Hopper

Poet Strand intuitively captures the spirit of American realist Edward Hopper's (1882-1967) paintings in this latest entry in Ecco's Writers on Art series. Hopper's people, he writes, whether glimpsed in hotel rooms, diners, storefronts or gas stations, ``seem to have nothing to do. They are like characters whose parts have deserted them and now, trapped in the space of their waiting, must keep themselves company with no clear place to go, no future.'' In his spare, precise commentaries on two dozen paintings, which are reproduced here in black-and-white, Strand peels away layers of poetic meaning and symbolism to pierce the private dramas implicit in Hopper's lonely, brooding canvases. Strand calls Sun in an Empty Room (1963) ``a vision of the world without us; not merely a place that excludes us, but a place emptied of us.'' That formulation suggests the stark, slightly menacing atmosphere that makes Hopper's pictures still look so modern. (Jan.)