Research On Painting Style Of Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper is an important and representative realist painter in American history during 20th century. His works show a strong style of American customs. Edward Hopper as the American representative painters participated the biennial exhibition in Venice Biennale in 1952. The biggest characteristic of Edward Hopper’s paintings is that a strong emotional atmosphere exists in his paintings. As an American custom painter, loneliness and solitude in his paintings are the most important emotional atmosphere in his paintings. In this paper, we analysis Hopper’s paintings from the perspectives of the composition, color, empathy effect and social background of his times. There are four sections in this paper. Section 1 briefs the effect of industry society background on the composition of his paintings. Meanwhile, we can understand the people’s introspection of the time and the memory of the old life in small towns from his paintings. Section 2 analyzes the effect of light composition on Edward Hopper’s paintings, and the completeness of the whole composition brought by light. Section 3 researches the use of color in Hopper’s paintings. The match between main characters and the cold or warm colors in picture surrounding is analyzed. Also, we discuss that the color-compensation effect and color composition lay the foundation for showing the emotion surrounding in his paintings. Section 4 researches the empathy effect in Edward Hopper’s paintings, and points out that the elements used in the composition has a direct relationship with the metaphor emotion embodied in the composition. In the meantime, the empathy effect in Edward Hopper’s paintings is compared with that in Chinese paintings.