In the early 20th century, Europe played host to a procession of distinct art movements which continued until a procession of black boots stomped the creative life out of the continent.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, a bunch of painters were happy to be doing pretty much the same thing for most of the 1920s and 1930s, that is, painting the countryside, small rural towns and, occasionally, the tentative urban environments of their young country. One of the best known of the American Scene painters was Edward Hopper (1882-1967), and some 85 of his oils, watercolors and drawings are now showing at the Bunkamura Museum of Art in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward.
A quiet and restrained painter, Hopper traveled throughout America painting simple people in simple settings, never championing the fancy cars or the skyscrapers that were to change the face of his country. He seems to have been proud of this unique American aesthetic. Hopper did not want his American Scene pals to fret about how plain some of their pastorals might have appeared to the avant-gardists overseas and to certain Europhile critics in America.
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