Connections between artists and photographers

Edward Hopper and Gregory Crewdson


Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally as talented as a water-colourist and printmaker in etching. In both urban and rural scenes, his paintings reflected his personal vision of modern American life.
Reluctant to talk about his life and work, Hopper simply summed up his art by stating, "The whole answer is there on the canvas."
Hopper paid particular attention to geometrical design and the careful placement of human figures in proper balance with their environment. He was a slow and methodical artist as he said, “It takes a long time for an idea to strike. Then I have to think about it for a long time. I don’t start painting until I have it all worked out in my mind. I’m all right when I get to the easel".


Hopper derived his subject matter from two primary sources: one, the common features of American life (gas stations, motels, restaurants, theatres, rail roads, and street scenes) and its inhabitants; and two, seascapes and rural landscapes.



Gregory Crewdson is an American photographer best known for his elaborate staged scenes of American homes and neighbourhoods.
His photographs usually take place in small town America, but are dramatic and cinematic. They feature often disturbing, surreal events. The photographs are shot using a large crew, and are elaborately staged and lit. The films Blue Velvet, Safe and Close Encounters of the Third Kind have influenced his style, as well as the painter Edward Hopper and Diane Arbus.

As mentioned above Gregory was greatly influenced by Edward Hopper's intricate placement and thought into the paintings he spent time on. Hopper's work is grounded in an American sensibility that deals with ideas of beauty, theatricality, sadness, rootlessness and desire.

"I’m sitting in a hotel room in Massachusetts thinking about the past three days I have spent driving around looking for a location that feels like it is nondescript, but is very particular. In other words, I have been searching for a sense of the American landscape that is linked intrinsically to Edward Hopper’s vision."

There is always a suggestion of framing in his pictures, whether it's windows, doorways or shafts of light but the single frames he refers to are also very much about the fragment.
Hopper's narratives occur in moments that are forever suspended between a "before" and an "after"- elliptical impregnated moments that never really resolve themselves. There is an enormous reservoir of psychological anxieties in his work, a sense of stories repressed beneath the calm surface.


David Hockney and Pablo Picasso


David Hockney is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer. David is an important contributes to the Pop Art movement in the 1960's, his is considered one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century.
When Hockney moved to the United States, at this time of the 1960's he was known for his 'swimming pool' paintings, during the'70s for this elaborate stage sets and the '80s for his photo collages.

"Until cubism, all art, all pictures, could be 'read' by anybody. If this hadn't been so, the Christian message wouldn't Christian message wouldn't have been seen by peasants and its importance would have been diminished."




 

Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and stage designer.One of the most greatest and influential artists of the 20th century, he is widely known for co-founding the Cubism movement; the invention of constructed sculptor, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles he developed and explored.

"Art is a lie that makes us realise the truth."

Picasso's work is often categorized into periods. The most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901-1904), the Rose Period (1905-1907), the African-influenced Period (1908-1909), Analytic Cubism (1909-1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912-1919).

"God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, he just goes on trying other things."

"In Picasso's pictures you can see the front and back of a person simultaneously. That means you've walked round them. It's a sort of memory picture; we make pictures like that in our heads"

David Hockney was greatly influenced by Picasso's work all his life; "Picasso is still influencing me. Of course, I haven't got that kind of energy, or skill."
He says himself: "I think Picasso was, without doubt, the greatest portraitist of the 20th century, if not any other century."