Exhibition on Screen: Hopper - An American Love Story - Matinee

Exhibition on Screen: Hopper - An American Love Story | Documentary | Dir. Phil Grabsky | 2022 | 94mins 

Places are strictly limited and we recommend you buy your tickets in advance as we cannot guarantee ticket availability on the door.  (Less than 12 tickets left as at 12 April).  Please contact us by email to join a waiting list if you are unable to buy tickets online.

Hopper's work is the most recognizable art in America. Countless painters, photographers, filmmakers and musicians have been influenced by his art - but who was he, and how did a struggling illustrator create such a bounty of notable work?

This new film takes a deep look into Hopper’s art, his life, and his relationships. From his early career as an illustrator; his wife giving up her own promising art career to be his manager; his critical and commercial acclaim; and in his own words – this film explores the enigmatic personality behind the brush…

Combined with expert interviews, diaries, and a startling visual reflection of American life, Hopper brings to life America’s arguably most influential artist.

• Hopper is a rare artist whose work is accessible to both the casual and critical observer.
• Rothko, Banksy, Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, and even The Simpsons have all been inspired by the unique way Hopper captured American life.

This Hopper documentary is not anchored to a specific exhibition, but still presents the customary mix of loving close-ups of the paintings, knowledgeable talking heads, and voiceover readings of original letters and diary entries. (There’s some nicely effective soundtrack music too, eerie and mournful by turns.) Hopper’s difficult early years are described, and then elevation to glory after meeting his future wife, Josephine Nivison. 

Considerable attention is given to some of Hopper’s less well-known works – the bizarre Soir Bleu from 1914, the equally mysterious Two Comedians, from the other end of his career in 1966 – though most attention is lavished on key paintings of isolation and alienation: Automat, Chop Suey, Office at Night, Nighthawks.

There has, however, been considerable revisionism of the Hopper story in recent years, and this film is not afraid to tackle it: partly concerning Hopper’s refusal to engage with the teeming multicultural streets of his home base, New York City, which was undergoing enormous social change around him, but more substantially with the oppressiveness of his treatment of Nivison, who encouraged and supported his work in the early days but found her own already-established career as an artist stymied and thwarted by his disapproval. Others have been more outspoken about the toxic nature of Hopper’s attitude, but there’s plenty of material included here that reinforces Hopper’s spitefulness even as he was dependent on her; the film’s title, while not entirely ironic, certainly points up their difficult relationship. Inevitably focus remains on him, but Nivison would make a rich subject for another film.

Please note, tickets are limited to 70 in total. Unreserved seating in screen 3. One wheelchair space is available. Please get in touch to reserve this if required.