Edward Hopper, Time and the Art of Living

ryan — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 21:52:00 -0400

I went to see the Edward Hopper special exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts here in Boston recently and, along with being reminded why Hopper is my favorite artist, I was reminded of the first paragraph of Robert Grudin’s Time and the Art of Living.

In a railroad car at nightfall, when the natural light outside has diminished until it is even with the artificial light inside, the passenger facing forward sees in his window two images at once: the dim landscape rushing toward him out of a pit of darkness, and the interior of the car, reflected with its more or less motionless occupants. At this hour most passengers unconsciously give allegiance to one of these two polarities of vision; and the individual momentarily aware of both may be struck by the profound, almost tragic duality between outer and inner world, between the rush of experience and the immobility of awareness. The uneasy contrast implied by this image is to my mind one of the special marks of our condition, one of the tragic divorces between our lonely humanity and the pulse of nature.

So much of Hopper’s painting seems to draw us to the haunting contrast between the inner and outer worlds. He loves twilight, and showing us private worlds glimpsed through public spaces.

Grudin’s book is also full of transcendent insights. It’s a philosophical treatise on time, productivity, and the human inability to quite get a grasp on either.

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Edward Hopper, Time and the Art of Living