I named this post Edward Grasshopper because I love grasshoppers and I like and am somewhat influenced by the art of Edward Hopper. I admittedly don’t know much about Edward Hopper the person, so I did a little bit of research on him and the most interesting thing about him is that he was married to another artist, Josephine Nivison. She aided him in being a model and as a creative partner.

Edward died before Josephine. She passed away 10 months after him. She left their entire artistic estate to the Whitney Museum of American Art. This is what sucks. It was believed that the Whitney turned around and just threw away all of Josephine’s artwork. BUT, thankfully they didn’t, they just shoved a bunch of them in the basement. In 2000 about 200 of Joephine’s works were discovered. Which is sad because Edward was great to Josephine the artist.

From the wiki:

Beginning in the mid-1920s Jo became her husband’s only model. It was she who thought up the names for a number of her husband’s paintings, including one of his most famous oil paintings, Nighthawks. Despite their complicated relationship, she helped when her husband felt insecure about a painting in progress, as in, for example, the case of Five A.M. (1937). As late as 1936, Jo reported that her husband was highly competitive and that her starting a work would frequently inspire Edward to start his own. In The Lonely City Olivia Laing discusses Jo’s career and how it floundered because Edward was “profoundly opposed to its existence. Edward didn’t just fail to support Jo’s painting, but rather worked actively to discourage it, mocking and denigrating the few things she did manage to produce”.

One of the paintings that Hopper did when not being a jerk to his wife, Automat, is part of the Des Moines Art Center’s collection.

Which reminds me that it should be about time for my nearly annual trip to the Des Moines Art Center with Suzie.

Here are some pictures of grasshoppers that probably love and support their significant others in every way possible:

The last two pictures are from the Boone Art Center. Also known as the Union Pacific railroad tracks.