(What follows is a lightly edited version of a degree essay I wrote some years ago…)
The practice of social art history is one by which the meaning and significance of an artwork is unlocked by utilising the most in-depth contextual survey possible. This methodology suggests that every work is primarily a product of its own time and that the fuller the understanding we have of the social context of its production and of its author, the more we can learn about the work itself. A major exponent of this style of art historical writing is T.J. Clark and his now famous book The Painting of Modern Life (1985) explores French painting in the latter half of the nineteenth century through a varied and extensive investigation into the social context of the period. One of the best examples of this is his analysis of Manet’s final masterpiece A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1882. For me, a painting that seems to closely mirror Manet but produced 70 years later and on another continent is Edward Hopper’s New York Movie, 1939. They are both paintings deeply connected to their eras, closely tied to the social forces at work, and images that take the isolating quality of the modern city as their subject.
In what might seem an unconventional decision, Clark begins his discussion of A Bar at the Folies-Bergère not with a visual description of the painting or even an explanation of its subject matter, but rather an analysis of the world this painting was born into – Paris in the 1880s. His focus lies in the emergence of the new middle-class, and the conflicts therein, arguing that the Haussmanisation of Paris had made the business of pretending and performing a certain ‘class’ “visible and glittering in a new way.” He then examines, in great detail, the culture of the ‘café-concerts’ to be found in Paris at the time, one of which is the setting of the painting in question. He points out that in their own time they were thought to be “trivial but representative”, places that were looked down upon as vulgar and declasse but at the same time absolutely a natural product of modern Paris. He also dives into specifics, such as the appearance of electrified lighting in Manet’s painting, something that is easy for a contemporary audience to overlook, but contextual research helps to underscore just how new and exotic these electrically lit establishments felt to the Parisian clientele of the 1880s, the painting’s original audience. In Clark’s deep-dive into Manet’s world, he even goes as far as looking at lyrics of specific songs sung in the café-concerts, who was singing them, and when.
Underlying all of Clark’s social art history is the Marxist philosophy of class struggle and, in his Folies-Bergère analysis, he frequently returns to the “unease and duplicity” that many felt in this new developing industrialised and urbanised social climate as well as anxieties over what was considered suitable entertainment for the different classes. This builds up to a greater point about the growing commercialisation of life and entertainment in this period – he writes, “Haussman’s city was nothing if not a pattern of residence plus a pattern of entertainment. But the less obvious thing to be said is this: both these patterns were forms of class formation and class control.” It is not until towards the end of his chapter that he begins to look specifically at the painting itself and its reception, but the overall effect is, by the time we get to the appearance of the painting, our mind’s eye has been filled by all of the colourful contextual information and now the painting itself takes on new significance for the viewer. We now see it as just one frozen frame of a dynamic, effervescent culture rather than an anachronistic fiction.
It is with this intention in mind that I now turn to Hopper’s painting. The connection between these two works is not by sheer chance, Hopper was deeply influenced by Manet during his time studying in Paris between 1906-7 and they share a passion for capturing the unusual corners of society. The subject matter has striking similarities, an isolated, working woman in a public place of entertainment, seemingly lost in thought. The difference comes in their contexts, the great void of nearly 70 years between the 1880s and the late 1930s, between Paris and New York, between the old world and the new. Clark has examined the former and I will attempt the latter.
The elephant in the room when discussing any American work from the ‘30s in the Great Depression. The shockwaves from the 1929 Wall Street Crash reverberated across the world but (with the possible exception of Weimar Germany) they were most keenly felt in the United States. By 1933 unemployment had reached a peak of 25% and the masses of laid-off workers flowing from the country into the cities looking for jobs only made the urban situation worse. This period came hot on the heels of an era of great prosperity in the US, resulting in the customary baby boom and growth in immigration that comes at such times, between 1890 and 1930 the American population doubled. The overall result of this turnaround was mass disillusion, many fell out of the bottom of society and the ‘American Dream’ seemed harder to achieve than ever. Hopper captures something of this sense of misery and isolation in his lone figure of the usherette in New York Movie, her separation from the rest of the scene, her pensive attitude but also the suggestion of fatigue as she leans against the wall for support. She could be anguishing over whether she can afford the rent or whether she’ll be able to keep her job. Hopper was the master of depicting such internal anxieties, as art historian Sheena Wagstaff outlines, “[Hopper’s subjects] are posed in dramatic scenes of distraction, absorbed in private thought and sober musing…Hopper’s graphic drama creates a thrall of spectatorship that makes potent the compelling mystery of their mental state.”
Contextually Hopper’s usherette had a lot more to worry about than just her personal finances, the economic chaos had caused a rise in the popularity of both Communism and Fascism in Europe, and America would soon become embroiled in these tensions. Not only was there a growing dislike of President Hoover, and later Roosevelt, at home, but European and Japanese despotism would come to have the greatest effect on the US in the 20th century, with the US entry into the Second World War only coming only two years after New York Movie was painted – at the time of its creation the nations of Europe were already fighting. This was the age of anxiety, a time in which, “fired up by the mass media, fears of social collapse preyed on minds already beset by economic anxiety and apprehension for the future.”
Apprehensions about the future were a cultural thread that ran through ‘30s America. There was a general feeling that the nation was on the edge of something new, or at least great changes were expected with the fallout from the 1929 crash – they did not know then that it would be a world war that would thrust America into the nuclear age and make it a world superpower. In the same year as Hopper painted New York Movie, 1939, the New York World’s Fair opened to the public, in many ways it was a recreation of the Exposition Universelle of late-nineteenth-century Paris. Although in this case, the main thrust of the fair was an optimistic look at the future with its unambiguous slogan ‘Dawn of a New Day’ and advertising that described it as a glimpse at ‘the world of tomorrow’.
Another great symbol of the American future was the skyscraper, most of which had appeared on Manhattan island in the preceding decade. In 1930 the Chrysler Building was completed, the tallest building in the world at the time. Its art deco chrome spire seemed to point towards a bright, modern future for New York and America – “the display of economic power and the excitement of fantasy” as Robert Hughes describes it. But fantasy was exactly what it was, by the time it was finally completed the market had crashed and the depression had started. Less than a year later, and only a few blocks away, the Empire State Building would out top the Chrysler, but it is the style, bravado, and faith in American industry that particularly the Chrysler embodies that suggests a future that could have been – maybe it is that future that Hopper’s usherette is imagining, that she’s dreaming of?
This imagining of a future is where the downtrodden Americans found their escapism, and nowhere can this be more clearly seen than in the increasingly popular and developing world of the American movie – Hopper’s chosen setting for his painting. Just as Clark sees the café-concerts as representative of Parisian society in the 1880s, we can see the cinema as 1930s New York’s equivalent. The anxiety of the period manifested itself in the growing popularity of horror movies in the ‘30s, much like the blood and violence found in the pages of pulp fiction novels. People found a sense of catharsis in stories of people worse off than themselves, as well as a brief distraction from their own misery. Escapism in cinema reached its zenith in 1939 with the premiere of ‘The Wizard of Oz’, starring Judy Garland and produced primarily in Technicolour. The shift from black and white to full colour that takes place when Dorothy moves from the real world to Oz is the kind of change that many wanted to see happen in their own lives. The year also saw the release of the Oscar-winning ‘Gone with the Wind’, both films still hold iconic status in American culture, evidence that it was at the end of the 1930s that cinema as an art form really reached a mass appeal.
Hopper’s choice to set his scene in the cinema testifies to the important role it played in the society, however, he chooses to set the screen itself right off in the left of the composition, only the smallest sliver is visible. Clark describes many of the paintings in his period of interest in much the same terms, “there are pictures by Manet and Degas that seem to indicate just such a lack of pretension, with beer and tables filling the foreground and the spectacle itself half-glimpsed in a mirror, or largely left off to one side.” Although writing about Manet and Degas he could just as easily be describing Hopper’s treatment of the cinema. However, a contextual analysis of Hopper’s painting allows us to read further, the small part of the screen that he has chosen to make visible seems to show snow-capped mountains, a frame from a film that Teresa Carbone has identified as Frank Capra’s 1937 film ‘Lost Horizon.’ In this film a plane crashes in the Tibetan Himalayas, resulting in the survivors discovering a utopian society lost in the mountains. If this identification is correct then Hopper may have specifically chosen this film (which was two years old by the time he painted the image) as it seemingly underscores many of the societal issues current at the time – a disastrous crash, a feeling of being lost and isolated, and the vision of a brighter, utopian, future. Most tellingly, ‘Lost Horizon’ opens with a quote that could be comfortably applied as a subtitle to Hopper’s painting – “In these days of wars and rumours of wars – haven’t you ever dreamed of a place where there was peace and security, where living was not a struggle but a lasting delight?” The usherette (along with most Americans) certainly has and is most likely doing so right here in the painting.
These dream-like tales that came pouring from Hollywood in the ‘30s almost all featured a glamorous, peroxide blonde, female lead. Erika Doss has explored how these images of ‘ultimate femininity’ might have affected the women of America, and of course none more so than an usherette who has to watch these films over and over again. Doss considers the “contradictions inherent between the coy goddess Hollywood considered the ultimate in womanhood and the bleak reality of the working girl,” going on to suggest “perhaps Hollywood movies are guilty of spawning the sort of personal unrest and unhappiness evidenced in the ordinary women of the period.” This suggests that the very movies that depression-era Americans ran to for help in escaping their misery may have also played a part in contributing to their unhappiness. Hopper’s choice to give his usherette her shining blond hair and high-heeled shoes draws parallels and underscores the differences between the real working women of America and the images of womanhood fed to them by Hollywood. Notably, he splits the composition in half with the strong vertical form of the dividing wall, suggesting the real woman is separate from the Hollywood dream; she exists in a different reality to the rose-tinted dream that the silver screen shows.
It must also be noted that it is somewhat surprising to see a woman in work at all in 1939. As was the case through most of history, and ridiculously even in many places today, women were considered less valuable as employees and in ‘30s America this was certainly the case. Women were therefore often the first to be made redundant when the Wall Street Crash hit. Starkly underlined by the women’s employment figures from 1930, the year after the crash, with female employment dropping from an all-time high of ten million in January down to eight million just twelve months later. That’s two million women laid off in just one year, it would take more than a decade and a global conflict for America to begin to emerge from this slump. Hopper’s placement of this woman at the centre of a relatively large canvas begins to highlight her and many other women’s plight in this period of hardship for all. He takes someone who was considered almost invisible in society and places her centre stage, putting the faux glitz and glamour of Hollywood off to the one side.
Just as Clark’s social and contextual analysis of Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère unlocks additional levels of understanding, applying this technique can achieve the same effect for any work and also prove how, when seen through the lens of their contexts, two works that are similar in visuality and subject matter can root from almost entirely different social positions. Once one has an understanding of the social context of Hopper’s painting it becomes so much more than just an image of a lonely usherette in a cinema, it takes on the role of a mouthpiece for a whole generation of Americans, and specifically American women, at a very particular time in history. It is almost impossible for any work of art to be created in total isolation from its contextual setting, and therefore it is important that the methodology of social art history is continued and applied to objects from all periods, by doing this we will be able to place art alongside other social forces in a more fleshed out and full picture of our shared global history.
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Morgan Haigh 