part of a larger modern American realist movement rooted in regionalism. Lloyd Goodrich of the Whitney Museum of American Art once classified Hopper's style as that of an "American Scene" painter, a term which was originally coined by Henry James (1843–1916) for his controversial book The American Scene (1907). In spite of these critical assessments, Hopper refused to accept any connection with the American Scene movement during his life.[15]

Art historian Jerrold Lanes also disagreed with describing Hopper as an American Scene painter, preferring to describe his subjects as rooted in the American scene, but with French influence like Degas on Hopper's composition, which is generalized rather than specific, leading to describing Hopper's style as more of a symbolist.[16] "For although Sun in an Empty Room is a highly symbolic picture," writes Lanes, "it yet contains nothing that can be called a symbol, whether object or person, except the room and the light, and these are the sine qua non of the design. This is basically the process by which any and all art makes its statement as it is the subject of that statement, and I think the painting can be taken as a measure of the ambitiousness, the purity and the success of Hopper’s art at its best, and by the same token of the extent by which it transcends the American or any other scene."[16]

Sun in an Empty Room is reduced to its simplest elements of light and shadow. Because of this, critics often attempted to compare Hopper's late period works to the more modern style of 20th century abstract art, but Hopper adamantly refused to accept or acknowledge this comparison as well.[17]

Neuroscience[edit]

Visual neurophysiologist Margaret Livingstone argues that this painting is part of a larger body of art that reveals how we see and think about the world in terms of visual processing. Livingstone notes that artists can disregard the laws of physics because our visual systems are not concerned with details such as shadows. "Because computations about depth from shading and illumination of objects begin with local computations", writes Livingstone, "images do not have to be globally consistent in order to generate a satisfactory sensation of depth and shadow."[18] In this example, Livingstone shows how Hopper fails to paint a shadow on the wall from the sunlight falling through the middle check rail of the window.[18]

Cultural influence[edit]

Many writers and artists have referred to the painting in their work. American poet John Hollander (1929–2013) published a poem about the painting,[19] and in other work, defends Hopper from his critics and portrays Hopper as following in the tradition of Ralph Waldo Emerson.[13] Canadian indie rock band The Weakerthans wrote the song "Sun in an Empty Room" about the painting, publishing it on their fourth album, Reunion Tour (2007). The song's lyrics describe what might have happened in the room. Filmmaker Mathieu Amalric created an entire short film based on the painting titled Next to Last (Autumn 63) (2012) for the European public service channel Arte, part of a larger series called Hopper Stories.[20] Filmmaker Gustav Deutsch brings the painting to life in the context of American history in his film Shirley: Visions of Reality (2013).[21]

See also[edit]

Notes and references[edit]

Notes

  1. ^ American poet John Hollander (1929–2013) also refers to the connection to Rooms by the Sea in his poem "Sun in an Empty Room" (1995): "It may recall / An earlier glimpse of emptiness, a corner / Of a room by the sea, opening seemingly / Onto an uncontainable expanse of ocean"[9]

References

  1. ^ Hopper, Edward; Liesbrock, Heinz (1988). Edward Hopper: Forty Masterworks. Schirmer's Visual Library series. New York: W. W. Norton. p. 111. ISBN 9780393307641. OCLC 317395314.
  2. ^ Souter, Gerry (2012) Edward Hopper: Light and Dark. Parkstone Press. p. 190. ISBN 9781783100262. OCLC 778447718.
  3. ^ a b Goodrich, Lloyd (1964). Edward Hopper. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art. pp. 8-12, 56. OCLC 31479075.
  4. ^ Berman, Avis (July 2007). "Hopper: The Supreme American Realist of the 20th-Century" Archived 2019-08-20 at the Wayback Machine. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved January 23, 2024.
  5. ^ a b c d O'Doherty, Brian (1973). "Hopper's Voice". American Masters: The Voice and the Myth. New York: Random House. pp. 12-43. ISBN 9780394464237. OCLC 1080825254.
  6. ^ a b c d Levin, Gail (1995). Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. pp. 561-562. ISBN 0394546644. OCLC 716046833.
  7. ^ Cotter, Holland (May 4, 2007). "Hopper's America, in Shadow and Light" Archived 2019-08-23 at the Wayback Machine. The New York Times. Retrieved January 23, 2024.
  8. ^ a b Troyen, Carol (2007). "'A Stranger Worth Talking to': Profiles and Portraits of Edward Hopper". In Troyen, Carol, Kelly, Franklin, Barter, Judith A. Edward Hopper. MFA Publications. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. p. 26. ISBN 9780878467136. OCLC 129510490.
  9. ^ Hollander, John; Weber, Joanna (2001). Words for Images: A Gallery of Poems. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery. pp. 72-75. ISBN 9780894670961. OCLC 46321100.
  10. ^ Iversen, Margaret (September 2018). "The World without a Self: Edward Hopper and Chantal Akerman". Art History. 41 (4): 742–760. doi:10.1111/1467-8365.12398.
  11. ^ Barter, Judith A. (2007). "Travels and Travails: Hopper's Late Pictures". In Troyen, Carol; Kelly, Franklin; Barter, Judith A. Edward Hopper. MFA Publications. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. ISBN 9780878467136. OCLC 129510490.
  12. ^ a b c Kuh, Katharine (2006). "Edward Hopper: Foils for the Light". In Kuh, Katharine and Berman, Avis (ed.). My Love Affair with Modern Art: Behind the Scenes with a Legendary Curator. New York: Arcade Publishing. p. 281-282, 292. ISBN 9781559707695. OCLC 59224003.
  13. ^ a b c Lewis, Kevin (2009). Lonesome: The Spiritual Meanings of American Solitude. New York: I.B.Tauris. pp. 119-126. ISBN 9781848850750. OCLC 311761479.
  14. ^ Terkel, Studs (November 12, 1971) "The Captured Moment of Change" Archived 2024-01-18 at the Wayback Machine. Life. p. 8. ISSN 0024-3019. OCLC 947110599.
  15. ^ Easterbrook, Carolyn Louise (2004). "American Space, American Place: Edward Hopper, Painting and His Personal Vision of Modern America". PhD thesis. University of Kent. pp. 16-20. doi:10.22024/UniKent/01.02.94323.
  16. ^ a b Lanes, Jerrold (October 1968). "Edward Hopper" Archived 2024-01-18 at the Wayback Machine. Artforum, 7 (2): 44–49. OCLC 1306220717.
  17. ^ Mellow, James B. (September 5, 1971). "The World Of Edward is Hopper—The drama of light, the artificiality of nature, the remorseless human comedy" Archived 2023-06-03 at the Wayback Machine. The New York Times. p. 14.
  18. ^ a b Livingstone, Margaret (2014)[2002]. Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing. Revised and expanded edition. New York: Abrams. ISBN 9781419706929. OCLC 828416672}.
  19. ^ Hollander, John (1995). "Sun in an Empty Room". In Lyons, Deborah; Weinberg, Adam D. (ed.). Edward Hopper and the American Imagination. Whitney Museum of American Art and W.W. Norton. pp. 87-88. ISBN 9780393038149. OCLC 32051402.
  20. ^ Phelan, Richard (December 19, 2019). "Abstracting Hopper" Archived 2024-01-24 at the Wayback Machine. Textes et Contextes. 14 (2). ISSN 1961-991X.
  21. ^ Carvalho, Ana Olga André Senra dos Santos (2023)."Lights, camera, action! Light, canvas, stillness. A look at the intermedial relationship between cinema and Edward Hopper´s paintings" Archived 2024-01-24 at the Wayback Machine. (MA) Dissertation. University of Lisbon. Retrieved January 23, 2024.

Further reading[edit]

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