Movies on Canvas: Wenders' Homage to Hopper

Have you ever thought that an Edward Hopper painting is like a scene from a classic Hollywood movie? Take Gas, for example: a lonely gas station on the edge of the woods at dusk, with a balding man tending to the pumps in the harsh glare of the electric light. What's going to happen next, when a car pulls in to fill up?

Hopper's intimate relationship with the cinema is a central theme of an absolutely excellent new exhibition about the painter at the Fondation Beyeler on the outskirts of the Swiss city of Basel. Don't take our word for it; the man who knows all about it is the great German director, Wim Wenders. 

Hopper's "affinity with film is unparalleled, both in his themes -- American landscape or the existential exposedness of man in the 20th century -- and in his lighting and framing," Wenders says. "Hopper was also a frequent moviegoer, often going to the cinema every day for weeks on end, especially when he didn't know what to paint any more." 

And Wenders has created a short dialogue-free cinematic tribute to Hopper that you can enjoy at the end of this show. Settle into your comfy seat, put on your 3D glasses and, as the lights go down, you will see the gas station emerge out of the forest, and then a car pulls in to fill up....

There's another terrific example of Hopper the movie-maker among the drawings in this show -- many of them from the Whitney Museum of American Art, the largest repository of the artist's work, but an aspect of his output with which we were not very familiar. 

With Road and Rocks, the viewer has the sensation of being in a car travelling along a twisting road. What's just round the bend? Is there another vehicle coming towards us? This is just one instant: 1/24th of a second. So what's in the next frame?

This show focuses to a great extent on landscapes (in a fairly broad sense) within Hopper's extensive output. So that means you won't find Nighthawks or Automat or too many of those other images that seem to evoke human loneliness in the big city here. 

The tone is set in the first room you enter -- you might call it the railroad room. It demonstrates how Hopper often emphasises the expanse of the American landscape by highlighting horizontal lines, such as the rail track, the hills and the clouds stretching all the way across the canvas in Railroad Sunset. What you see is just a tiny part of a much bigger picture that extends far, far beyond the limitations of the frame.

Hopper and his wife Josephine undertook many long-distance train journeys across the States after they married in 1924, and those railway lines, often with a solitary building -- a signal box or a house -- are a recurrent theme in his work. There's no narrative; there rarely is in Hopper; these are the establishing shots at the start of those Hollywood classics. In Freight Cars, Gloucester, two wagons are motionless in front of a silent townscape, while a house stands alone on a road by a Railroad Crossing. It's a bright day, but there's a dense forest in the background, another typical Hopper motif.

Ah yes, that forest. It's there too in Cape Cod Morning, looking quite impenetrable, as a woman stares intently out at something in the distance, beyond the frame. The women in Hopper's paintings were mostly modelled by his wife, but there's not really a story here, more a mood.

There's another sun-drenched clapboard house nearby, again hemmed in by the woods, in Second Story Sunlight, painted towards the end of Hopper's life in 1960. It's all about the light and shade; on a balcony, a young woman sunbathes in a bikini while an older woman has lowered her newspaper or magazine to enjoy the sun on her face.

Here's another favourite Hopper subject: the lighthouse. He painted this one, on Cape Elizabeth in Maine, a number of times on a stay in the state in 1927. What's the significance of these structures for the artist? They're another symbol of the boundlessness of nature, providing orientation amid the vast expanse of the ocean.

There are more than 60 oils and watercolours in this show, and it's worth highlighting the watercolours for a moment, because they're another not very widely known aspect of Hopper's work. As you might expect, they have a rather softer feel to them than the familiar large canvases. Some feature rather more picturesque landscapes than we're generally used to from him -- such as the White River in Vermont -- but others have a more recognisable Hopper air: the lonely building in a wide setting, and here in Automobile by a Cabin, that very cinematic atmosphere. What will be revealed in the next shot?

This is a beautifully laid-out exhibition. The paintings are widely spaced on white walls in large airy rooms. Wall texts are minimal but very informative. It was our first visit to the Fondation Beyeler (a building designed by Shard architect Renzo Piano), and we were struck by what a soothing and enjoyable museum-going experience it was. And while many of the pictures are from the Whitney in New York, there are rare finds from lenders whose existence we've never even dreamed of, like the Swope Art Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana. Hopper's a favourite artist for us, and we weren't in the least disappointed by this show, with the Wim Wenders movie tribute the icing on a very substantial cake.  

Practicalities

Edward Hopper runs at the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, near Basel, until May 17. The gallery is open daily from 1000 to 1800, with lates on Wednesdays until 2000. Full-price tickets are 25 Swiss francs, but you only pay 12.50 francs (just under £10) with the BaselCard that you get if you're staying at any hotel in Basel overnight. You can travel to the Fondation Beyeler on tram 6 from the city centre in 15-20 minutes; it stops right outside (and you also get free travel on the city's trams and buses with the aforementioned BaselCard; there are some bargains to be had in Switzerland).

Images

Edward Hopper, Gas, 1940, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © Heirs of Josephine Hopper/2019, ProLitteris, Zurich; © 2019 Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence
Still from Two or Three Things I Know about Edward Hopper by Wim Wenders, 2020. © Road Movies
Edward Hopper, Road and Rocks, c. 1962, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Edward Hopper, Railroad Sunset, 1929, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. © Heirs of Josephine Hopper/2019, ProLitteris, Zurich; Photo: © 2019 Digital image Whitney Museum of American Art/Licensed by Scala
Edward Hopper, Cape Cod Morning, 1950, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington. © Heirs of Josephine Hopper/2019, ProLitteris, Zurich. Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gene Young
Edward Hopper, Lighthouse Hill, 1927, Dallas Museum of Art. © Heirs of Josephine Hopper/2019, ProLitteris, Zurich. Photo: Dallas Museum of Art, Brad Flowers

Edward Hopper, Automobile near a Cabin, 1929, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.