On the Hopper

Having declared Monet to be my favorite painter, I suppose it makes sense my favorite American painter is Edward Hopper - both realists, painting snapshots of any given moment, Planet Human.

Last night I was watching a doc on Hopper and was, I must say, pleased to hear about his displeasure with abstract expressionism:

Hopper was dismayed by the rise of Abstract Expressionism and in 1953 was one of a group of representational painters who launched the journal Reality as a mouthpiece for their views; in 1963 they protested to the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art about the ‘gobbledegook influences’ of abstract art in their collections.

I've always viewed art as a jumping-off point: yes, it's a bowl of fruit, but where does it take you? To a bowl of fruit your mother put out the day your grandfather died? The bowl of fruit that was there for your first Super Bowl? Smells of the first time you got a handjob? Nothing? That's fine too. But with abstract expressionism I've always felt there's nothing to hold onto to make that leap in the first place. I've always assumed that as the resident hick rube dumbass it's just ME who never "got it;" so I was pleased to hear Hopper call it bs too.