Hopper

The painter of modern American solitude. Hopper is an introduction to Edward Hopper — the struggling artist who became the defining visual chronicler of the modern, urban experience — and the enduring power of his haunting compositions.

The book traces his mastery of place, mood, and melancholy through his vivid color juxtapositions, stark theatrical lighting, and harshly contoured figures who feel at once part of and alien to their surroundings. Famed for the nocturnal diner scene of Nighthawks, Hopper's body of work captures something essential about American loneliness — and the quiet, charged stillness of being awake in a city that's gone to sleep.

The stillness of modern life.