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Watercolors by Winslow Homer: The Color of Light
The Art Institute of Chicago
It is light which calls color forth from objects that surround us, defining with brightness and shadow their form. It is light which creates space, for perception of spatial coordinates are dependent on the varying values light gives to objects near and far. And it is light, in figurative painting, which plays a primary part in evoking mood and sensation, whether it is the bright stillness of a hot afternoon, the murky threat of an approaching storm, or the silent midnight of a brightly-lit pharmacy window when all else in the street is dark. The Art Institute's exhibition of works by Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper, running through May 10, 2008 (Homer through May 11), offers a rare opportunity to experience these two important American artists side by side. Presented as two separate exhibitions, each artist may be appreciated in the context of paintings within his own body of work. At the same time, observing one and then the other opens up an appreciation of the similarities these artists exercise in their approach to creating effects of light on paper or on canvas. It also underscores the contrast of very different viewpoints of American life, painted in two not-so-distant time periods. Painting approximately a half-century apart, Homer and Hopper are near enough in chronology to offer piquant comparison, yet distanced sufficiently in time to illustrate compelling contrasts in theme, handling, and subject matter. Winslow Homer (1836-1910) typifies the environment and matters which concerned the late 19th century: natural scenes and the wild rocky coast, sailing ships and fishermen, boating vessels and their masters. His impulses are founded in light and landscape in and of themselves, gathering into one body of work such rural locales as the fishing villages of Cullercoats on the English coast and the islands of the tropics. In contrast the rural scenes of Edward Hopper (1882-1967) are cut through by railroad tracks, evidence of the supremacy of man in mastering the natural world. Hopper's primary interest is in modern cityscapes, the thoroughly urbanized streets of the 20s and 30s and those. The simplified outlines of his architectural geometry are a far cry from the wind-whipped contours of Homer's wilderness and sea scenes. Yet both display a similar exaltation of the colors of light, and a like facility in portraying its every nuance: Homer as an element of almost physical sensation, Hopper in evoking precise, illuminate, vacant spaces, both interior and exterior.
Watercolors by Winslow Homer: The Color of Light and Edward Hopper are presented as separate exhibitions. It is best to begin with Winslow Homer to maintain chronology. The 130 works in Winslow Homer: The Color of Light span nearly 30 years of the artist's career, and focus on the celebrated watercolors, accompanied by select oil paintings. These watercolors, in particular, are a fragile medium, rarely exhibited due to their sensitivity to fading under light, and as a result, this is a rare opportunity to see in person many works otherwise known only in reproduction. The exhibit opens with selections of early monochromatic works done for the illustrated press, an introduction to the artist's grounding in composing effective images in grayscale. Homer was accomplished in both wood engraving and lithography. These were the main methods of creating images in newspapers and magazines of the times, both relying solely on black, white and gray. Homer learned how to invoke light using these monocolor media, in particular mastering the challenge of representing a full array of effects suggestive of color solely through contrasting areas of light and shadow. Select prints and oils, including some from his journalistic coverage of the American Civil War (1861-1865), in which he served two tours of duty as a reporter for Harper's Weekly, show that the demands of the illustrated press were perhaps the finest foundational schooling he could have received in the subtleties of light and drama. Through the disciplines imposed by this need to create expressive images of immediate impact in prints limited to monochromatic reproduction, he developed an understanding of the composition of light and shade as sources of emotional force in composing his scenes. At the age of 37, Homer entered abruptly into working with watercolor, in part wishing to have a medium more suitable for his explorations of color theory. His interest in color theory itself was stimulated by receiving from his brother in 1860 a copy of Michel-Eugène Chevruel's book, The Laws of Contrast of Color (1859). Watercolor suited Homer's needs: fast-drying, flexible in its usage, and portable in plein-air settings. Having had prior experience with oil painting many of Homer's earliest watercolors are worked in an opaque manner, more similar in its intensity of color to oil. Watercolor studies such as that of a young woman in Fresh Eggs (1874) show the artist's confident rendering of the woman's dark dress against the shadowed background. But Homer's new mastery of transparent washes, the more familiar form of the watercolor medium, soon became his preferred handling and infused his renderings of Eastern beaches and coastal scenes. Homer's subjects reflect life as it was for most of the population at the time: primarily rural, of necessity humble, fraught with natural dangers and requiring vigilance in the face of reading its weather-signs and seasons. Homer's fishermen and their wives and children may face hardship and difficulty, but are linked in community and the buoying forces of support it brings. The exhibition is divided into thematic areas following Homer's major areas of painting and work: early watercolors of the New England coast; coastal and figure studies from his twenty-month stay in the town of Cullercoats, England, in 1881; Prout's Neck, Maine; visits to the Adirondacks between 1870-1910; and his stays in the tropics between 1884-1905. The many well-known works on exhibit include classics such as The Gulf Stream (1899).
Edward Hopper is presented as a separate yet adjoining exhibition of 90 paintings, prints and watercolors. It complements Winslow Homer's work with its many points of comparison and contrast. Painting several decades after Homer, Edward Hopper's art reflects a quite different milieu. Between their two eras lay a gulf of irreversible social change, for within that time the migration to the cities began, individuals leaving rural homes and flocking to the cities, either through necessity or the desire for a life better, faster, more prosperous. With this unprecedented aggregation of humanity came the price of loss of community, the disappearance of that reciprocal support system that formed the bulwark of small town living Winslow Homer so often suggests. The faces of Hopper's individuals, when there are people in his pictures, show the strain. Urban life brings isolation, late nights in the office under bright lights, midnights on an empty street or in an all-but-empty diner or automat. In contrast to Homer's wild spaces this is a constructed environment, its details thought out by architects and built to a rational plan. In Hopper's paintings one aspect in particular of modern living finds expression, and that is that in urban life, nearly every space is bounded by man-made construction, either enclosing, or excluding. Such interior and exterior spaces receive full exploration in Hopper's paintings in three recurring subjects: exterior geometries, as in his lighthouses, which display all their planes and arrangements as blocks of form; interior spaces illuminated by natural or artificial light, as in the open window of an office seen by night; and a melding of the two in interior spaces as seen from without, combining exterior walls pierced by windows and lit from within to reveal voyeuristic glimpses into interior cavities. Hopper himself has suggested that the identification of his paintings with social alienation has been overdone, and although his images have a starkness, they also evince a brilliant and refreshing illumination, purifying in its intensity. The walls he paints are merely instruments to explore the spaces and the ways in which light defines them. And what light! Refined with early morning, dazzling with afternoon, at times the uncompromising starkness of artificial lighting at midnight. Even in his later works that intense sunshine is unabated. For all their remoteness, these paintings are a jubilation of light. If Hopper's houses, apartments, lighthouses and lonely urban denizens hold their secrets, it is only to yield up to us a pure knowledge of these spaces, exquisite in their evocations of an emptiness filled with illumination. His last painting, Sun In an Empty Room (1963), takes his explorations down to their final essence. Special sections in Winslow Homer: The Color of Light discuss new discoveries regarding the artist's working method. Homer's actual watercolor paints and working materials are also on display. A 228-page exhibition catalogue accompanies Winslow Homer: The Color of Light. A 288-page catalogue features the works included in Edward Hopper exhibition. Both catalogues are available at the Art Institute. Each of these exhibitions is filled with iconic work. Edward Hopper includes that jewel of The Art Institute's own collection, the celebrated Nighthawks (1942). Though these may be familiar paintings, often reproduced in print, all are well worth seeing in the original for a true experience of their size and immediacy and their remarkable brilliance. Exhibiting these artists side by side is a fortuitous stroke, encouraging an appreciation which enhances both. --Katherine R. Lieber Katherine R. Lieber has edited ArtScope.net's Visual Arts reviews since 1998. Ms. Lieber is Editor and Associate Producer for ArtScope.net.
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