September 15, 2024

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

Open doors are an often theme in art – paintings and photography. For the photo, the lens person’s eye has caught a moment that others might not immediately see but later do because of her/his skill; for the painting, the artist probably doesn’t know the story because, as realist Edward Hopper noted, “inner experience” and looking for one’s self manage the paint brush. Do any of us ever know the fullness of our story?

Hopper painted numerous doorways – and windows – into his works. A notable door piece is his 1949 “Stairway,” a take on the foyer of his Nyack, N.Y., birthplace home. The entryway is realistic, even to this day at the house, which is now the Edward Hopper Museum and Study Center, but the view through the door portal is anything but – landscape, sky, the unknown. What’s ahead as you leave the home? What’s left behind as you enter? Where and what of the artist is in this work?

Painters are, then, story-tellers, even if they do not know all the chapters, maybe not even the plot. The gift they are given by the heavens, be they Renoir or the amateur with some talent, is the gathering line of their brush, pulling from a stream of consciousness to tell a story or at least present the elements of one. We viewers write the rest.

That adds to the ever-filling library of observation, explanation and emotion of all sorts in this very human experience. Hail such narration from the heavens.

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

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