Page 14 - Studio International - November 1974

Objects are often piled up in the centre or
stacked laterally in what are always frontally
orientated groups. The table tops are open at
the sides, avoiding the pictorial embarrassment
of the table's perspective coming close to the
physical edge. Space is wrought out of this
potentially flat situation by the use of overlaps
and verticals. Upright bottles echo the vertical
sides of the painting and by looking from one
vertical to another and to the physical edge, a
space can be constructed which is deep in the
centre where the overlapping is most dense and
open and airy around the group.This method
of spatial construction originates in Cubism.
The flatness of the canvas is acknowledged by
Morandi, but volumes, although threatened,
are never totally flattened. These are small,
apparently humble works, but in terms of
pictorial ambition Morandi seems to want to do
everything. In his best paintings, especially
when the paint is fairly thick, through his act of
looking a kind of distillation has taken place.
Light, colour, drawing, and most important,
volume are condensed into the surface. It is as
if the painting is made of some new substance
that can hold suspended within it a number of
pictorial opposites: brushiness and volume,
texture and illusionistic space, chiaroscuro light
and colour-evoked light. This may only come
about because, for instance, the paintings are
small, the depicted objects very simple and (Top) Edward Hopper House by the Railroad 1925
Oil on canvas, 24 x 29 in. Museum of Modern Art,
plenty of 'open space' is left around them; but
New York
it also happens because the major rules of (Left) Edward Hopper Office in a Small City 1953
painting from nature are organically reconciled Oil on Canvas, 28 x 40 in. Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York
with more recent ideas of surface and colour.
(It could also be suggested here that the act of
intuitively selecting from nature is of the same
order of thinking as that employed by most
modernist painters whose decision making
process is based on direct interaction with the
painting.)
Hopper's work is very different, most
importantly because there is always a clear
separation between volumes and spaces. where the vertical wall meets the horizontal of The conventional basis for naturalism is
Volumes are used as design elements with as the railway track, relieves the simplicity of the strong and it may be that it can be revitalized
much compositional clarity as any geometric composition and introduces space into what by the analytical attitudes of modernism.
abstract painting. The buildings in Hopper's might otherwise be a flat situation. These are Certainly design and shape ideas have enriched
paintings are precisely carved out, but what is all examples of Hopper's self-conscious interest some very recent American figurative painting.
also impressive is the way they are arranged. in design, but this concern is allied with other For example, in Philip Pearlstein's work, figures
It is as if these monumental masses have been purely journalistic aims of recording everyday are piled up, leant, and arranged like abstract
moved around to left or right then slightly events, the time of day, and the style of elements. William Bailey's still-lives consist of
tilted (as in House by a Railroad) so that their buildings with objective accuracy, which is why modular shapes composed in an open-ended
placement becomes almost gestural. In other Hopper's work observes all traditional fashion, and in Gabriel Ladderman's double
paintings, Rooms by the Sea, Sunlight in an naturalism's rules. It is through his analytic use figure paintings, volume is treated as if it was an
Empty Room and Night Hawks, for example, of design as an expressive element and his abstract concept. Volume itself is the central
strong directional light is used to make dramatic awareness of the whole surface of the canvas, issue, because it is on an illusion of mass that
two dimensional designs and at the same time including the edge, that makes him modernist figuration is based. At the same time, volumetric
carve out great slices of illusionistic space. in attitude. He is often acknowledged to be painting is totally antithetical to tactile surface
Another instance of Hopper's concern for influential to pop art because of his subject and strong colour which typifies the best of
design is Early Sunday Morning. Here a frontal matter (gas stations, movie theatres, cafes etc.) recent abstract painting. Drawing, light, and
open-ended composition is made by the row of and to Photo-Realism because of the mood of space, however, are equally important pictorial
lower east-side houses. A black square appears frozen emptiness of some of his paintings. It elements, and if these are attached to figuration
in the top right hand corner, presumably to could be that as time passes the formal vigour through an awareness of the issues I have
stop the eye shooting off the edge and to link of Hopper's work will continue to emerge from described, then it may still be possible for a
the line of buildings with the top of the behind the picturesque architecture and figurative art of high quality to be produced;
painting. A similar device occurs in House by a melancholy moodiness, to be seen as the lasting based as it must be on the stabilizing process of
Railroad in which a black triangle at the point strength of his work. working directly from nature.
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