“We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.”
– Anais Nin
In 2009 I attended an exhibition at the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco entitled Edward Hopper And Company. The exhibition juxtaposed the works of Hopper with works from eight photographers spanning the years 1936 to 1974. The exhibition included the works of Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Harry Callahan, Lee Friedlander, Robert Frank, Walker Evans, William Eggleston and Stephen Shore. My fascination with Edward Hopper predates this exhibition by many years. Hopper’s iconography - strong use of shadow and edited compositions - presented many questions for me as an artist. Seeing this comparative exhibition provided new insight into how Hopper influenced other artists, including myself.
Similar to Hopper, the Bay Area painter Robert Bechtle uses American iconic images of the mundane, commonplace roadside. Each artist, within the confines of a canvas, speaks the same language, of a time frozen or a moment in between to communicate a particular stillness and quiet. In this essay, I explore Hopper and Bechtle to further understand their similarities and differences. In the process, I gained insight into my own work and my fascination with commonplace images that we often overlook. By looking at educational background and other significant influences I’m able to understand Hopper’s art as well as the influence his work has had on other artists, particularly that of photorealist Robert Bechtle.
Painter Robert Henri taught at the New York School of Art where Hopper was a student and directly influenced the young artist. Henri an American educated in Europe at the École des Beaux Arts was directly influenced by the Impressionists. Most notable for Henri was an exhibition he organized called The Eight, associated with the Ash Can School. Their work, sometimes called newspaper artists, focused on a fascination with realism and every day scenes in urban environments.
After completing his education Hopper traveled throughout Europe and lived in Paris for a year. Upon the advice of Hoppers parents he, like many artists such as Arthur Dove, Mark Tobey and most notably Andy Warhol, worked as an illustrator and commercial artist. At the age of 31 Hopper sold his first painting, which would remain his only sale for another ten years.
The year 1918 marked the establishment of the Whitney Studio Club in New York where independent artists were given an opportunity to exhibit their work. Hopper was among the founding members of the club, which was later to become the Whitney Museum of American Art. The first one-man show of the oils that Hopper had done in Paris took place in the Whitney Studio in 1920.”
Through his life’s work Hopper investigated the relationship between nature and civilization, perception on perspective, and edited and cropped the information presented to the viewer. Probably the most important question he engaged with was; what is reality? His art was a well “informed pursuit that drew inspiritation from American writers, Ernest Hemingway and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Along with an educated understanding of art, art history, conceptualism and philosophy, he addressed cultural and social issues surrounding urban life in America. His perceptions played out much like the Surrealists who had a special eye for “the trite, ordinary, and supposedly insignificant things.” Through a series of sketches and mental impressions Hopper presented a consistent simplified narrative of contemporary urban American lives. “This resulted in “that strange combination of distance and intimacy that is such a fascinating yet provoking feature of Hopper’s paintings. This draws us into the picture, which at the same time attempts to exclude us.”
Much like Hopper American photorealist painter Robert Bechtle was trained as an illustrator while getting his MFA in 1958 at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California (now called California College of Arts, or CCA). This San Francisco Bay Area artist taught at San Francisco State University and currently maintains a studio in Portrero Hill. Most noted for his portrayal of mundane American middle class neighborhoods, as well as urban scenes from everyday life, his overall concern is to address that which portrayed what he thought of as the character of American life.
In the early 1970s Bechtle took on what he called “the beastliness of American cars” of that period. He played with composition by cropping and making the car look mutilated. He also had architectural structure – be it a house or an apartment building - fit the canvas in order to have the paintings “look less like a brochure.” He relished the type of photograph “that pictured the car owners with their prized possession, and they were immediately understood as such, by people looking at them.”
When looking at Bechtle, the artist, the social and cultural context of his early work is important. The documentary Berkeley in the Sixties shows the developing political climate, which started in 1964 with non violent student demonstrations addressing civil rights and freedom of speech. Out of this synergy of organized students came the development of other significant movements. One such was called the Viet Nam Day Committee which organized the first demonstrations protesting the Viet Nam war. Another was the formation in Oakland of the Black Panther Party in 1966, and demonstrations on the Women’s Rights Movement in 1968. Concurrent with the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, during this time frame the Bay Area Figurative Movement emerged, lead by painters Richard Deibenkorn, David Parks, Elmer Bishof and Joan Brown. Bay Area Figurative was in direct response to what was happening in New York with Abstract Expressionism. Bay Area Figurative opened the door for other ideas and distinctions in the West, and one such was Photorealism.
Bechtel’s initial use of the camera was a way to document images for potential paintings. Eventually his 35 millimeter slides were projected onto the canvas with the attempt to “achieve a much greater degree of formal accuracy.” When one looks at the very nature of photography that captures everything in the lens one can understand how this played into his heightened sense of realism while additionally providing greater information about color accuracy. Relying on the photograph alleviated relying human observations “we simply cannot see everything at once with the same clarity.”
Bechtle participated in an exhibition at the San Francisco Art Institute called East Bay Realist. The exhibition included Bechtle, McLean, Charles Gill and Gerald Gooch, all of whom went to CCAC with Bechtle and worked from photographic source material. In a quote in ArtForum about Bechtle’s work, critic James Monte said, “that he under played the artfulness of his work and focused more on social issues.” In another exhibition curated by Linda Nochlin which included Robert Bechtle, she wrote, “it is exactly this sort of accuracy of meaningless detail which is essential to realism - it is what exactly anchors realist work in a concrete rather than an ideal or poetic reality.” It was Gallerist Ivan Karp along with Louis K. Melsel who helped define the term photorealist painter with one overall rule: that the photorealisest painter must have the ability to “make a painting look photographic.”
Comparing the works of both Hopper and Bechtle, one can see their attraction to urban environments and their individual need to address the contemporary look of man in his environment. Their individual and distinctive views were influenced by contemporary political and social issues and thus played out very differently on the canvas. Hopper chose not to use the camera after finding that it changed his oeuvre. Hopper’s use of editing is more tied to the Impressionist’s philosophy and portrays a romanticism, and in the process portrays a unique world created by Hopper. Bechtle’s exactitude through his use of the camera gives all of the objects in his composition equal value and forces the viewer to read his painting like a photograph. Bechtle’s paintings are not about the seductiveness of the materiality but nontheless communicate a particular feeling. “All awash in pale California sunlight and suffused with a subtly sad nostalgia. The paintings impart a strange feeling of loss, which they began as an attempt to avoid emotionality.” It could be concluded that political and cultural issues surrounding both artists made it easier for each artist to just give us information about the mundane and ordinary as a stabilizer, allowing the viewer insight through quietude and reflection.
Works sited:
Anais Nin, Robert Bechtle: A Retrospective, p. 22
Edward Hopper and Company: the American Landscape, March 19, 2009 http://connectedtraveler.com/wordpress/2009/03/14/edward-hopper-and-company-the-american-landscape/
Ivo Kransfelder, Edward Hopper 1882-1967 Visions of Reality, Borders Press, page 13
Ivo Kransfelder, Edward Hopper 1882-1967 Visions of Reality, Borders Press, page 93
Ivo Kransfelder, Edward Hopper 1882-1967 Visions of Reality, Borders Press, page 115
Ivo Kransfelder, Edward Hopper 1882-1967 Visions of Reality, Borders Press, page 54
Janet Bishop, Michael Auping, Jonathan Weinberg, and Charles Ray, Robert Bechtle: A Retrospective, University of California Press, page 13
Janet Bishop, Michael Auping, Jonathan Weinberg, and Charles Ray, Robert Bechtle: A Retrospective, University of California Press, page 10
Berkeley in the Sixties, Director: Mark Kitchell, 1990
Janet Bishop, Michael Auping, Jonathan Weinberg, and Charles Ray, Robert Bechtle: A Retrospective, University of California Press, page 10
Janet Bishop, Michael Auping, Jonathan Weinberg, and Charles Ray, Robert Bechtle: A Retrospective, University of California Press, page 11
Janet Bishop, Michael Auping, Jonathan Weinberg, and Charles Ray, Robert Bechtle: A Retrospective, University of California Press, page 10
Janet Bishop, Michael Auping, Jonathan Weinberg, and Charles Ray, Robert Bechtle: A Retrospective, University of California Press, page 12
Rachel Howard, Inside the Photoreal World of Robert Bechtle, SFSU Magazine, spring 2006, volume 6 http://www.sfsu.edu/~sfsumag/archive/spring_06/bechtle.html
