Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks", Surrealism, and the War

Liminal Figures and Infinities: Edward Hopper as Magic Realism

“…He even helped choose to display the work of surrealists Andre Masson and James Guy and magic realist O. Louis Guglielmi as part of the exhibit. 13 According to his wife's statements, Hopper was impressed by both the surrealists' handling of color and their skill in depicting altered realities, even if he himself did not believe in or acknowledge such alternative realities in his own work. Yet Hopper seems to find non-naturalistic forms of representation within the work of other American realists exciting and admirable.…”

“…For instance, Hopper shared with surrealists and magic realists a fascination in the writings of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Art historian Gail Levin, one of the foremost scholars on Edward Hopper's life and career, notes that Hopper was -capable of talking about Freud for an entire evening,‖ and his remarks throughout his career and in various interviews and writings indicate that he had an -enduring interest in psychoanalytic ideas‖ 1. Hopper even made a small sketch between 1925 and 1930 that depicts a young, cartoon-like boy carrying books with the names -Freud‖ and -Jung‖ inscribed on top of them.…”

“…As art historian Rolf G. Renner notes, Hopper's paintings exist in -an ambivalent, Freudian world in which the things that comfort us and the things we find unsettling are implicitly shown to have the same origins… The painting transcends realism.‖3 Like the surrealists and magic realists, who based much of the philosophy of their movements on Freud's work (as is evident by its influence on Andre Breton's First Manifesto of Surrealism) and who even employed new techniques to help explore the unconscious in their art (through techniques like automatism), Hopper was deeply influenced by Freud's unraveling of the mind to the extent that it influenced both the conception of his art and the purpose behind it. Hopper's artistic style and philosophy were greatly impacted by other sources, however 1. University of Michigan, Department of History of Art mmotoc17@gmail.com…”