Free Blog post: Boyhood

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/mar/27/we-are-all-edward-hopper-paintings-now-artist-coronavirus-age

First of all, this article from the Guardian published on Friday the 27th of March 2020 and written by Jonathan Jones is titled: "We are all Edward Hopper's paintings now": is he the artist from the coronavirus age?

Therefore, this article is about the way Hopper's paintings illustrate perfectly the isolation we are living today. His art reflects the lonelisness of his characters and the emptiness of the streets which makes us meditate on the current situation of the coronavirus pandemic. His characters seem to be alienated and self-indulged which is the contrary to what this isolation is supposed to means which is surviving as a community by being apart. Edward Hopper didn't intend to illustrate today's reality as he died in 1967 but his Nighthawks are astonishingly similar to what we can see today and more importantly, of how we feel.

 

What is more these paintings are a good way to show our current relationship with different Spaces and Exchanges. The isolation we are living today cuts us off from any social interaction and makes us submerge into some kind of solitude human beings aren't acustomed to. 

"Maybe I am not very human - what I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house."

This quote by Hopper shows how he feels about the location of his paintings in confined, intimate spaces. This gives a whole new meaning to his objective as we may even feel clostrophobic or trapped when we see these paintings, sunlight being the only reflection of hope and life from the outside world. We can say that the Spaces are reduced and seperated in two, the interior and the exterior, the first one representing captivity, intimacy and inner reflexion and the second being the symbol of freedom, nature and exterior life. However the Exchanges are determined by the Spaces as being inside only allows exchanges with oneself which can be thoughts, represented in the paintings by the characters expressions and postures, contrarily to being outside which allows social interaction with other human beings. Little did Hopper know that the window in his painting would later become a metaphore for social media as the window to the outside world during isolation.