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Charles Baudelaire
The early 20th-century American artist Edward Hopper was famous for painting traveling places, from hotels and gas stations to trains and roadside cafeterias. To de Botton, who presents a series of these paintings in his second essay, Hopper’s work offers viewers a chance to explore their own grief and loneliness through subjects and environments that echo their sense of unbelonging.
Edward Hopper Quotes in The Art of Travel
The The Art of Travel quotes below are all either spoken by Edward Hopper or refer to Edward Hopper. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 2 Quotes
The twenty-four-hour diner, the station waiting room and the motel are sanctuaries for those who have, for noble reasons, failed to find a home in the ordinary world—those whom Baudelaire might have dignified with the honorific poets.
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De Botton summarizes the beauty he sees in the transient places of travel, which Edward Hopper depicted in his paintings of American life on the road. Places like diners, motels, and station waiting rooms exist only to help people transition from one place to another—it is as though they are not true places in themselves but merely stops along the road from point A to point B. The people one finds there—and whom Hopper paints—are accordingly themselves in a state of transition, and de Botton suggests that these traveling places thus often reflect travelers’ solitude and uncertainty. He concludes that Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis
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Edward Hopper Character Timeline in The Art of Travel
The timeline below shows where the character Edward Hopper appears in The Art of Travel. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2: On Traveling Places
...it matches his environment, and also because it reminds him of the American painter Edward Hopper, whose works “allow the viewer to witness an echo of his or her own grief”...
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Hopper actually read Baudelaire throughout his life, which de Botton finds understandable given their “shared interests...
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Hopper’s painting Automat (p. 50) depicts a woman drinking coffee alone at night, seemingly saddened, “self-conscious...
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...with “a clinical white light” until it reaches a gas station in a clearing—this is Hopper’s 1940 painting Gas (p. 53). At the station, the manager seems to have gone out...
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Hopper saw a “dreaminess” in trains, where thought flows more freely and people can access memories...
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