Hopper at the Tate

When I was a teenager, isolated in Kentish suburbia, I couldn't relate to England and its claustrophobic, cluttered provincialism. So I sought solace in the existential philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard, the desert plays of Sam Shepard, the poetic adventures of Jack Kerouac and the painted bleakness of Edward Hopper.

Hopper's paintings in particular perfectly conveyed the loneliness and desolation I often felt during this time. It didn't matter that they were iconic images of an America I had never visited; somehow his paintings transcended space and time and instead stood for a certain mood and emotion that was universal.

Today we went to the Hopper retrospective at the Tate Modern. I've moved a long way - emotionally and physically - from those lonely times, and yet today his paintings still managed to evoke in me feelings of alienation.

An intensely emotional experience.

Other links today:
+ McDonalds (or MaDonal) arrives in Iraq. Let the colonisation begin.
+ Theories of play.