There are poems and there are poets. And then there is Billy Collins the American Poet Laureate who has had an influence on my own writing ever since I discovered his ‘animated’ poems on youtube. His poems are rich in imagery and visual texture, evoking mood and metaphor at unexpected turns, delving deep into the imagination without ever leaving the surface simplicity of everyday words. I’ve always found his work a refreshing change from the cloudy abstraction of a lot of contemporary poetry because they are accessible and immediate. The videos one can find on youtube are certainly interesting interpretations of his oeuvre and I’d definitely like to try my hand at ‘visualising’ one of his poems one day.
On of my personal favourite poems by Collins is Sweet Talk in which he compares his lover to the Mona Lisa, Boticelli’s Venus, a painting by Delacroix and finally a work by Edward Hopper. You can see the video edited to a reading by Collins himself here.
I wasn’t familiar with Edward Hopper’s work when I read this poem but in retrospect, I really think I ought to have been. Edward Hopper is one of those artists every scenographer should study in order to understand lighting, colour and architectural composition. He was a master painter of sunlight and is known most famously to have said:
“All I ever wanted to do was paint sunlight on the side of a house”
A few days I ago I was fortunate enough to visit a comprehensive exhibition of the American painter’s work in Rome at the Fondazione Roma. Curated by Carter Foster of the Whitney Museum, the exhibition brings together sketches, prints, oils and watercolours spanning Hopper’s output as a student, illustrator and painter. The real treat on display is a digital reproduction of one of his artistic “ledgers” that documents his paintings in sketches and notes.
The prologue to the exhibition consists of a scenographic reproduction of his 1942 Nighthawks in which the visitor is invited to walk into a mock diner filled with Hopper’s subjects and photograph oneself in its environs. One is invited to “become part of the painting” and experience oneself inside the three-dimensional world of Hopper’s two-dimensional representation – something rather like walking into Rembrandt’s Nightwatch and taking position in the scene.
Nighthawks, 1942
Second Story Sun, 1960
Morning Sun, 1952
The exhibition then follows in a chronological fashion, taking us through his work as student and then as a professional illustrator. His Paris paintings follow, displayed against a shaded backdrop that imitates the sky, recreating an atmospheric experience of his work.
Some paintings are preceded by Hopper’s sketches and colour studies. Seen together they provide an insight into the painter’s methodical and almost scientific process as one reflects on his colour scheme and lighting plan. Other rooms contain black and white etchings that evidence Hopper’s mastery of contrast and tonal variations, capturing sunlight in black ink and white paper.
Although the exhibition is comprehensive in its content, I found myself wishing that it had been hosted in a more suitable location. In certain spots one had to walk from one room to the next through narrow 4 foot wide corridors and navigate through the exhibition in an unnecessarily enforced order dictated by the Italian guard that simply would not let you pass from one room to the adjacent one without walking through 2 other rooms first. The rooms were small and in some cases when I would have liked to stand a good distance away from the work in order to appreciate it, there was just no space to manoeuvre.
View of one of the galleries
The exhibition claims to be the largest assembling of Edward Hopper’s work in Italy and I do encourage you to catch it either in Rome or in Lausanne where it will be on display next.
You can visit the exhibition’s website here and find out more about Hopper and his Times in an interesting multi-media segment of the site here
(All images are from the exhibition’s website)
