“We are lonesome animals. And it seems we spend all our life trying to be less lonesome.”
~John Steinbeck
Edward Hopper was one of America’s most celebrated 20th century artists. He painted hotels, motels, trains and highways, and also liked to paint public and semi-public places where people gathered: especially restaurants, theatres, cinemas and offices. But even in these paintings he stressed the theme of loneliness–his theatres are often semideserted, with a few patrons waiting for the curtain to go up or the performers isolated in the fierce light of the stage.
In what is utterly incomprehensible, Hopper died in 1967, isolated and forgotten.
When I see theaters like the Orpheum, I think of his painting, “New York Movie.”
There will never be another like Edward Hopper. And while he may have passed on more than forty years ago, he is certainly not forgotten.
The Orpheum Theater, Mainstreet, eastern SD
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