Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography 9780520396975

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(OWARO HOPP(R

Arnold Newman, Edward and Jo Hopper in South Truro, 1960. Photograph© 1974, Arnold Newman.

(OWARD HOPP(R

An Intimate Biography

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley • Los Angeles • London

University of California Press Oakland, California © 1995 by Gail Levin All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions Originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1995 First paperback printing by University of California Press, 1998; paperback reissued, 2023 Frontispiece photograph ©1974, Arnold Newman; photograph on page 347 ©1995, Arnold Newman Owing to limitations of space, all acknowledgments for permission to reprint previously published and unpublished material may be found following the index. Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Levin, Gail Edward Hopper : an intimate biography / Gail Levin. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-520-39338-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Hopper, Edward, 1882–1967. 2. Artists—United States—Biography. I. Title. N6537.H6 L48 1998 760'.092—dc20 Manufactured in the United States of America 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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10/3/22 2:50 PM

For John Babcock Van Sickle

CONllNTS Introduction: Truth and Pain

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The Roots of Conflict: 1882-1899 Defining the Talent: 1899-1906

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Seductive Paris: 1906-1907

The Ambivalent American: 1907-1910 In Search ofa Style: 1911-1915

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The Detour through Etching: 1915-1918 The Deeper Hunger: 1918-1923 The Leading Lady

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First Success: 1923-1924

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CONTENTS

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Getting Established: 1925-1927

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On the Road to America: 1928-1929 Recognition: 1930-1933

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First Retrospective and the Truro House: 1933-1935 An Intellectual Self-Portrait

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Consequences of Success: 1936-1938 3o7

The Struggle to Paint: 1939 The War Begins: 1940

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Failed Odyssey: 1941 Nighthawks: 1942

Mexico: 1943

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War on the Home Front: 1944 The Aesthetic Divide: 1945 Anxiety: 1946-1947

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Illness and Loss: 1948

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Melancholy Reflection: 1949 A Retrospective Year: 1950 Mexico Again: 1951

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Planning Reality: 1952

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Reality: 1953

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Taking Stock: 1954

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Personal Vision: 1955

Time Cover Story: 1956

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Toward Reconciliation: 1957-1958

Excursion into Philosophy: 1959 Protest: 1960

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Prints Again: 1961-1962

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Last Rehearsal: 1963-1964 Final Curtain: 1965-1967

Bibliographical Notes Notes

Index

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Acknowledgments 647

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INTRODUCTION TRUTH AND PAIN r N THE LA s T DE c ADE of her life, Jo Hopper was planning to write two books: one on Arthur, her alley cat, strayed some thirty years before, and one on Edward, her husband. "Some day I'm going to write the real story of Ed­ ward Hopper," she told an interviewer, adding with emphasis, "No one else can do it. The man from The New Yorker wanted to do a Silhouette of Eddie, but finally gave up. He just couldn't get the material. You'll never get the whole story. It's pure Dostoevsky. Oh, the shattering bitterness!" 1 Jo's boast was a feint to intimidate the inquirer. She never wrote "the real story of Edward Hopper." But through the years, from the early 1930s until her eyesight failed not long before she died in 1968, she did keep diaries. Often she wrote to express herself when Edward shunned conversation. She told of her frustration at his silence: "Sometimes talking with Eddie is just like dropping a stone in a well except that it doesn't thump when it hits bottom."2 As time passed, the entries became more introspective and pur­ poseful. She began to imagine a future audience. On a page dated Wednes­ day, March 29, 1950, a great blot of ink stands out like some enigmatic Rorschach test. Envisioning a prospective reader who might be tempted to see too much, Jo verified suddenly: "This no emotional crisis-just reversing ink bottle to fill side chamber for filling fountain pen."3

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EDWARD HOPPER

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On a typical day, Jo began by complaining of her week shut in with a cold: Read Reader Dig. & New Yorker ... not like reading a fine bookRadio out of tune too. E. has made such sketches at a burlesque & is juggling with advisability of attempting a canvas, but wants to see things more clearly-wants to make sure he is really interested before starting off. Ed is reading a translation of Paul Valerie Criticism & reads me bits on Beaudelaire & Stendahl. E. does not want to go to bed anymore-wants to sit up & then leaps up at 7-must be all those vitamins he's taking Benzarine, Cebeose & Bottalin.... E wants to sit up and read, read, read. Never wants to talk about anything. Try to devise ways of making our lives gayer, "richer" D. calls it. Not that I need to go places, but I do like to look at people or discuss circumstances as they are, not like him, a clout with no consciousness of the passing of hours, days, weeks, lives. 4 Not only the man from The New Yorker pursued in vain the secrets oflife chez Hopper. Would-be chroniclers multiplied as Edward's reputation grew. The invaders had to confront not only his storied reticence but Jo. She made herself notorious for the obstacles she threw in the way of those who hoped to write about her husband. Purposefully, energetically, and with his full complicity, she engineered his legend as a recluse. All the while, she kept filling the diaries with the detailed personal record that would permit the kind of biography both she and he approved. In their opinions about the requirements for biography, the couple converged for once. Jo was defying an outsider when she claimed that only she could tell "the real story." Edward put off another outsider and asserted that artists' lives should be "written by people very close to them." That Hopper expressed his opinion at all is a tribute to Katharine Kuh. She provoked him in a 1960 interview by claiming he had "suggested that a book dealing exclusively with the lives of artists would be valuable." Evidently she touched a nerve. He virtually jumped to set her straight and pushed on with uncharacteristic openness to spell out a tenet of his faith about art: "I didn't mean that. I meant with their character-whether weak or strong, whether emotional or cold-written by people very close to them. The man's the work. Something doesn't come out of nothing." 5 The importance of the man in the art was a theme Hopper stressed repeatedly. He once explained to Selden Rodman: "Originality is neither a matter of inventiveness nor method-in particular a fashionable method. It is far deeper than that, and it is the essence of personality." 6 Hopper had voiced the same thought years earlier at a moment of personal triumph. In 1933, for the

Truth and Pain

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catalogue of his first retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, he wrote: "I believe that the great painters, with their intellect as master, have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions. I find any digression from this large aim leads me to boredom."7 The conviction surfaced again when Hopper was asked to explain why he chose certain subjects over others: "I do not exactly know, unless it is that I believe them to be the best mediums for a synthesis of my inner experience."8 This belief in the personal grounding of his art links Hopper to the confessional mode of certain writers among his contemporaries. Hopper belongs to the tradition of spiritual autobiography. 9 His search for person