Stein & Hopper

Here's one clue to Edward Hopper. It comes from "What Are Masterpieces" by Gertrude Stein, which came out in 1940. "It is very curious," wrote that curious avant-gardist, "but the detective story . . . is . . . the only really modern novel form that has come into existence."
Stein was hinting at a mood -- of secrecy and suffering and aloneness among strangers -- that, new in 1940, is still part of who we are. Hopper lets us see it. Manliness and mystery pervade "Edward Hopper," a show with masterpieces, which goes on view on Sunday at the National Gallery of Art.
He was noir before that concept formed. Its mood of hidden knowing is a constant in his art. Hopper carves it out of shadows in his etchings. He pulls it from clear sunlight in his watercolor views of coastal Maine and Massachusetts. His oil paintings of the city summon it with color (maroon, acidic greens) and lead us to its lair, to anonymous hotel rooms, to freight yards at the city's edge, to the movie theater's dark.
There are no cops in his pictures, no guns, no snapping traps, nothing as crude as that. He refuses denouements. It's emotion he is after. Hopper (1882-1967) needs no creaky plots, just pale yellow window shades, sun-fall on a red brick wall, the glint of chrome at night.
To enter Hopper's world is to become his accomplice. The four figures you see in his best-known oil, "Nighthawks" (1942) from the Art Institute of Chicago, are not its only players. You are there as well, present but unseen.