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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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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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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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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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 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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The man's the work. Something does not come out of nothing.
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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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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 only real influence I have had was myself.
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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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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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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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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 quality that endures in art is a personal vision of the world. Methods are transient: personality is enduring.
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Originality is neither a matter of inventiveness nor method, it is the essence of personality.
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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.
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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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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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The trend in some of the contemporary movements in art, but by no means all, seems to deny this ideal and to me appears to lead to a purely decorative conception of painting.
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Just to paint a representation or design is not hard, but to express a thought in painting is. Thought is fluid. What you put on canvas is concrete, and it tends to direct the thought. The more you punt on canvas the more you lose control of the thought. I’ve never been able to paint what I set out to paint.