Hopper’s “Notes on Painting” Notebook, 1940s–60s

Farris Wabeh: The “Notes on Painting” is his personal notebook where he would write his thoughts on art and philosophy. 

Narrator: Farris Wabeh is Benjamin and Irma Weiss Director of Research Resources at the Whitney.

Farris Wabeh: In the public imagination, Edward Hopper is known as a reticent artist, really not vocal in terms of what his thoughts were. He always said that the painting speaks for itself. 

But I think what the archives suggest is something that was a lot different. He was very conscious of how he presented himself to the public, even if it was in a manner that was very shortened and very curt. That I think was a persona that he cultivated. And I think it was very calculating, very much like his paintings, I mean everything was done in a very self-conscious and structured way. In fact, in the Notes on Painting, there's a quote that says “self-conscious Americanism,” which I think is really an interesting thing to think about with Hopper, that self-conscious Americanism where you're thinking about how you are portrayed and who you are and how you can construct that. 

The quote before that in the notebook starts as: “the dreamer and mystic must create a reality that you could walk around in, exist, and breathe in,” which I think is really interesting because he's such an American pragmatist. To think about mystics and seers, even within this notebook on painting, really shows him thinking in ways that he would never express in public.