Mid-morning.
You are stiff and out of sorts physically and not much better mentally this
morning. You have you walkers on and are ready for the park. Carol will be
ready momentarily.
0949 hours. We are running later than
usual – busy voting an OEA ballot for caretakers of our pensions – important
stuff.
Carol spent time playing computer games
sitting on the side of the bed after she was ready to walk and you spent time
listening to Sudoku beeps resting with Jadah in your lap – a pleasant morning.
Spooky popped in periodically but her favorite spot is looking out the living
room window.
1149 hours. We have another wonderful
Fall day in cloudless southwest Ohio.
An errand for a bank deposit and at stop at
Graeter’s for a treat before lunch, a stop at the post office and a stop at
Kroger’s on Mason-Montgomery Road before heading home, then, as Carol wishes, a
takeout from uptown Mason to be eaten either on the deck or the front porch. (1352)
You
are sitting at Troy’s parking lot in Mason waiting for your take out. Carol
ordered a Troy burger with bacon and cheese and you a Cuban Panini. Otherwise,
it is a very routine day. – Amorella
Almost
dinnertime. Carol is watching one of her shows, “Criminal Minds”. Before you
both watched “Blindspot” and “NCIS.LA”. You just finished a seven hundred and
three word draft of ‘Brothers 11’. – Amorella
1752 hours. It was easier to work on
Brothers than Pouch. I cut it down from a few more than 1800 words. Basically
it is a remembered conversation between Bob and myself while we were having
lunch at Taco Bell. The focus is on Merlyn’s dreams and how they may be
existential in tone like Eric Hopper’s paintings are existential in tone. Here
is a copy of a similar painting the segment is speaking of “Chair Car”.
** **
"Chair Car"
Edward Hopper
From - http://www.museumsyndicateDOTcom/item.php?item=468
** **
In your mind this is not the painting, you
described her with a blue dress. The Hopper book of art Bob gave you is not on
your bookshelf but because it was a present from Bob you probably gave it to
Kim for safekeeping as you did other works. In any case, this painting will
suffice so adapt the segment to this image. Do you see Merlyn suggesting such
an image? Look up existential tone in Hopper’s work. We can modify. – Amorella
1845
hours. Amazing, Amorella. I was checking out Wikipedia about Hopper’s artistic
tone when I discovered an image of the girl in the blue dress that I was
describing in the Merlyn’s Mind books. It is titled “Hotel Lobby”.
** **
"Hotel Lobby"
Edward Hopper
from Wikipedia - enclosed in article on E.H.
** **
Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was a prominent American realist
painter and printmaker. While he was most popularly known for his oil paintings,
he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching. Both in
his urban and rural scenes, his spare and finely calculated renderings
reflected his personal vision of modern American life.
Early life
In his early self-portraits, Hopper tended to
represent himself as skinny, ungraceful, and homely. Though a tall and quiet
teenager, his prankish sense of humor found outlet in his art, sometimes in
depictions of immigrants or of women dominating men in comic situations. Later
in life, he mostly depicted women as the figures in his paintings. In high
school, he dreamed of being a naval architect, but after graduation he declared
his intention to follow an art career. Hopper's parents insisted that he study
commercial art to have a reliable means of income. In developing his self-image
and individualistic philosophy of life, Hopper was influenced by the writings
of Ralph Waldo Emerson. He later said, "I admire him greatly...I read him
over and over again.”
Marriage and breakthrough
By 1923,
Hopper's slow climb finally produced a breakthrough. He re-encountered his
future wife Josephine Nivison, an artist and former student of Robert Henri,
during a summer painting trip in Gloucester, Massachusetts. They were
opposites: she was short, open, gregarious, sociable, and liberal, while he was
tall, secretive, shy, quiet, introspective, and conservative. They married a
year later. She remarked famously, "Sometimes talking to Eddie is just
like dropping a stone in a well, except that it doesn't thump when it hits
bottom.” She subordinated her career to his and shared his reclusive life
style. The rest of their lives revolved around their spare walk-up apartment in
the city and their summers in South Truro on Cape Code. She managed his career
and his interviews, was his primary model, and was his life companion.
With
Nivison's help, six of Hopper's Gloucester watercolors were admitted to an
exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum in 1923. One of them, The Mansard Roof,
was purchased by the museum for its permanent collection for the sum of $100.
The critics generally raved about his work; one stated, "What vitality,
force and directness! Observe what can be done with the homeliest
subject." Hopper sold all his watercolors at a one-man show the following
year and finally decided to put illustration behind him.
The
artist had demonstrated his ability to transfer his attraction to Parisian
architecture to American urban and rural architecture. According to Boston
Museum of Fine Arts curator Carol Troyen, "Hopper really liked the way
these houses, with their turrets and towers and porches and mansard roofs and
ornament cast wonderful shadows. He always said that his favorite thing was
painting sunlight on the side of a house."
At
forty-one, Hopper received further recognition for his work. He continued to
harbor bitterness about his career, later turning down appearances and awards.
His financial stability now secured, Hopper would live a simple, stable life
and continue creating art in his distinctive style for four more decades.
His Two
on the Aisle (1927) sold for a personal record $1,500, enabling Hopper to
purchase an automobile, which he used to make field trips to remote areas of
New England. In 1929, he produced Chop Suey and Railroad Sunset.
The following year, art patron Stephen Clark donated House by the Railroad
(1925) to the Museum of Modern Art, the first oil painting it acquired for its
collection. Hopper painted his last self-portrait in oil around 1930.
Although she posed for many of his paintings, Josephine modeled for only one
formal oil portrait by her husband, Jo Painting (1936).
Hopper
fared better than many other artists during the Great Depression. His stature
took a sharp rise in 1931 when major museums, including the Whitney Museum of
American Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, paid thousands of dollars for
his works. He sold 30 paintings that year, including 13 watercolors. The
following year he participated in the first Whitney Annual, and he continued to
exhibit in every annual at the museum for the rest of his life. In 1933, the
Museum of Modern Art gave Hopper his first large-scale retrospective.
During
1934 the Hoppers built their summer house in South Truro on Cape Cod in
Massachusetts. They returned there every summer for the rest of their lives,
taking driving trips from South Truro into other areas when Edward needed to
search for fresh material to paint. In the summers of 1937 and '38, the Hoppers
spent extended sojourns on Wagon Wheels Farm in South Royalton, Vermont, where
Edward painted a series of watercolors along the White River. These scenes are
atypical among Hopper's mature works, as most are "pure" landscapes,
devoid of architecture or human figures. First Branch of the White River
(1938), now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is the most well-known of
Hopper's Vermont landscapes.
Hopper was very productive through the 1930s and early
1940s, producing among many important works New York Movie (1939), Girlie
Show (1941), Nighthawks (1942), Hotel Lobby (1943), and Morning
in a City (1944). During the late 1940s, however, he suffered a period of
relative inactivity. He admitted, "I wish I could paint more. I get sick
of reading and going to the movies." In the two decades to come his health
faltered, and he had several prostate surgeries and other medical problems.
Nonetheless, in the 1950s and early 1960s, he created several more major works,
including First Row Orchestra (1951); as well as Morning Sun and Hotel by a Railroad, both in 1952; and Intermission
in 1963.
Art
Personality and vision
Always
reluctant to discuss himself and his art, Hopper simply summed up his art by
stating, "The whole answer is there on the canvas." Hopper was stoic
and fatalistic—a quiet introverted man with a gentle sense of humor and a frank
manner. Conservative in politics and social matters, he accepted things as they
were and displayed a lack of idealism. Cultured and sophisticated, he was
well-read, and many of his paintings show figures reading. He was generally
good company and unperturbed by silences, though sometimes taciturn, grumpy or
detached. He was always serious about his art and the art of others, and when
asked would return frank opinions.
Hopper's
most systematic declaration of his philosophy as an artist was given in a
handwritten note, entitled "Statement", submitted in 1953 to the
journal, Reality:
Great
art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner
life will result in his personal vision of the world. No amount of skillful
invention can replace the essential element of imagination.
One of
the weaknesses of much abstract painting is the attempt to substitute the
inventions of the human intellect for a private imaginative conception.
The
inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm and does not concern
itself alone with stimulating arrangements of color, form and design.
The term
life used in art is something not to be held in contempt, for it implies all of
existence and the province of art is to react to it and not to shun it.
Painting
will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's
phenomena before it can again become great.
Though Hopper claimed that he didn't consciously embed
psychological meaning in his paintings, he was deeply interested in Freud and
the power of the subconscious mind. He wrote in 1939, "So much of every
art is an expression of the subconscious that it seems to me most of all the
important qualities are put there unconsciously, and little of importance by
the conscious intellect."
Selected and edited from Wikipedia – Edward Hopper
** **
2132
hours. Bob Pringle and I were interested in Freud also. We were both
existentialists, very much twins mentally but we took to different formats, Bob
with poetry and me with novels. The discussion in the story will be very much
how we spoke in real life.
You watched several shows today and ended
with the first episode of “Jay Leno’s Garage”. Carol likes the show. You both
have a standing affection for all kinds of cars. You walked a little more than
one and a half miles today and are pleased that you did. Carol walked more than
two. – Amorella
2138 hours. I am shifting my focus on
Brothers 11 to a kind of standard on how it was between Bob and myself in real
life. He is still my friend. I miss him. I miss our discussions on literature
and art and life. He read the Merlyn books from which the GMG are taken. He
accepted my fiction warts and all. I love you Robert.
Post. - Amorella
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