FIERCE, FRESH AND FURIOUS: MR. HOPPER’S NEIGHBORHOOD STARTS AT CAPE ANN MUSEUM

Surreal, puckish touches everywhere:

An unimposing wall of a sea captain’s mansion blares as if with a spotlight for a celebrity to enter or exit; or perhaps an invitation for the honored viewer – yourself – but there is no door, just the leaves of high bushes full of light. Are bushes being honored, while the majestic facade’s portal is ignored?

Everyone knows Edward Hopper’s iconic 1942 “Nighthawks,” but are they fully aware of how his touches of individuality in the clothes, the attitude of bodies in themselves and in relation to the other bodies, fills a scene, inert in other hands, with drama. Hopper, shy and reticent as a person, as an artist he loves to steal upon a scene with hidden meanings, open it up for his delectation, then share it with anyone around who cares to peer over his shoulder.

All shyness and reticence laid aside, when he takes up his brushes, Hopper becomes an impresario flinging aside the public curtain on urgent private dramas. Perversely, masterfully, Hopper can do without the people as he reveals the personality of a house front meditating on its own grandiosity, or conversely, its modesty as it attempts to shield its grander points from passersby with quick, covering shadows, just as the view seems to stabilize, to clear of all ambiguities.

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