Posting Date: March 24, 2008
Artist’s Vision Captures Sunlight, Perspective
A day off from work can be therapeutic in a number of ways. My wife was celebrating her birthday and we decided to spend it together, free, for one day at least, from the rigors of answering phone calls and glaring at computer monitors.
Our destination was downtown Chicago. My wife, Margie, is an artist and it was her wish to spend a day at the Art Institute of Chicago. The weather was cooperative with temperatures in the lower 50’s. After an insufferable winter, witnessing sunlight and warmer temperatures was the perfect gift for my wife.
And that leads us to our visit to the Art Institute. Margie wanted to view the exhibit of works of Edward Hopper and Winslow Homer. My wife was looking forward to rekindling her passion by viewing the works of respected painters. Margie was especially looking forward to observing the creations of Homer, who excelled in watercolors and oils. I don’t pretend to have that depth of knowledge. My view of art is that of a writer. If it intrigues me, whether I totally understand it or not, then I’m satisfied.
So, I was surprised somewhat that my wife was more impressed with Hopper. I felt the same way, but what did I know. It’s not that Hopper was an obscure artist. Quite the contrary. Even the general population is aware of his “Nighthawks” painting of three impassionate figures seated on stools of a well lit diner with a solitary clerk behind the counter. Two figures — a man and a woman — are seated next to each other, but they seem distant, lost in their own thoughts. On closer inspection, it is not certain they are even together. The third figure, a man, can be only be viewed from behind. He is alone and appears withdrawn.
That is the general theme of Hopper’s works. His etchings and drawings of the human form often appeared clumsy or cold. But his consistency in these themes, which stretched from the early 1900s to the 1960s, was undeniable. His attention to detail and his expertise in the contrasts of light and dark were interesting. While his contemporaries were more apt to draw lush New England landscapes, Hopper preferred drawing the ordinary entities in those same locations — a weathered building, gas station pumps, the facades of buildings.
Hopper gave little explanation for his etchings and oils. He concentrated on the mundane and the ordinary aspects of American life in the isolation period of the 1920s and 1930s. While other artists celebrated the American landscape, Hopper’s passionless figures implied a certain ambiguity or sadness. His repeated explanation for his art was that he only wanted to draw sunlight on a building.
And then it hit me. A day away from the office and the works of an artist who has been dead for nearly 40 years confirmed to me why someone picks up a paint brush or works with words. A news story or a column is more engaging when it is viewed from a different perspective. This past month, Illinois Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has had to defend his relationship with his pastor, who has used volatile language that some have deemed racially explosive. Hilary Clinton, who grew up in Park Ridge, Ill., just northwest of Chicago, was supposed to wear the Democratic nomination crown in 2008.
That was until the personable Obama entered the fray. Clinton initially viewed the junior senator from Illinois as quaint and cuddly. That changed when he ran off eight straight primary victories. Obama was no longer loveable. He became an irritation. The Clinton camp tried to paint him as inexperienced in foreign affairs and not able to answer that phone call at 3 a.m.
But I look at this more as a case of the Eastern establishment being rebuffed by this Midwest intruder. It makes no difference that Clinton’s roots are in the Heartland. She gave that up a long time ago with her political ambitions.
Obama has been the sunlight in this Democratic campaign. It took a day at the art museum to realize that.
(Joe Boyle is the managing editor of the Southwest News-Herald newspapers on Chicago’s Southwest Side. He can be reached at vonpub@aol.com.)