Fine Art Insights
...Hopper’s oeuvre is full of spartanly populated spaces in the heart of normally bustling cities; a girl dining alone in a late night restaurant, a pensive usher in a theater, a man and woman working silently in an office, an empty street, a storefront. Looking at these images now, and knowing what we know about government-mandated separation from our colleagues, our friends, our families and loved ones, they transform into something different. In light of current events, Hopper’s paintings of urban isolation become perceptibly more relevant and more poetic to people living nearly a century later.
So, what can art like Hopper’s provide for us in times of uncertainty, anxiety, and fear? What do these paintings matter? If nothing else, there is something to be said for the reassuring stability of art across time. After all, as they say, art is long, life is brief. Most art, be it the great, the good, or the terrible, will outlast us and for that reason it innately has a tendency to give us something as precious as it is rare: perspective.