Edward Hopper
In Soir Bleu, an early (1914) Hopper in the Whitney’s collection, seven people are grouped together. A powdered prostitute, a white-faced clown, a military man in epaulettes, a bearded bohemian and a pair of slumming aristocrats impose on one another’s space but do not interact. Each, feigning public detachment, flounders in private sorrow. It’s an ambitious but inert picture, too heavy-handed in its allegory of disconnection. Their lack of connection is not pushed in the viewer’s face, as it might be by an ironist or expressionist. It just is. We are at a café in France somewhere. Patrons sit at the tables. Right there in the middle, facing us, is a clown. He is wearing a white, frilly get-up and his face is painted white, too, with red lips and a couple of red stripes down the eyes. He is smoking a cigarette. Hopper is a painter without any sense of humor. He paints without wit, without self-awareness. His clown just couldn't be happy. We may have to accept the fact that Hopper painted the sad clown smoking a cigarette in the café because he felt it to be a poignant scene. He was so moved by the depressed clown that he went and painted one of the silliest paintings of the era.
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