Magic Realism: Edward Hopper's American Art

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Edward Hopper was a twentieth century artist well known for his works under the category Magic Realism. While most artist of the time were focused on showing off how great their country was as they painted things such as landscapes of rural or urban living, Hopper was more motivated in being a precise observer and painting the world as he really saw it. 1As Avis Berman of Smithsonian Magazine put it, “He reserved his greatest affection for unexceptiona1. . . drawing satisfaction from things that stayed as they were.” He knew the world had amazing things to offer, however, he never sugar coated what the world really was. To him the world wasn't as warm as people wanted to believe. During a time when the economic crisis was full blown, it became …show more content…

3As Ivo Kranzfelder described the typical look of Hopper's American art, “Hopper's pictures seemed to be located in a twilight zone. . . They reveal a human world that is no longer in a state of innocence, but has not yet reached the point of self destruction.” A painting that he admired was “The Night Watch” by Rembrandt, and thus he chose to use the technique, Chiaroscuro, to emphasis the moods he portrayed in his paintings. While using the darkest colors to shade everything that was shaded from the light, he used bright colors to emphasis the areas that the view should have focused on. Hills, South Truro is a explanatory title, a painting of the Hills of South Truro. The scene is of a single house surrounded by trees looking out over a barren hillside. The shading is dramatic and makes the world look cold and unwelcoming, but there are bright patches over the hills that could be described as warm and …show more content…

Edward Hopper, 1882-1967: Vision of Reality. Köln: B. Taschen, 1995. Print. Schmied, Wieland. Edward Hopper: Portraits of America. Munich: Prestel, 2005. Print. Souter, Gerry. Edward Hopper: Light and Dark. New York: Parkstone, 2007. Print. Berman, Avis. "Hopper: The Supreme American Realist of the 20th-Century." Smithsonian Magazine. Smithsonian, July-Aug. 2007. Web. 24 Oct. 2016.

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