Excursions into Philosophy, Deconstructed (after Hopper) left panel of diptych
Excursions into Philosophy, Deconstructed (after Hopper) right panel of diptych
About this Series
Early Sunday Morning, Saturday Night is Over is a series of paintings completed for exhibition as Resident Artist at Edward Hopper House Museum and Study Center.
This series explores the body language of power dynamics, intimacy, and estrangement between couples in a bedroom setting, and reflects on American painter Edward Hopper's late painting “Excursion into Philosophy”, a tense and mysterious narrative between a man and a women on a twin bed. This body of work was conceived as a non-sequential storyboard of minor bedroom dramas, with a changing cast of bedmates in mixed-gender relationships, sharing a bed in minimal interiors with flat, artificial lighting.
In 1959, 77 year old Edward Hopper painted a bedroom scene with a fully clothed man seated on a bed, shoulders slumped and facial expression grim. A woman lays in a semi-fetal position, her face hidden, wearing only a pink top with her naked buttocks exposed. There is an open book on the bed. Hopper’s wife Jo was frequently his model, but we do not know if she modeled for this painting. Jo was an artist who gave up her practice to support and promote Edward, and their marriage was not always happy. Jo wrote in her ledger “The open book is Plato, re-read too late.”
In my deconstructed version of "Excursion into Philosophy", the couple each occupy a panel in a diptych, viewed from different angles. The woman, visually protected from the male gaze by pink panties, stretches out face down on a pillow. The man, slumping forward, is completely nude, and his entire head and shoulders have been cropped out of the frame. There is no book in my version. However, other "Untitled" canvases in this series feature cell phones occupying the attention of a bed partner.
Early Sunday Morning, Saturday Night is Over, V. 1
Early Sunday Morning, Saturday Night is Over, V. 2
Early Sunday Morning, Saturday Night is Over, V. 3
Early Sunday Morning, Saturday Night is Over, V. 4
Early Sunday Morning, Saturday Night is Over, V. 5
Early Sunday Morning, Saturday Night is Over, V. 6
Early Sunday Morning, Saturday Night is Over, V. 7
Early Sunday Morning, Saturday Night is Over, V. 8
