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| Work
Edward and Jo Hopper:Excursion into Philosophy
| Date: | 1995
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| Medium: | Oil on canvas |
| Size inches: | 32 x 42 |
| Size cm: | 81.3 x 106.7
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| Signature: | Signed and dated lower right. Titled lower left |
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| Location: | New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut |
New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut. Gift of the Estate of George Deem. Accession Number 2013.54.37
| Image Notes
Reference
Edward Hopper, Excursion into Philosophy, 1959. Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches (76.2 x 101.6 cm). Private Collection.
Figures of Edward and Jo Hopper from a 1955 black-and-white photograph by Sidney Waintrob.
Variant Titles
George Deem in 2003 revised his original title from Edward and Jo Hopper to Edward and Jo Hopper in a Hopper Interior. The artist later chose the paintings present title: Edward and Jo Hopper: Excursion into Philosophy.
Gail Levin quotes Jo Hopper's description of Hopper's painting:
"Real Hopper landscape out of window. A.M. Sun in blue sky touching green dune top, window sill, rug, man, leg of female in pink shirt & back wall. The open book is Plato, reread too late. Walls neutral greenish."
Levin (p. 525) discusses Hopper's painting as "an image offering parallels to ... long-standing sexual tensions (between Edward and Jo Hopper)."
(Gail Levin,Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography. 1995: New York, pp.523-6)
George Deem painted Edward and Jo Hopper in 1995, the year in which Gail Levin gave him a copy of her book with the inscription "for George / Best regards / Gail."
Painting Reproduced:
George Deem, How To Paint A Vermeer: A Painter’s History of Art. 2004: New York (99).
| Artist's Notes
Edward and Jo Hopper, 1995.
In this painting I placed the painter Edward Hopper, seated with his wife, Jo, in one of his own paintings, Excursion into Philosophy. In Hopper's 1959 painting a man sits on the couch. Behind him, facing the wall, lies a woman wearing only a pink shirt. In my painting I have removed Hopper's figures of the seated man and recumbent woman and replaced them with the figures of Edward and Jo Hopper from a 1955 black-and-white photograph by Sidney Waintrob. Next to the man in Hopper's painting, and next to Hopper in my painting, is a book that lies open on the couch, as if tossed there. The book in Hopper's painting has been identified by Jo Hopper as "Plato, reread too late." I have left a one-inch margin around the edge of my canvas, which is 32 by 42 inches, as a sign that this is not a painting by Hopper whose Excursion into Philosophy measures 30 by 40 inches.There is an oil-on-plastic-canvas study for this painting, also made in 1995. The study measures 15 by 20 inches. It is in a private collection in New York. (George Deem, New York, February 19, 1996).
| Exhibitions
Las Vegas Art Museum, Las Vegas, Nevada
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