August in the City 1945

Edward Hopper’s "August in the City" uses oil on canvas to capture a strangely voyeuristic view. The paint is applied thinly, almost dryly, which gives everything a sun-baked, slightly unreal quality. It feels like a memory, faded at the edges. Look at the way he’s built up the shadows on the side of the building, they are almost like an after thought, a suggestion that everything is still not set in stone. The facade of the building in the foreground seems to almost blend into the landscape beyond, there is a flattening effect, the kind that you find in early modernist painting. There is an intriguing layering of interiors and exteriors. Hopper is in dialogue with painters like de Chirico, who create eerie dreamscapes and uncanny realities. He reminds us that painting is as much about what we leave out as what we put in, and that the most compelling images often leave us with more questions than answers.