The Edward Hopper retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts is aesthetically delicious.
The museum decided to market the exhibition that opened on May 6 with food, an item that was often left out of Hopper's diners, automats and restaurants.
Their Galleria Caf?© has been transformed into Hopperia, modeled after a diner from the '20s, complete with milkshakes and burgers. Dishes dedicated to the places Hopper spent his summers are also being served. Since the exhibition is appropriately located in New England, where many of the paintings were created, the food will surely be fresh, tasty and authentic to get the viewer into the mindset of the show.
A smorgasbord of paintings of lighthouses, trains and people are offered in the show, organized chronologically by location. The viewer follows Hopper from his early work in Nyack, N.Y. to the different places where he spent summers in Massachusetts and Maine, to New York City where he worked during the year. The watercolors, prints and oils such as "New York Restaurant" (1922) are hung higher than usual for better viewing and mimicking the height of the six-foot-five-inch-tall painter.
One signature work of the exhibition is his "Chop Suey" (1929) in which two women sit at a restaurant table. While the tea pot on their table and the sign showing the letters "SUEY" are pronounced with detail, not even a hint of the existence of food is offered, allowing the viewer to focus on the awkward relationship and isolation of the characters.
The exhibition is often set up thematically - showing many lighthouses or images centered around women on the same wall. Hopper's unique perspectives make the repetitions engaging. While in seaside towns, most painters focus on the water, Hopper focuses on run-down architecture and characters, similar to his restaurant scenes, which do not focus on the obvious subject of food.
In Hopper's "Nighthawks" (1942), the iconic painting that even gets its own drink and salad at the museum restaurants, the diner is again filled with isolated patrons rather than food. According to art historian Gail Levin, who spoke at Tufts University on May 3, this work is Hopper's response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Hopper's wife Jo was very anxious about the event and kept a sack with supplies and sustenance.
The long-overshadowed Jo Hopper, who helped her husband come up with concepts for his paintings, even naming them and posing as a model for the women who by the end of the project only mildly resembled her, is given several nods in the exhibition. Two of the ledgers she helped make, documenting the moves of his career, are on display. She is discussed in the show's documentary that is narrated by Steve Martin, an avid Hopper collector.
Films heavily influenced Hopper's work. The gaze and voyeurism are key components of paintings, which often look on people from a window; these later served as an influence for Hitchcock. "Today it's almost inevitable that books on film noir will talk about his paintings with their under-populated vistas and their sense of disconnection in an urban landscape," Professor Lee Edelman, who teaches an English course on Hitchcock, said.
Paralleling a common character in film noir, many of the women in Hopper's work play the role of a femme fatale, a temptress of unachievable or tragic proportions. In his 1927 "Automat," a woman sits alone. The only hint that she is at an automat, a common type of self-service eatery of that period where food was served from glass cases, is in the title. The only food present is a basket of fruit situated behind her that serves as a window display mimicking the shape of her hat. She is in a deep state of contemplation and can herself be seen as the food behind the glass that is characteristic of an automat.
Apples, the classic fruit of temptation, are more apparent in Hopper's "Tables for Ladies" (1930). According to Levin, Jo Hopper shopped for props for this work, serving as a set designer. The title is a reference to a common phrase in the early 20th century for a restaurant where, if the women were dressed nicely, they could sit alone without the assumption of being prostitutes.
The pieces in the "Later Works" section deal more with the perspective of looking from the inside out rather than from the outside in, with a figure shown looking out of a window. Hopper seemed to have found a place for himself. All he wanted to do from the beginning was paint a shadow on the wall. Hopper does not tell stories, he implies them, just as he does not show food, he implies it - leaving the viewer both hungry and satisfied at the same time.