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After all, we are not French and never can be, and any attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon the surface.

Edward Hopper

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Edward Hopper
Age: 84 †
Born: 1882
Born: July 21
Died: 1967
Died: May 15
Drawer
Engraver
Graphic Artist
Illustrator
Painter
Nyack
New York
Surface
Upon
Character
Veneer
Nothing
Impose
Trying
Inheritance
Never
French
Attempt
Deny

More quotes by Edward Hopper

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What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.
Edward Hopper
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No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.
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I use a retouching varnish which is made in France, Libert, and that's all the varnish I use.
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I find in working always the disturbing intrusion of elements not a part of my most interested vision, and the inevitable obliteration and replacement of this vision by the work itself as it proceeds.
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I think that zinc white has a property of scaling and cracking.
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It's (the lack of communication between the people in his paintings, ed.) probably a reflection of my own, if I may say, loneliness. I don't know. It could be the whole human condition.
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I once got a little camera to use for details of architecture and so forth but the photo was always so different from the perspective the eye gives, I gave it up.
Edward Hopper
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Well, I have a very simple method of painting.
Edward Hopper
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I believe that the great painters with their intellect as master have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions.
Edward Hopper
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Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great.
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So many people say painting is fun. I don't find it fun at all. It's hard work for me.
Edward Hopper
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The only real influence I've ever had was myself.
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The trend in some of the contemporary movements in art, but by no means all, seems to deny this ideal and to me appears to lead to a purely decorative conception of painting.
Edward Hopper
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When I don't feel in the mood for painting I go to the movies for a week or more. I go on a regular movie binge!
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Yes, linseed oil. I used to use poppy oil, but I have heard that poppy oil is given to cracking pigment too, so I use it no longer.
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More of me comes out when I improvise.
Edward Hopper
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Well, I've always been interested in approaching a big city in a train, and I can't exactly describe the sensations, but they're entirely human and perhaps have nothing to do with aesthetics.
Edward Hopper
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If the technical innovations of the Impressionists led merely to a more accurate representation of nature, it was perhaps of not much value in enlarging their powers of expression.
Edward Hopper
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The question of the value of nationality in art is perhaps unsolvable.
Edward Hopper
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Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.
Edward Hopper