Two Comedians, 1966

Kambui Olujimi: In Hopper's work Two Comedians, you have these two figures that don't really seem hilarious at all, but they feel really futuristic. 

Narrator: Artist Kambui Olujimi.

Kambui Olujimi: Like they come from a time where this is where comedy lives. It's one of the last paintings that he made. It's that kind of closing out of life. 

The perspective is a little odd to me in that we are front and center, front row, and Hopper is, or the figure is planning to take a final bow, but there's a way in which the foreground dissolves and almost feels like sand to me, it almost feels like a landscape. And he still does the Hopper thing where he gives you just enough to not believe, almost like a magician. Like there's enough of the stage to say it's a stage, but it doesn't feel like a stage to me. And you know, enough of what I would think is a curtain to say, yeah, that's a curtain, but it feels more like a field, you know, where the green goes into a deeper green, into a navy into a midnight. 

So there's a lot of trickery here.