Barn and Silo, Vermont 1929

Hopper made this watercolor, of a barn and silo in Vermont, with washes of browns, yellows, and blues. I can imagine him outside, squinting in the sun, trying to capture the light on the weathered wood. He must have been thinking about the geometry of these buildings. See how he simplified the shapes? It’s not a photorealistic rendering, but more of a distilled essence of barn-ness, silo-ness. The paint is thin and translucent, allowing the white of the paper to shine through, which gives the whole scene a hazy, dreamlike quality. Check out the way he painted the shadows. That dark underbelly of the barn is really doing a lot of work here. It's like he's trying to find the underlying structure of the scene, not just the surface appearance. Painters today, we’re all in conversation with these earlier artists, riffing on their ideas, and pushing them in new directions. It's a constant back-and-forth across time.