Edward Hopper Quotes
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All I ever wanted to do is to paint sunlight on the side of a wall.
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I am interested primarily in the vast field of experience and sensation which neither literature nor a purely plastic art deals with.
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So much of every art is an expression of the subconscious that it seems to me most of all the important qualities are put there unconsciously, and little of importance by the conscious intellect. But these are things for the psychologist to untangle.
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I am after ME his response on the question what he was after, in his sober painting in 1963 'Sun in an empty room'.
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The technical obstacles of painting perhaps dictate this form. It derives also from the limitations of personality, and such may be the simplifications that I have attempted.
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They are in a high key, somewhat like impressionism or a modified impressionism. I think I'm still an impressionist.
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The whole answer is there on the canvas.
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I was always interested in architecture, but the editors of the magazines who demanded these subjects for the illustrations of Hopper wanted people waving with their arms.
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The man's the work. Something does not come out of nothing.
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In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
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The only real influence I have had was myself.
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Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in 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.
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The killing of the horses a bullfight in Madrid, he visited in June 1910 by the bull is very horrible, much more so as they have no chance to escape and are ridden up to the bull to be butchered.. ..the entry of the bull into the ring however is very beautiful; his surprise and the first charges he makes are very pretty.
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One must perhaps qualify this statement and say that seemingly opposite tendencies each contain some modicum of the other. I have tried to present my sensations in what is the most congenial and impressive form possible to me.
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Jo, his wife, remarked on Hopper's painting 'Cape Cod morning', 1950: 'It is a woman looking out to see if the weather is good enough to hang out her wash'. Then Edward Hopper reacted: 'did I say that? You're making it Norman Rockwell. From my point of view she's just looking out the window, just looking out the window'.
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Though I studied with Robert Henri, I was never a member of the Ash-Can School. You see, it had a sociological trend which didn't interest me. Hopper then proceeded to inform Kuh that his work contained no social content whatsoever!
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There will be, I think, an attempt to grasp again the surprise and accidents of nature and a more intimate and sympathetic study of its moods, together with a renewed wonder and humility on the part of such as are still capable of these basic reactions.
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My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impressions of nature.
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After I took up etchings c. 1915, my paintings seemed to crystallize.
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I believe that the great painters with their intellect as master have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions. I find any digression from this large aim leads me to boredom.
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Partly through choice, I was never willing to hire out more than three days a week making illustrations for the magazines to support himself, c. 1912 I kept some time to do my own work. Illustrating was a depressing experience. And I didn't get very good prices because I didn't often do what they wanted.
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Originality is neither a matter of inventiveness nor method, it is the essence of personality.
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The only quality that endures in art is a personal vision of the world. Methods are transient: personality is enduring.
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It seemed awful crude and raw here when I got back after his return from his third and last trip to Europe, in 1910. It took me ten years to get over Europe.