Late American artist Edward Hopper's first Korean solo exhibition opens

Edward Hopper (1882-1967) is beloved for his oil paintings that portray motifs that are deemed American, particularly of the 20th century. Most will know the American realist for his 1942 “Nighthawks” oil painting, which depicts four people...

"Second Story Sunlight" (1960) [WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, NEW YORK]

Edward Hopper (1882-1967) is beloved for his oil paintings that portray motifs that are deemed American, particularly of the 20th century.

Most will know the American realist for his 1942 “Nighthawks” oil painting, which depicts four people inside a downtown diner late at night. Other famed paintings by Hopper typically consist of a New York-style cityscape, such as an apartment or office space.

His take on the daily lives and sentiments of the United States in the 1900s, eliciting a sense of nostalgia, has shot the artist to stardom. His works have been subject to many parodies and remakes throughout the years.

A few years back, Shinsegae’s e-commerce brand SSG created homages of Hopper’s paintings for its advertisements, featuring actors Kong Hyo-jin and Gong Yoo, which went viral online.

"Seven A.M." (1948) [WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, NEW YORK]

Despite his popularity, Hopper never held a solo exhibition in the country. That is until now.

His first Korean solo exhibition, “From City to Coast,” opens at the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA)’s Seosomun branch in Jung District, central Seoul, beginning Thursday.

It is the largest exhibit to take place in Korea in the first half of 2023 and follows SeMA’s biggest hit — the David Hockney exhibition that attracted some 300,000 visitors in 2019. A total of 100,000 early bird tickets that went on sale at a discount price from March 23 quickly sold out. Though the museum is selling a certain number of tickets for different time slots to minimize overcrowding, as it did for the Hockney exhibition, large crowds seem inevitable.

Presenting 160 oil paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints, spanning 65 years of his career, the large-scale exhibition takes up all three floors of SeMA.

In addition to the artworks are some 110 archival pieces that dive behind the scenes of Hopper’s artistic world.

"Night Windows" (1928) [WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, NEW YORK]

The show was co-organized with the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, which has over 3,100 of Hopper’s works. It is the largest collection in the entire world.

The use of warm colors and the cinema-like visuals in Hopper’s paintings make them aesthetically pleasing, but they are much more complex than mere depictions of landscapes. People who appear emotionless and indifferent play a huge role, prompting Hopper’s works to be associated with solitude.

“[New York] is the city he knew best, and the city that he liked the most,” said Adam D. Weinberg, director of the Whitney Museum, during a press event on Wednesday.

His works presented captivating stories of the soul as well as the soullessness of modern life, he explained, “and he painted the world he saw, the world he knew, the world he invented and the world he lived in.”

"Soir Bleu" (1914) [WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, NEW YORK]

This exhibition, however, goes beyond New York. It presents works from some of his other favorite places: Paris, New England and Cape Cod.

“This exhibition spans Hopper’s personal visions in New York and includes other meaningful places that inspired new approaches to his art,” Weinberg said. “Wherever Hopper was, he was an observer.”

"Self-Portrait" (1925-30) [WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, NEW YORK]

The show begins with oil self-portraits as well as paintings and sketches based on memories in the home Hopper grew up in New York. He was fascinated by the mundane details in life and panoramic views, such as the rooftops of high-rise buildings.

Later on he shifted the subjects of his paintings outdoors as he visited other European cities and became enchanted by the effects of light and shadows.

"City Roofs" (1932) [WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, NEW YORK]

“This revealed his interest in the quiet moments in everyday subjects rather than a spectacle of the bustling metropolis,” said Kim Conaty, a curator at Whitney who also organized the “Edward Hopper’s New York” exhibition.

“Hopper was always drawn to moments of transition, whether movement from one place to another or the changing qualities of light, at sunrise or sunset. Such moments stoked his imagination.”

Just because he was known as a realist did not necessarily mean he depicted scenery only in a straightforward manner. From the late 1930s, he began relying on his memories and infused his imagination into his works, and in SeMA’s show there are side-by-side comparisons of sketches and paintings of the same subject and how they had been reconfigured.

"Maine in Fog" (1926-29) [WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, NEW YORK]

He enjoyed painting sailboats and trains, naturally shifting his focus to rural life, and he experimented with watercolors. It was in New England where he met his wife, Josephine, who would later act as his muse and manager.

Nicknamed Jo, she is the only female figure to ever appear in Hopper’s works as seen in paintings or sketches like “A Woman in the Sun” (1961), “Jo Sketching in the Truro House” (1934-38) and “Jo Hopper Reading” (c. 1935-40).

“Hopper was a very taciturn person, so it was Jo who kept ledger books that documented 30-years’ worth of his works,” said SeMA’s curator Lee Seung-ah. “These later became very crucial historical sources when studying Hopper’s works.”

"A Woman in the Sun" (1961) [WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, NEW YORK]

"Jo Sketching in the Truro House" (1934-38) [WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, NEW YORK]

It was also Jo who had donated about 2,500 works to the Whitney Museum in 1968, after Hopper died.

The ledger books are displayed at SeMA as digital videos, and archival data includes colorful illustrations from Hopper’s earlier years as a freelancer for magazines, letters he wrote to his mother and ticket stubs of plays the couple had kept as souvenirs.

“From City to Coast” continues until Aug. 20. SeMA is open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day except Mondays. The museum is a five-minute walk from City Hall Station, line No. 2. Tickets are 17,000 won ($12) for adults.

"Night Shadows" (1921) [WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, NEW YORK]

BY SHIN MIN-HEE [shin.minhee@joongang.co.kr]