The Last Word on Hopper

Or at least my last word. For now. Or until my review of the Boston MFA's Hopper show appears next week in Time.

While going through the show last week I was always aware of Hopper's dark foliage, his way of indicating trees with a feathery mix of green and black, which makes the woods seem both beckoning and mordant. A few of the better known examples:

House at Dusk, 1935 — Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond

Cape Cod Evening, 1939 — National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., John Hay Whitney Collection

Gas, 1940 — The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund

Second Story Sunlight, 1960 — Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

But it wasn't until last week that it struck me that in Nighthawks, though there isn't a tree anywhere in sight, the pallette in much of the canvas outside the diner is in the same green/black combination, as though Hopper were invoking for us the city as forest primeval, with all its terrors and wonders, and the diner as the campfire enclosure that promises protection of whatever kind.

Nighthawks, 1942 — The Art Institute of Chicago

Maybe these nighthawks have been woodland birds all along.