The Essential: Edward Hopper (Essential (Harry N. Abrams)) [Hardcover]

Abrams (Author)

Book Description

Series: Essential (Harry N. Abrams) | Publication Date: September 15, 1998

For readers who have little time to spare and are averse to art-world jargon, this series aims to provide an entertaining guide to individual artists and pop culture. Each volume presents an account of the artist's life, personal and professional anecdotes, concise definitions of cultural and social movements that shaped the artist's work, and colour reproductions. This study of the American realist Edward Hopper discusses why his paintings can leave viewers feeling lonely and alienated; why his art can seem familiar, yet elusive; why he was smitten with films, sex and car travel; and why so many women in Hopper's paintings look alike.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"Eerie silence, desolate houses, and blank-eyed individuals with frozen faces, stunned and fixed in time. Cold sunlight from some mysterious, otherworldly source. Unmoving bodies drained of passion and lonely people staring nowhere," writes author Justin Spring on the first page of this pocket-sized guide to one of America's favorite realist painters. "Welcome to Hopper's world."

Hopper's landscapes and interiors have affected everyone from noir film directors to the abstract expressionists. His paintings conveying the loneliness of contemporary life were painfully apt in the 1930s during the Great Depression--and they are still meaningful today. This book, one of the Essentials series of art books that offer the reader a quick and easy grounding in the work of a single artist, is also a surprisingly deep work thanks to the author. Spring can take a marriage like Edward and Jo Hopper's, which other writers have viewed as monumentally dysfunctional, and find what was good and enduring in it. He has a perfect grasp of Hopper's beauty as well as his strangeness, his voyeurism and his insistence on privacy, his asceticism, his love of culture, and his wanderlust. Spring also gives readers telling glimpses of scores of famous paintings, such as Nighthawks and A Woman in the Sun. Quoting Jo's note about the latter: "Cigarette and sad face of woman unlit." This is an excellent introduction to the art and the artist. --Peggy Moorman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (September 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810958058
• ISBN-13: 978-0810958050
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #385,861 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #19 in Books > Arts & Photography > Schools, Periods & Styles > Realism

More About the Author

Justin Spring is a New York based writer specializing in twentieth-century American art and culture. His biography SECRET HISTORIAN is a 2010 New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a 2010 National Book Award Finalist, an Amazon Top 10 Biography of the Year, an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book for 2011,winner of the 2011 Lamda Literary Award in Biography; the winner of the 2011 Randy Shilts Prize in Non-Fiction from the Publishing Triangle; and winner of the 2011 Geoff Mains Non-Fiction Prize of the National Leather Association. It is also an ARTFORUM Top 10 of 2010 pick and a Top 10 Book of the Year for 2010 in the San Francisco Chronicle.

For a full review of SECRET HISTORIAN by Mark Harris in the New York Times Book Review:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/books/review/Harris-t.html?_r=1&ref=bookreviews

For a feature on Justin Spring's discovery of the Steward Archive, by Patti Cohen in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/books/26secret.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Justin%20Spring&st=cse

For a slide show in the New York Times about the Steward Archive:
www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/.../20100726-secret.html

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars small, yet informative..., January 1, 2000

By 

stephanie-ann (Portland, ME USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Essential Edward Hopper (Hardcover)

... but more about the artist and less about the art. Basically the abbreviated "Cliff's Notes" version of who Edward Hopper was and what constituted his work. The pictures are tiny and do little justice to the incredible artist that he was. If you want an introduction to the artist and his work, this book is sufficient, but not highly recommended. If you truly want to "know" Edward Hopper, check out any number of books by the current foremost authority on Hopper, Gail Levin, or any larger scale reproduction catalog of his work.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A little book with a lot of Hopper, November 25, 1999

By 

DJ Rix (NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Essential Edward Hopper (Hardcover)

Pocket-sized introduction to Edward Hopper from Abrams via Andrews McMeel Publishing, one of a series that includes Dali, Pollock, Van Gogh & others. Features a fine biographical essay by Justin Spring plus many illustrations, critiques & sidebar notes. The size of this book probably consigns it to the gift item category for someone you know who owns a coffee table collection of Hopper's works or who just enjoys artsy presents, which is unfortunate. A version of this book with larger prints would be quite good.

Bob Rixon