Looking at Edward Hopper’s, Alfred Hitchcock’s and Gregory Crewdson’s images.
Art is an exchange between the artist and the viewer. Art is a creation that requires a certain observation. Through this new article, I want to show you the attention that the works of these three artists require.
The second article, in my trilogy focusing on the similarities between the images of Hopper, Hitchcock and Crewdson, was about voyeurism and it ended with Alfred Hitchcock’s film “Rear Window”. I’ve decided to start this new article with a shot from this same film because it can easily be compared to “Night Windows”, a painting by Edward Hopper.
In these two images, we’re immersed in a very intimate moment: we’re looking at an isolated flat, it may be summer and that’s why the windows are open and through them, we see, in each image, a woman. Both women are quite attractive but they’re also very different: in Hopper’s painting, the woman is turned, lowered towards something or someone. We don’t know what she’s doing. It leaves much more mystery than in the Hitchcock’s scene, since the woman he depicts is openly facing us, almost dancing for us.
In any case, the woman is at the centre of the two works. Both artists wanted to direct our attention to them.
Besides, there’s something important I should say: Edward Hopper was a huge fan of cinema, he could apparently go to the cinema 3 times a day. In his Diary, his wife Jo tells us that in December 1938, after a long period of inactivity, Edward Hopper began to go to the cinema because he wanted to know if films could help him to paint again. She even said that he could have painted more if he didn’t spend so much time watching films and reading books. As for Hitchcock, we know that he was a huge art lover and it has been said that he may have had some Hopper’s paintings at home… so we can assume, given the dates, that they may have known, liked and fed off each other’s work.
Perhaps an even better known example of the similarity of the compositions is the painting “House by the railroad” by Edward Hopper in 1925 and the house in which Norman Bates lives in the film “Psycho”.
As you can see, the resemblance is more than obvious. Houses in the middle of nowhere, with Victorian architecture. The shots are quite similar and both give a truly heavy and austere atmosphere. If we look at the houses, without knowing the story of Psycho, we can imagine that they’re abandoned and even haunted.
Recurring elements are also visible in the compositions of Edward Hopper and Gregory Crewdson and some of them symbolise intimacy (bed, nudity…), and the link, as we have seen, between the interior and exterior world (windows, doors…). However, we can notice that Hopper’s paintings are uncluttered, especially at the end of his life, while Crewdson’s photographs are full of details.
Gregory Crewdson is also a great cinema fan. He often cites the films of Hitchcock, Spielberg and Lynch as references. And he’s not only a fan of this art, he also works as a film director. His images are scenes that he creates from from start to finish. Every detail matters.
To make his images, Gregory Crewdson has colossal budgets and means at his disposal: his team resembles a film crew (lighting technicians, cameramen, director of photography, make-up artists, decorators, stylists, etc.) and studios when he wants to create indoor photographs
His compositions leave nothing to chance. When Gregory Crewdson wants to create outdoor photographs, it can take him months to find the perfect spot: he drives for a very long time, does research, takes notes, and only begins when he thinks he has found the ideal location.
His means are truly important since for a single photograph, he can block a street for several days (as you can see in this video), make a casting to recruit the models… just for a single image. Most of the people photographed aren’t professional models, they are often people living in the city where the photograph is taken and that’s why they audition to play the characters, ut Gregory Crewdson has also taken photos with real actors like Julianne Moore (series “Dream House”) for example.
We also see in his photographs the blue and green colours, which are colours that we find in Spielberg’s films. As for the stories, they often take place behind closed doors, and can therefore easily remind us of certain Hitchcock films such as “Dial M for Murder”.
By creating photographs that look like still images, Gregory Crewdson places us in a situation where we know neither the beginning nor the end. Like in Edward Hopper’s paintings, we can imagine what we want. Gregory Crewdson gives us many details but he always finds a perfect balance so we can invent our own stories. He gives us questions but no answers. So the viewer has to analyse every subject and each detail to clarify the situation and make sense of it.This is also the reason why Gregory Crewdson prefers to take photographs rather than make films: for him, each image remains silent, incomplete and frozen. He calls these scenes “In-between moments”. It corresponds to the idea of photography, which is to capture the moment.
This photograph is called “The Mattress” and takes place in a forest. We can see two cars in the background, one of them is a police car. A man is standing in the foreground. He seems thoughtful, almost desperate. It’s up to us to imagine a link between all these elements. Is he a police officer, an investigator? What’s the story behind the mattress? Is it a very important clue? Has someone disappeared? There can be so many questions and so many interpretations.
As I said, the idea of multiple interpretations is also present in Edward Hopper’s work. We constantly imagine an off-screen. His paintings are mysterious, ambiguous, they often leave the viewer with questions.
In this painting called “Cap Cod Morning”, painted by Hopper in 1950, we see a woman who’s looking out of a window. She’s in profile. The fact that she was painted in profile is not insignificant, since it gives us several interpretations. The woman seems to have seen something that intrigues her. Or she’s maybe waiting for someone who is not coming. Hopper, like Crewdson, gave us many keys. But we don’t know which one will open the door.
In Hitchcock’s films, interpretation is passed from the character to the viewer. (SPOILER ALERT) In “Suspicion”, Lina McKinlaw shares with us her fear of being murdered by her husband. We easily believe her. In the end, we understand that it wasn’t what we thought and that we were tied to a wrong interpretation.
We have come to the end of this article and thus to the end of the trilogy on the similarities that I have noted between Hopper’s, Hitchcock’s and Crewdson’s works. Perhaps there are other similarities, and if so, I would be delighted to hear about them. I hope you have enjoyed these three articles.
I have enjoyed observing, analysing and sharing this filiation with you. This one is never a plagiarism. These artists have re-appropriated atmospheres, subjects and feelings without ever crossing the border of the copy and past thing. They have succeeded in offering the audience masterful workswhich, for example, can make us say: “Here, this is an Alfred Hitchcock’s film” or “I’m sure that it’s a Crewdson’s photograph”.
