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If one takes the train as a metaphor for the work of Edward Hopper, “he’s a one-way track,” notes Franklin Kelly, curator of American painting at the National Gallery of Art. “He’s going one place, and he did it, and he did it brilliantly. But in terms of the tree of art history, of modernism, Hopper’s line really doesn’t go anywhere. It is. It’s his own line.” The Hopper we meet in “Hopper: An American Love Story” wouldn’t disagree. He would likely be pleased. Or at least less starchy than he usually seems to be.
The enduring appeal of Hopper’s paintings—“Nighthawks” (1942) probably being the most recognizable—has much to do with their surface simplicity, their not-so-welcoming invitation to critical interpretation, and their mix of naturalism with a suggestion of the surreal, of the familiar being out of place. The deeper, paradoxical Hopper—whose pictures recognize, and share, an existential loneliness—is there if one wants to do a little mining, which this “American Masters” presentation does to enlightening effect.
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