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th
leasures
of
Sadness
Edward Hopper belongs to that category of artists whose
w o r k
is sad but
does
not make us sad - the painterly coun
terpart
toBach or Leonard Cohen. Loneliness is the
domi
nant theme in his art. His figures look as though they are far
from
home, they stand reading a letter on the
edge
of a hote l
bed or dr inking in a bar, theygaze out of the window of a
mov in g train
or read a boo k in a ho tel lobb y Their
faces
are
vulnerable and introspective. They have perhaps just left
someone
or been
left,
they are in
search
of work, sex or
company, adrift in transient places. It is often night and
through
the window lie the
darkness
and threat of the open
country
or of a strange city. And yet despite the
bleakness
Ho ppe r s paintings depict, they are no t themselves bleak to
look
at - perhaps
because
they allow viewers to witness an
echo of their own griefs and disappointments, and thereby
to
feel less person ally persecuted and beset by them. It is
perhaps sad books that
console
us most when we are sad,
and the pictures o f lon ely
service
stations
that
we should hang
on
our walls when there is no one to hold or love.
In
utomat
1927),
a woman sits alone
dr inking
a cup of
coffee. Itis late and,
to
jud ge by her h at and coat, co ld outside.
The roomseems large, b rig ht ly li t and empty. Th e decor is
functional,
w i t h
a stone-topped table, hard-wearing black
wo od en chairs and w hite wal ls . The w om an looks self-
conscious
and slightly afraid, unused to sitting alone in a
public
place. Something
appears
to
have
gone
wrong. She
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u n w i t t i n g l y invites the
viewer
to imagine stories for her,
stories of betrayal or loss. She is try in g n ot to let her hand
shake
as she movesthe
coffee
cup to her lips. I t may be eleven
at night in
February
i n a
large
North American c i ty .
utomat
is a pictu re o f sadness - and yet i t is n ot a sad
picture.
It has the pow er o f a greatm elancholy pieceo f mu sic.
Despite the starkness of the furnishings, the location itsel f
doesn o t
seem
w retched. O thers in the ro om may be o n their
o w n , m e n a n d w o m e n d r i n k i n g coffee by themselves simi
l a r ly
lost in th ou gh t, s im i lar ly distanced fr om society: a
common i so la t ion
w i t h
the beneficial
effect
o f
lessening
the
oppressive sense w i t h i n any one person that they are alone
in
being alone. Hopper invites us to feel empathy w i t h the
w om an in her isolat ion. She seems dignified and generous
only
perhaps
a l i tt le too t rust ing , a l i tt lenaive - as if she has
knocked against a hard corner of the world. Hopper puts us
o n her side the side of the outsider against the insiders.
In
roadside diners and late-night cafeterias hotel lobbies
and station cafes we too may di lute a feel ing of isolation in
a lonely publicplace and hencerediscover a distinctive sense
o f com m un ity. The lack of domesticity, the bri gh t l ights and
anony mo us fu rn itu re may be a rel ief from w hat can be the
falsecomforts of hom e.
It
may be
easier
to
give
way to
sadness
herethan in a l iv ing r o o m
w i t h
wal lpaper and framed photos,
the decor o f a refuge that has let us down. The figures in
H opp er s art are n ot opponen ts o f hom e per se, i t is sim ply
that, in a variety of undefined ways home appears t o have
betrayed them, forcing them out into the night or on to the
road. The twenty-four-hour diner, the stat ion wait ing room
or m ot el are sanctuariesfo r thosew h o have for noble
reasons
failed to find a home in the ord inary w or ld .
A side
effect
o f coming into contact w i t h an y great artist
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the leasures of Sadness
is that we start to notice things in the
w o r l d
that we can
understand,
thanks to the work, that the painter wouldhave
been receptive to. We become sensitized to what one might
call
the Hopperesque, a quality now found not only in the
No r t h
American
locales
where Hopper himself w ent, but
also
anywhere in the developed
w o r ld
where there are motels and
servicestations, roadside diners and airports, bus stations and
all-nightsupermarkets. Hopper is the father of a whole school
o f art which finds as its subject matter l im in a l spaces bui ld
ings that lie outside homes and offices, placesof
transit
where
we are
aware
of a particular
k ind
of alienated poetry. We feel
Hopper s
presence
behind the photographs of Andreas
Gursky and Hannah Starkey the films of Wim Wenders and
th e books of Thomas Bernhardt.
remember
finding
the Hopperesque one evening in a
serv-
ice stationoff th e motorway between London and Manchester.
Objectively
speaking, it wasn t a beautiful building. The
light
ing
was unforgiving, bringing out pallor and blemishes. The
chairs and
seats
painted in childishlybr ight colours, had the
strained
jo l l i ty
of a fake smile. No one in the station was talk
ing,no one admitting to curiosity or fellow feeling. We gazed
blankly
past one another at the serving counter or out
into
the
darkness. We
m igh t
havebeen
seated
among rocks. I sat in one
corner, eating fingers of chocolate and taking occasional
sips
o f
orange juice. I
felt
lonely but, for once, this was a gentle,
even pleasant k ind of loneliness because rather than unfold
ing against a backdrop of laughter and fellowship, in which I
wou l d
suffer from a contrast between my mood and the envir-
onment , this loneliness unfolded in a place where everyone
was a stranger, where the difficulties of communication and
th efrustrated longing for love
seemed
to be acknowledged and
brutal ly celebrated by the architecture and l ighting.
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l in
de Botton
Servicestationsalways
evoke
for me Hopper sGas painted
thirteen
yearsbefore Automat and,
l ike
the earlier
p icture,
also
a study of isolation. We see a petrol station standing on its
o w n
in the impending darkness. But in Hopper s hands, the
isolat ion
is again made poignant and enticing. The darkness
thatspreads l ike a fog f rom the r i gh t of thecanvas,a harbin
ger of fear, contrasts w i t h the security of the station. Against
th e backdrop of
n ight
and w i l d woods, in this last outpost of
humanity , a
sense
of kinship may be easier to develop than
in daylight in the city. The coffee machine and magazines,
tokens of small human
desires
and vanities, stand in opposi
t ion to the wide non-human
w o r l d
outside, to the miles of
forest in which branches crack occasionally under the foot
fall of bears and foxes. There is something touching in the
suggestion - made in bold
p ink
on the cover of one maga
zine - that we paint our nails purple this summer and an
invocat ion above the coffee machine that we sample the
aroma of freshly roasted beans. In this last stop before the
road enters theendlessforest, what we havein common
w i t h
others can loom larger than whatseparatesus.
It sa curious feature of Hopper sw o r k that t h o u g h itseems
concerned to show us
places
that are transient and unhomely
we may in contact
w i t h
it, feel as if we have been carried
back to some important place in ourselves, a place of still-
nessand
sadness,
of seriousnessand
authenticity:
it can help
us to remember ourselves. How is it possible to forget
oneself?
At
stake
is not a l i teral forgetting of practical data,
rather a forgetting of those parts of ourselves
w i t h
which a
particular
sense
of integr i ty and well-being
appears
to be
b o u n d
up. Wehave many different
selves,
not all of which
feel equally l ike us , a division we confront most clearly in
relation to our physical
appearance,
where we may judge that
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the person a photographer has captured, while something to
do
w i t h
the being bearing our name, in fact has very
little
connection w i t h the spirit and attitude we would choose to
identify w i t h .
This visual dynam ic has a psycho logical equiv
alent, for
w i th in
our own minds too, we are madeaware o f
constellations of ideasand moods distinct enough to feel like
different personalities - an inner f luidity which can on
occa-
sion lead us to declare without any al lusion to the
super-
natural , that we are not feeling as if we are ourselves.
O n looking at a picture , we may
recognize
it as being at
once
important to us , but out of our ordinary
reach
- and
one o f the things we may be tr yi ng to do in bu yin g the post
card o f it and hanging it pro m inen tly above the desk (as I
have done w i t h a num ber of Hopp er s wo rks) is to have i t
as an omnipresent, solid token of the emotional texture of
the person we want to be and feel we deep down are. By
seeing
the picture
every
day, the hope is that a
l i ttle
of its
qualities
w i l l
rub of f on us . What we may
welcome
in the
picture isn t so m uc h the
subject
matter as the tone, it is the
record of an emotional attitude
conveyed
through colour
and form. We know we w i l l o f
course drift
far fro m i t , that
it
w o n t be possible or even practical to hold on to the
picture s m oo d for ever and that we w i l l have to be many
differentpeople (w i th bold opinions and a
sense
of certainty,
w i t h
casual
w it and parental au tho rity), bu t we
welcome
i t
as a reminder and an anchor.
Hopper also took an interest in
cars
and trains. He was
drawn to the introspective mood that travellingseemsto pu t
us
into.
He was interested in capturing the
atmosphere
inside
half-empty carriagesm aking their way acrossa
landscape:
the
silence that reigns inside while the wheels beat i n r hy t hm
against the rails outside, the dreaminess fostered by the
noise
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Alain de Botton
and the view f r om the windows, a
dreaminess
in which we
seem to stand outside our normal
selves
andhaveaccessto
thoughts and m em ories that m ay notemergein m or e settled
circum stances. The w o m an in Ho pper s
Compartment C Car
29 3
1938)
seems in such a frame of m i n d , reading her book
and shifting her
gaze
between the carriage and the view.
Q f e wplacesare m or e conducive to internal conversations than
a moving plane, ship or
train.
There is an almost quaint corre-
lation between what is in front o f oureyes and the thoughts
we areableto havein ourheads:large thou ghts at tim es requir-
ing
large views, new thoughts new
places.
Introspective
reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the
f low o f the landscape. The m i n d may be reluctant to think
properly
w h e n
th inking
is all it is supposed to do. The task
can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or m im ic anaccent
o n dem and. Th ink ing im proves wh en parts o f the m i nd are
given other tasks, are charged w i t h l istening to m usic or
fo l lowing a line of trees. The music or the view distracts for
a time that nervous, censorious, practical part of the m ind
wh ich is inclined to shut down when it notices something
difficult
emerging inconsciousnessand wh ich runs
scared
o f
memories, longings, introspective or
or ig inal
ideasand prefers
instead the administrative and the impersonal.
O f
allmodes of transport, the
train
isperhaps th ebestaid
to thought:
th eviewshavenone of the
po tential
m on oton y o f
those on a ship or plane, they move
fast
enough for us not to
get
exasperated
but slowly enough to allow us to identify
objects. T he y offer us brief, insp irin g glimpses
into
private
domains,
letting
us see a woman at the moment when she
takes
a cup
from
a shelf in her
kitchen,
before carrying us on
to a patio where a man is sleeping and then to a park where
a child is catching a ball
t h row n
by a figure we cannot
see.l
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On the Pleasures of Sadness
A t
the end of hours of train-dreaming we may feel we
have
been returned to ourselves: that is brought back into
contact
w i t h
emotions and
ideas
of importance to us. It is
not necessarily
at home that we
best
encounter our true
selves. The furniture insists that we cannot
changebecause
it
does
not; the domestic setting
keeps
us tethered to the
person we are in ordinary life but wh o may not be who we
essentially are.
Ho tels offer a similar op po rtu nit y toescape our habits of
m i nd
and i t is unsu rprising tha t Ho ppe r painted th em repeat
edly
Hotel Room,
1931
Hotel Lobby,
1943
Room s for Tourists,
1945 Hotel by a Railroad, 1952 Hotel Window, 1956 and Western
Motel, 1957 . Lying in bed in a hotel the room quiet
except
for
the occasional swooshing of an elevator in the innards of
the building we can draw a line under what preceded our
arrival
we can overfly great and ignored stretches of our
experience. We can reflect upon our lives
from
a height we
could no t
have
reached in the midst of
everyday
business
-
subtly
assisted
in this by the unfam iliar w o rl d around us: by
the
small wrapped
soaps
on the
edge
o f the basin by the
gal lery of m iniature bott les in the minibar by the roo m -
service
m e n u
w i t h
its promises of all-night
dining
and the
view on to an
un kn o wn
city
stirring
silently twenty-five floors
be low us. H o t e l notepads can be the recipients o f unexpect
edly intense revelatory thou ght s taken dow n in the early
hours.
If
a feature o f love is an overcom ing o f loneliness it is on ly
f itt ing
that a few
weeks
after we met my now-wife and I
realized th at we shared a love o f alienated Hopperesque
spaces and in particular o f Little Chef restaurants. Little
Chefs
are to B ritish life w ha t the d iner is to A m erica: u gly
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places
f u l l
of bad food that are nevertheless resonant
w i t h
poetry. My wife had been taken to L i t t le
Chefs
as a l itt le g i r l
by her father, a m an o f few w ords w ho l ike d to order an
English breakfast, read the
paper
and
gaze
o u t o f t he w i n d o w
s m o k i n g a cigarette, saying no thi ng . It had felt l ike a break
from
r o u t i n e ,
from
t h e m o n o t o n y o f g r o w i n g u p i n a
du l l
Suffolk market
t ow n .
T h e m e n u w as
br ight ,
someoneb r o u g h t
th e food to you r table and there m ig ht be a slide to play o n
outside. She had
always
gone for the
Jubilee
pancakes and
once on her birthda y had had tw o orders and been sickover
the
back of the family car. Then, at university,
L i t t le
Chefs
had been aplace to go to when she wanted to get
away f r om
th e hothouse atmosphere of her campus and see more ordi
nary life ro l l by for a w hi l e .
For my part, I remembered going to
L i t t le
Chefs
w i t h
m y
parents as a rare treat - or funerary r ite - before returning
to
boardin g school. It was a symbol of a m u l t i -c o l o u r e d ,w a r m
cheerfu l w o rl d that I w anted to hang on to for
ever
so
v iv id
was its contrast w i th the place I w as headed for. Then, g ro w n
u p, in a lon g and painfu l ly lonely per iod in m y m id tw enties,
I d
SOM ETIMESdrive ou t of L ondo n to
have
a sol i tary lu nch
i n
a
L itt le
Chef. I t fe l t comfort ing to drown my own al ien
ation in a wholeheartedly al ienated environment. It felt l ike
reading
Schopenhauer
w h e n on e i s d ow n . L i t t le
Chefs
are in
many
ways
about loneliness; about a
particularly
Engl ish
k ind
o f
loneliness even. They
b o t h
represent and are a curious cure
for
i t .
Thanks to the unlikely setting of a
L i t tl e
Chef we can for
a t i m e
escapesome
of the constraints of home, of our habits
o f m i n d , of the rules of sophisticated society - and enjoy a
b e g u i l i n g vision of an alternative
l ife.
To identi fy a common
taste in
L i t t le
Chefs doesn t ju st m ean sharing a taste i n
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restaurants, itmeans sharing a piece of inner, very private
psychology. It s a w onde r they d on t h ol d more w edd ing
parties there.
OscarW i lde once remarked that there had been no fog in
L ond on
before W histle r had painted i t There was of course
lots o f fog, it was just that little bit harder to notice its qual-
itiesw i t hout
the example o f
W histler
to direct our
gaze.
W h a t
Wilde said o f W histler, we may w ell say o f H opp er: that
there were far fewer
service
stations,
Little Chefs
airports,
trains,
m otels and diners visible in the w o rl d before Edw ard
Hopper
began
painting.
