Hopper & Sheeler essays

Hopper & Sheeler essays Americas modernization and industrialization caused an artistic revolution, which caused many artists to begin to portray the new urban era in their works.and set out to create a Native American painting. One artist, Edward Hopper, a member of the Ashcan school of painters, focused on the gritty metropolis of urban city life in American society, particularly focusing on portraying ordinary subjects in the working class while socializing in modern entertainment events. Another artist named Charles Sheeler, a Precisionist, reveling Americas strength and growth, depicted many objects of the Industrial Age. Clearly, modernism was found in the gritty, alienated realities of urban society caused by industrialization, while other paintings, like Sheelers, reveled in the machine age and Americas growing industrial power. One of the great painters of the Industrialization Era was Edward Hopper, who depicted images of urban isolation in his work. Hopper was greatly influenced by the Ashcan artists, who followed Impressionistic style of cropping, and sketchy brushwork, as well as German Expressionistic techniques such as the use of a darker palette. He and others particularly focused on portraying ordinary subjects in the working class while mingling in modern entertainment events. They wanted their images to be real rather than sentimental and reassuring. Although Hopper was greatly influenced by the Ashcan School, he tended to depict more on urban isolation than the chaos of urban living. One such example is his 1942 painting of Nighthawks, in which he depicts three anonymous and uncommunicative customers lost in their own thoughts. The overall mood of the piece conveys a sense of loneliness and desolation, and the figures seem as remote from the viewer as they are from each other. Hoppers understanding of light and its expressive possibilities play upon the simplified shapes of the figures and give the ...