One of the Taschen series of black-spined short to medium length artist monographs, this book's underlying theme is summed up near its end: 'Realistic though they may seem, Edward Hopper's paintings are not mere representations of supposed reality.' Renner does a good job of showing how those layers are encoded in Hopper's work, accounting for the painter's characteristic use of colour, shade, framing and perspective in those terms - and, more importantly, tying them into the peculiar effect and mood generated by Hopper's best paintings.
Renner is particularly strong on highlighting the connections and continuities between the different phases and subjects of Hopper's work, tying his often luminous and apparently more simple rural scenes satisfyingly to his more famous city tableaux ("Nighthawks", "Chop Suey", etc). I visited the Whitney Museum while partway through, too, and it was great to be able to see many of the actual paintings discussed and reproduced in the book, giving me a far richer appreciation of what they were about.
