Review by Choice Review
Here is an updated and revised version of Levin's monumental Hopper biography (CH, Feb'96, 33-3129). Levin (art history, Baruch College and City College of New York) is the foremost scholar of Hopper, author of numerous books on the artist plus the catalogue raisonne. The main text here is much the same as the previous biography, but now with 87 small color plates and many new black-and-white pictures. Three essays appended add new significance. "Erased but Not Forever: The Recovery of Jo Nivison Hopper" demonstrates how Hopper's wife was an artist in her own right and an important influence. She recorded a difficult marriage and the art world around her in her diaries. Hopper's paintings are seen anew in light of her revelations. Levin comments on reactions to her feminist approach to Jo Nivison Hopper. In "Hopper's Legacy for Visual Artists," his influence is seen on painters, advertising, set designs, playwrights, and more. Many artists were influenced by Hopper and by exhibitions of his work, most curated by Levin. The third essay, "Hopper's Legacy for Cinema," considers his affinity for cinema and his paintings as inspirations for filmmakers. Libraries should purchase this for the new enlightening essays. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels. W. L. Whitwell formerly, Hollins College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Hopper's reticence was legendary, so Levin, a Hopper scholar, turned to the diaries of Hopper's far more loquacious wife, Jo, for insights into their very private life and discovered that Jo was essential to the creation of Edward's art. Levin's biography is, therefore, a double portrait. Edward and Jo were collaborators, soul mates, and adversaries for 45 productive if anguished years. Edward was an artist practically from birth, and Jo, an unusually independent young woman for her time, was also a painter, but once she married Edward, she sacrificed her art for his. Edward was as ruthlessly selfish as he was talented, as coldly competitive as he was brilliant. Jo posed for every female figure Edward painted, chronicled the making of every major work, and cajoled Edward out of his frequent slumps. Levin analyzes Edward's repressed and repressive personality and contentious marriage, then illuminates the sources of his powerful and provocative paintings and discusses his belief that art, in his words, "is one's effort to communicate to others one's emotional reaction to life and the world." That he did, with resounding success. --Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This remarkable biography throws Hopper's art and life into sharp new perspective. Its focus is the laconic, introverted painter's stormy 43-year marriage to outspoken, gregarious Josephine (``Jo'') Nivison, herself an artist. Levin, art professor at Baruch College and the City University of New York graduate school, draws extensively on Jo Hopper's intimate diaries, which she kept from the early 1930s until shortly before her death in 1968 (just 10 months after her husband died). Through diary entries, we learn that Hopper ridiculed, degraded and occasionally beat or bruised his wife, that he refused to let her drive their car, that he thwarted her career even as she devotedly helped him find subjects to paint. Nevertheless, as his model, intellectual peer and fellow artist, she stimulated his creativity, and, according to Levin, they became partners and conspirators in a domestic drama of deep attraction and violent opposition that fed his disquieting vision of modern life. Illustrated throughout with photographs as well as scores of reproductions of both Hoppers' paintings and drawings. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Hopper's cool portrayals of American life transcend photographic realism and, like the oft-reproduced and -parodied "Nighthawks," have become icons of despair and a remote hope. This thorough work is by necessity a dual biography of Hopper and Josephine Nivison Hopper, the artist's wife of nearly 50 years. By relying on the diaries and letters of Jo, Levin has depicted the antagonistic symbiosis of the couple's marriage. Jo Hopper was an untiringthough not uncomplainingadvocate of her husband's art and the female model for the characters in most of his great works. Hopper is depicted as a misogynist who takes every opportunity to thwart his wife's already frustratedthough not wholly unsuccessfulpainting career. Living up to the "intimate" of the subtitle, Levin's biography has taken advantage of her sources to create a detailed and monumental ledger of the genesis and creation of Hopper's modern masterpieces. Levin, the author of numerous works on Hopper (including the recent Edward Hopper: A Catalogue Raisonné, Norton, 1995), has carefully balanced the artistic and personal lives of the Hoppers. Recommended for all art and biography collections.Martin R. Kalfatovic, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, D.C. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
This sprawling study of his career and marriage sets the great painter of modern bleakness in an important new light but fails to fully illuminate his psyche. Writing on Hopper's (18821967) youth, Levin (Art/Baruch College and Graduate School, CUNY) works up hints about his early cultural milieu and hypotheses about his family into tentative psychological sketches. Hopper, she suggests, was a puritan chauvinist whose rectitude masked deep insecurities. In perhaps her strongest sections, Levin treats Hopper's better-documented student years. A protégé of the legendary teacher Robert Henri, Hopper struggled to assert himself as a serious artist in the tradition of older contemporaries such as John Sloan. Sojourns in Paris shaped his erotic sensibilities while undermining his allegiance to the cultural nationalism then dominant in the American art world. At age 41, just as he began to receive serious recognition, Hopper married painter Jo Nivison. The diary that she kept during the remaining 40-plus years of Hopper's life serves as Levin's key source. While Edward produced his most successful works, Jo played a crucial role as model, collaborator, and goad. Her own career, however, remained stalled. Jo's resentment of Edward's crueltiesfrom his refusal to allow her to drive to his physical attacks on herreinforced her bitterness toward him and the art world generally for belittling her work. Jo's diary records the agony that Edward's painter's block brought them both. The deep motivation for his torturous pace remains an enigma here, however. While reporting Jo's diagnoses of Edward's sadism, Levin never really fleshes out the psychological profile that her early chapters promise. All the same, Levin provides a crucial reference work for further research on the master. Depressing, at times tedious, yet nonetheless compelling, this book bears well the inevitable comparison to one of Hopper's signature tableaus. (100 drawings and photos, not seen) (Author tour)
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