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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
Deny
Surface
Upon
Character
Veneer
Nothing
Impose
Trying
Inheritance
Never
French
Attempt

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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The only real influence I've ever had was myself.
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
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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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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.
Edward Hopper
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The question of the value of nationality in art is perhaps unsolvable.
Edward Hopper
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I think that zinc white has a property of scaling and cracking.
Edward Hopper
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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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So much of every art is an expression of the subconscious that it seems to me most of all the important qualities are put there unconsciously, and little of importance by the conscious intellect. But these are things for the psychologist to untangle.
Edward Hopper
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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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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.
Edward Hopper
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It's to paint directly on the canvas without any funny business, as it were, and I use almost pure turpentine to start with, adding oil as I go along until the medium becomes pure oil. I use as little oil as I can possibly help, and that's my method.
Edward Hopper
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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.
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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Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great.
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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If the picture needs varnishing later, I allow a restorer to do that, if there's any restoring necessary.
Edward Hopper
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I use a retouching varnish which is made in France, Libert, and that's all the varnish I use.
Edward Hopper
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No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.
Edward Hopper