Some Insight Into Edward Hopper's Work

My Oil Painting,Yellow Hill,
(sort of) in the Style of Hopper

Hi-

Yesterday on Sunday Morning, a news and entertainment program with interesting segments on events and people, I saw an interview with Steve Martin, the American comedian and actor.

I knew, in addition to his acting, that Martin was also an award-winning banjo player and an author. He has written a play about Picasso, and he has a new novel about the art gallery scene in New York called Object of Beauty, the promoting of which was, I think, the reason for the interview.

I did not know, however, he is also an art connoisseur, and maybe you didn’t either.

The interview took place at the Whitney Museum in New York City as Martin perused the paintings and  discussed his love of art. Anyway, he was and is an art collector, and he mentioned an exhibition of his collection held in Las Vegas in 2001.

What got my attention, and the reason I’m blogging about this, was that one of Martin’s favorite artists is Edward Hopper. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, then you know Hopper is also one of my favorites, too.

It turns out, for 25 years Martin has owned Captain Upton’s House, one of Hopper’s famous iconic houses-on-Cape Cod paintings. I did not know this, and I thought almost all of Hopper’s paintings were in museums.

Most interesting to me was a comment that Adam Weinberg, the director of the museum, made about Hopper (and I quote), “The great thing about Hopper is, you think you know what it’s about, but no matter how much you study it, you never really get it.”

Steve Martin agreed and said (I’m paraphrasing) that’s what makes great art—you can’t sum it up—it’s inexplicable, and that if you do figure it out, then the painting is “done.”

Great comments, and I couldn’t agree more about Edward Hopper’s work. What an interesting and insightful interview.

Until next blog…