Edward Hopper

British author Geoff Dyer once surmised that Edward Hopper "could claim to be the most influential American photographer of the twentieth century--even though he didn't take any photographs." What we see in Hopper's paintings when we look at them through the lens of photography, and how, in turn, the language of photography was influenced by Hopper's work, are the twin subjects of Edward Hopper & Company. Thoughtfully curated and edited by the respected San Francisco gallerist Jeffrey Fraenkel, seven paintings and three drawings by Hopper are here thematically interlaced with carefully selected photographs by eight of the masters of twentieth-century photography: Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Harry Callahan, William Eggleston, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander and Stephen Shore. As Fraenkel writes in his introduction, "More than almost any American artist, Hopper has had a pervasive impact on the way we see the world--so pervasive as to be almost invisible. The photographs that follow are potent evidence of his legacy, each a revelation of how one medium might point to unimagined new possibilities for another." In his intimate essay for this volume, photographer Robert Adams identifies the singularity of Hopper's influence when he writes that it was Hopper who enabled his artistic realization "One did not need to be ashamed of having a heart."

One of the most enduringly popular painters of the twentieth century, Edward Hopper produced many works now considered icons of Modern art. Canvases such as Drugstore, New York Movie, and the universally recognized (and often parodied) Nighthawks not only reshaped what painting looked like in America, but created a visual language for middle-class life and its discontents. This extensive new assessment of Hopper, which accompanies a major traveling exhibition, examines the dynamics of the artist's creative process and discusses his work within the cultural currents of his day--examining the influence not only of other painters, but also of such media as literature and film. And while most studies have tended to see Hopper as the great painter of alienation, this one takes a much broader, more nuanced, and ultimately more representative view. Spanning the entirety of Hopper's career, but with particular emphasis on his heyday in the 30s and 40s, Edward Hopper highlights the artist's greatest achievements while discussing such topics as his absorption of European influences, critical reactions to his work, the relation of Realism to Modernism, the artist's fascination with architecture, his depiction of women, and the struggle in his last years to produce original works. Illustrated with over 150 oils, watercolors and prints, and including essays by several noted scholars in the field and an extensive chronology and bibliography, this is the most comprehensive volume on Hopper produced in the last decade.