听力第053套 （tl 003）L2

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2.C

3.BCE

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6.C

Listen to part of a lecture in an art history class.

Okay uh. For today, you read about Edward hopper, who’s probably one of the most recognizable painters of the early to mid 1900s in the United States. We’re going to look at a number of slides of hoppers paintings in a few minutes, but first a little background, what can you tell us about his word? Jane? Well, I read that in all of his paintings, his depiction of light and darkness is really important. Yes, in many of his mature works, strange shadows and dark spaces are contrasted with areas of light. For example, a large White House might dominate the scene of his painting. No people. And there might be some open windows, but you’ll only be able to see dark, empty spaces through these openings that leads the viewers to imagine what’s inside the house, why the windows are open, where the people who live in the house might be. Each viewer creates any one of a number of possible stories as it were.

Now, critics have suggested that the mysterious areas of light and shadow that are central to so many of his paintings could signify that life is lonely for human beings. But hopper himself disputed that he was a painter of loneliness. Well, there’s no one answer. We’ll discuss your thoughts about this in a bit after we take a close look at some of his works. But before we do that, uh, what else did you learn from the reading? Well, well, a hopper painting things that other painters didn’t think were like worthy of painting. I mean, he didn’t paint what was in fashion. Uh, like when he lived in the coast of Massachusetts, most artists of his time were painting things like beautiful coastal scenes, but hopper focused on the elaborate Victorian mansions of 1800s. And weren’t those Victorian structures actually considered unattractive to other painters?

Even vulgar, but hopper loved this kind of architecture. And he was one of the few serious artists of his day who painted it. It seems like he was always going against the grain. I mean, like when hopper lived in another coastal town, he painted old light houses. And then when he lived in New York City, he painted desolate urban scenes, things like all night diners with hardly any people in them, and other ordinary buildings built in the 1800s.

But other artists of the time were painting modern structures of the 1900s like skyscrapers. Right? Hopper had no interest in contemporary corporate America with its towering skyscrapers and so on. He was drawn to architecture that was typical of the previous century, as well as ordinary human experience uh, ordinary objects, and ordinary people with regular hopes and theaters. People in the process of trying to get by. And what was the reaction to this? Well, the critics thought that the lighthouses were unattractive, utilitarian, but they still acknowledged that hopper was transforming them into beautiful images and pretty quickly into his career. And then throughout most of it, his works received rave reviews and the public. Well, there was a demand for paintings of modern things, but hoppers paintings were in high demand, too. Even during the economic depression of the 1930s. It was as if people liked that, his paintings showed life honestly.

Now, I wanted stress that Harper didn’t completely turn his back on the 1900s. He loves going to movies and the theater. So it’s no accident that hopper approached the composition of his works in the same way. Many directors in the first half of the 1900s were conveying the Information of a scene in a play or a movie through a single shot of carefully arranged actors, props and lighting. Hoppers seen might be at a lunch counter or at a gas station at night. But it’s interesting that hoppers paintings always seem on the verge of telling a story. Hopper seemed reluctant to commit to any particular story line, and the viewer is often left with several possible interpretations. So he’s like that. Other scene. Painter, um, Norman Rockwell, but rockwell’s paintings are one dimensional and sentimental. And hoppers use of light and shadow that I mentioned earlier. Well, that shifts the focus of the painting away from the story told by the humans or other objects in it. To a variety of possible stories told with light and shadow across the canvas. And that’s what elevates his art above the art of other us seen painters of his time.