Talk:Rooms by the Sea

Deliberate homage?

Joseph Stanton describes the painting as highly reminiscent of Magritte, also noting that Magritte's The Empire of Light II (1950) displays Hopper-like aspects in turn.

There's no way to know since Hopper said almost nothing about his work, but it is interesting to note that Magritte's painting, which is said to evoke Hopper, came out a year before Rooms by the Sea, as if this was Hopper's response to Magritte. It makes a lot of sense if you think about it and are familiar with both artists. I say this as someone who loves music, and is familiar with the history of popular music. In music, it is extremely common for an artist to deliberately nod to another artist that came before them, so much so that jazz itself turned this into a kind of art form, with rap and hip hop taking it to another level altogether with the use of sampling. Is it too much to think that Hopper was doing just this in 1951, calling out Magritte directly for incorporating his own style in the previous year? We will never know. Viriditas (talk) 02:10, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Aside from Victory (1939) by Magritte, a painting that features a solitary open door on a bluff over a wide ocean and sky, there's an interesting lecture he gave in London and an essay called "Life Line" that Hopper may have been familiar with. Both of those two works have themes that apply here. I believe that Hopper read French fluently and might have read Magritte in his original tongue. Looking at Magritte’s collection of essays and writings, I was surprised to find in his notes a small drawing, I think it may have accompanied the lecture in London in the 1920s or 1930s, I don’t recall at the moment. But a cursory glance of the drawing looks remarkably similar to what Hopper was getting at in the 1950s and 1960s with the room with the door and the empty room with the window. This might just be a coincidence, as artists sketch out rooms all the time. Viriditas (talk) 20:26, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Dates

I don't see the point of giving dates for some persons but not others??

No strong feelings either way, but I was planning to give dates to all of the major figures. Viriditas (talk) 21:45, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say, do it for all, or for none, but be consistent. And my mild preference would be not to, especially because the more important ones are already blue-linked. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:50, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Viriditas (talk) 22:05, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Mabel Dodge

It is unknown if Hopper and Jo tried to visit Mabel Dodge there...

I feel like that sentence is missing the context of why one would expect that they would have had any reason to try to visit her. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:35, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, apologies, I thought it was obvious, Mabel Dodge was the doyenne of the art world at the time, so for the Hopper's to visit Santa Fe and not pay her a visit might have been unusual. However, Hopper had visited New Mexico before, and the sources indicate that his friends in the artworld there were not friends with Mabel Dodge because she was attached to the avant-garde, and Hopper and his friends were not. She was 1.5 hours away in Taos (70 miles), so it would have been an easy visit. The Taos art colony was also well known at the time. I will clear this up later with more info from the source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Viriditas (talk • contribs) 21:19, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) You might need to make clear whether the Hoppers were already in the habit of meeting with or interacting with her. Or attribute the characterization to a source that says that it would have been expected that the Hoppers, specifically, might try to visit her. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:20, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Will do. I think the overarching point here is to show that Edward Hopper was different than other artists and remained somewhat isolated from the larger artworld in spite of his success. I should also note by way of comparison, this was also exactly true for Georgia O'Keeffe, who even lived in New Mexico and avoided Mabel Dodge for the same reason! In many ways, Hopper and O'Keeffe were very much alike, although vastly different as artists. Viriditas (talk) 21:22, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, the picture becomes clearer. It turns out that Jo was the connection with Dodge, not Edward. See below. Viriditas (talk) 22:09, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like I misread it. It's a diary entry from Jo Hopper, made on July 13, 1951, explaining why they didn't visit her, not that it was unknown. I will fix it now. Viriditas (talk) 22:14, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. Not sure how that happened. Must have been up too late. Viriditas (talk) 22:23, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Background

"In Provincetown in the summer of 1915, when she stayed in an ill- equipped fishhouse, Nivison received unexpected warmth and hospitality from the feminist writer Susan Glaspell and her husband, the writer George Cram 'Jig' Cook. Glaspell and Cook gathered their Village friends together in a wharf house in Provincetown that belonged to the feminist writer Mary Heaton Vorse and produced their first play, Suppressed Desires, a satire on psychoanalysis that the Washington Square Players had considered too esoteric. The activities that summer led to the founding of the Provincetown Players, but Nivison did not join the new company, continuing to perform with the Washington Square Players instead. She later recalled that 'Mary Heaton Vorse has had a lovely little house at Provincetown all her married life & has had it full of visiting friends who complained of her cooking, criticized the way she brought up her children etc. Now she opens her house to the travelling public, charming people who appreciate everything & pay her good money.' Nivison remembered 'a gay summer with many costumes & much dancing.' She recollected her fondness for Glaspell, Cook, and his 'valiant & delightful little mother, Mamie.' Among the others there that summer were the set designer Robert Edmond Jones, the writers Neith Boyce and Hutchins Hapgood, the radical socialite Mabel Dodge, and many artists, among them Marguerite and William Zorach, and Charles Demuth, who, like Nivison, worked in watercolor. The Provincetown Art Association, founded the previous season, numbered 147 members." Levin (1995:158-159)
"In December 1913 Hopper left Fifty-ninth Street for Greenwich Village, where he would live and work until his death...He had neither central heating nor a private bathroom, but the light from the large skylight was exceptional...Hopper’s choice of Greenwich Village did not lack irony. Bohemian life in Paris had never seduced him, although it captivated his eye and brush and pen; nor did he demonstrate any taste for the convivial life or ever show any inclination for vanguards. He did not yearn for access to the famous salons of Gertrude Stein’s friend Mabel Dodge, who had returned from Europe and set up a house of cultural innovation not far up Fifth Avenue from Washington Square, at the corner of Ninth Street. Neither the free talk of radical politics and aesthetics, nor the free sexuality, appealed to Hopper. Psychoanalysis, another current topic, did arouse his intellectual interest." Levin (1995:92-93)
"During the 1920s, the artist leaders of the Santa Fe and Taos colonies had been ahead of their times in some respects. They had learned from the best European modernist masters, but turned their attention away from Europe to focus on native scenes, arguing for an art inspired by and rooted in regional landscape and culture. With some exceptions, that pioneering spirit had diminished as many of them "remained immune to many of the more heated artistic contests of the 30s decade." Furthermore, the founders of the colonies had fled an urban, industrial America and a mass society in which many depression artists took renewed interest. Taos and Santa Fe seemed increasingly divorced from the "real" world of the city, factory, and rural poverty that compelled proletarian realists like Grant Wood, Edward Hopper, and Ben Shahn." Rudnick (1987:282)
"On July 10 they left for Santa Fe, moved by Edward's sudden desire to see it again after twenty-six years. In a few hours they found the place 'so changed for the worse after 25 yrs., that we were content with idea of Cape Cod & sped back there.' Santa Fe was 'so cluttered & mangy' that it was 'reminiscent of our own Coney Island.' To be sure, they 'might have made some effort to see Mable Dodge [whose avant-garde salon had been the talk of New York in 1913] but that not in E.'s line—& if we had accepted any hospitality from her, E.'d have to bestir himself on behalf of any protegés she might send to him.'" Levin (1995:440)

Removal of Hopper House material

@EEng: I appreciate your copyedits, but I think the removal of the Hopper house material is a mistake. This painting is based on and represents the view from the Hopper house, and this point is made over and over again in the literature (See for example the Edward Hopper Encyclopedia where this point is summarized in relation to the painting) For the reader to understand why this is even important, a description of the Hopper house is essential to the narrative, culminating in the idealized view of the bay from the door, which is what this painting represents on one major level. For this reason, I plan on adding it back. I’m curious, however, why you thought it wasn’t relevant, both to the background history and development. It feels like you removed it for some reason that I can’t figure out. Viriditas (talk) 03:30, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Look again. I didn't remove the description of the house -- I did tease it out into its own paragraph at the head of the section, and I did economize the verbiage without (I belive) dropping any of the facts. What I did take out is the mention that it's today called "Hopper House", since it got in the way of the flow -- and then I changed later references to "Hopper House" to say merely "the Hopper house", which amounts to the same thing.

But if I did mistakenly removed something, feel free to add it back of course. E Eng 03:40, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the changes are good, while some are confusing, such as reversing the order of the window looking out over the dunes with the beach below. No idea what the thinking behind that was. Also, you moved the image of the early painting back up, where at higher resolutions (we want to present the article for different readers) it sandwiches the text with the infobox on the other side; that’s why it was placed farther down. Viriditas (talk) 04:23, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

By all means move the image back if you think that's better; again, I'm not married to anything. But I still don't see the problem re the house. Here's the text before I touched anything:

In 1934, Hopper designed and built ... a new wooden home in South Truro. Known as the "Hopper House" today, the house has a distinctive, large window facing north, and sits upon a ocean-facing bluff covered in low-lying shrubs and grasses in the dunes above Fisher Beach.

And here's the new:

[I]n 1934 Hopper designed and built ... a new home in South Truro; on a grassy ocean bluff in the dunes above Fisher Beach, the wooden house has a large and distinctive north-facing window.

The old text didn't say anything about the window looking out over the dunes, merely that there's a window. It's true I changed

upon an ocean-facing bluff covered in low-lying shrubs and grasses

to

on a grassy ocean bluff

But I didn't think that "low-lying shrubs and grasses" gave the reader a clearer mental image than did simply "grassy". We could make it a "grassy, shrubby ocean bluff", but that scans a bit weird. E Eng 04:43, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for explaining, and I think that illustrates the way we see this differently. I will take a break from this article for a bit as I find this kind of thing a bit too stressful. The former description shows that the Hopper home has the window facing north on the bluff covered in shrubs in the dunes above the beach. This was written this way on purpose, because it both describes the house in situ (and how it appears to people outside of it) as well as describes and anticipates how Hopper saw the bay from within, particularly from the open door, which is implied, but has not yet been added. In other words, I was attempting to describe how others saw the house from outside of it, while also being mindful of how Hopper saw things, prior to painting the work. By placing the window after all of this, it loses the sense of place. When you walk by the house on the beach, it’s one of the first things you see (if it isn’t covered up), and it’s also the most notable thing about it from the famous Time magazine photo. Viriditas (talk) 05:01, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Look, V, I'm really sorry you're stressed, but I've emphasized from the beginning that if you want to change something back, by all means change it back. It's OK with me, really. But I'm bound to say that the plain English of the "old text" (above) doesn't say what you keep saying it says. What it says is (a) that the house has a window facing north, and (separately, with no connection to the window) that (b) that the house sits upon a ocean-facing bluff covered in low-lying shrubs and grasses in the dunes above Fisher Beach. It says nothing about what you see from the window (other than that you're looking north), and in particular it says nothing about being able to see the bay, or any other specific thing, from this window.

In any event, I hope Tfish's subsequent edits assuaged your concern. E Eng 22:52, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, this is all my fault, because I posted a comment on EEng's talk page, boasting about how good my DYK hook is. Anyway, I've made a bunch of new edits that I hope go a long way towards reconciling the differences between you two. I actually think that the page is much improved now. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:29, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Did you know nomination

(

Comment or view
Article history

)

... that Edward Hopper sold some beachfront property to a New York art gallery?
Sources: "When he wrote to his dealer about the picture, an austere view out the door of his Truro studio...directly on the water of the bay, he noted only: 'I have finished a canvas am [sic] hoping to get another before we leave here'." Levin, Gail (1998). Hopper's Places (2nd ed). University of California Press. pp. XI. ISBN 9780520216761. OCLC 1228847942. "[Art collector Stephen Carlton Clark] bought Rooms by the Sea...and kept it for the remainder of his life. Hopper's wife, Jo, in the notebook she used to record her husband's sales, noted next to Clark's name in the entry for this picture, 'snapped up at once before shown publicly'." [...] "Purchased by SCC from Rehn Gallery, New York". Vincent, Gilbert T.; Sarah Lees (2006). "A Life with Art: Stephen Carlton Clark as Collector and Philanthropist". The Clark Brothers Collect: Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. pp. 186, 332. ISBN 0300116195. OCLC 1110377214
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Mount Aniakchak; Template:Did you know nominations/Weston Turville Castle; Template:Did you know nominations/Cold Crematorium: Reporting From the Land of Auschwitz; Template:Did you know nominations/Leeds 2023
- Comments: Hopper had an exclusive arrangement with Rehn Gallery in New York for 43 years. See Edward Hopper: Paintings & Ledger Book Drawings (2012) for additional supporting info, particularly pp. 23, 25, and especially 114, where Hopper's wife confirms they received the check for the painting from Rehn on April 7, 1952.

Created by Viriditas (talk) and Tryptofish (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 26 past nominations.

Viriditas (talk) 23:02, 29 August 2024 (UTC).[reply]

I started to review this, but then I got to copyediting so I'm ineligible to review. It grieves me to say that I could not find material for an even remotely off-color ALT. E Eng 02:22, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Article is new enough, long enough, and within policy. However, I don't think this hook works for two reasons. One, the fun of this hook is backwards. The punchline of this hook is when you get to the article and realize it is about a painting and not actual beachfront property. That's witty, but the wit isn't in what one sees on the main page. On its face, the buying of property along a beach isn't interesting, and I don't think the hook will draw in many readers so that they get the wit of the hook which requires actually going to the page. Two, the hook is factually inaccurate. Even if a painting depicts beachside property, the purchaser of a painting knows they aren't buying land, they are buying a painting. I get the humor/wit behind the hook, and if this were an April Fools hook proposal it would be appropriate. In short: we need a new hook that is hooky at first glance and verifiable.4meter4 (talk) 22:33, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

ALT1:

... that an art critic felt that Rooms by the Sea was one of Edward Hopper's "strangest" works?

Source: "The light in many of Hopper’s paintings appears overdetermined, as much psychological as natural. In “Rooms by the Sea” (1951), one of his strangest paintings, it is especially urgent and borderline surrealistic." Johnson, Ken (January 3, 2013). "Artworks That Shine in New York Museums". The New York Times.

@4meter4: I've provided an alternative hook that I think will satisfy your specifications. (In case you didn't know, the joke about selling someone "beachfront property" is a thing, [1], and we even have a page about a song about it.) --Tryptofish (talk) 21:11, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That works for me. Approving Alt1.4meter4 (talk) 21:40, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]