The flourishing small town of America's past and the fading small town of America's present will forever be iconic symbols.  The small town has always held an importance in American history. Small town America was the backbone of the country and often considered to provide the benchmark for patriotic feelings, honorable values, and hard-working citizenry.  The beginning of the twentieth century found a "revolt against the village" in literature by authors such as Edgar Lee Masters, Sinclair Lewis and Sherwood Anderson (Heller 71). Focusing on the mundane existence of everyday life, their writing provided a critical commentary on the small town. In art, the "American Scene" developed in the 1930s as a uniquely American art form distinguishable from European modernism in an attempt to create a national and cultural identity. Those artists whose emphasis lay in small town and rural America were termed Regionalists.  Benton, Curry and Wood have become synonymous with Regionalism, presenting uplifting images as reassurance during a time of uncertainty and despair.

Many critics attempt to ascribe a specific place with Regionalist art, yet the challenge to artists was how to paint the American Scene, infused with native details of a particular locale, with universal appeal.  In an article from 1928, Edward Hopper wrote:

By sympathy with the particular he has made it epic and universal.  No mood has been so mean as to seem unworthy of interpretation; the look of an asphalt road as it lies in the broiling sun at noon, cars and locomotives lying in God-forsaken railway yards, the steaming summer rain that can fill us with such hopeless boredom, the blank concrete walls and steel construction of modern industry, mid-summer streets with the acid green of close-cut lawns, the dusty Fords and gilded movies—all the sweltering, tawdry life of the American small town, and behind all, the sad desolation of our suburban landscape.  He derives daily stimulus from these, that others flee from or pass with indifference. (Hopper 6-7)

 

Hopper describes the work of his contemporary Charles Burchfield, but he may have been writing about himself and his own intentions and focus.  Although the locations represented in the work of Hopper were mainly in and around his Massachusetts studio and Burchfield painted close to his hometown, the images of both artists are universal.  A farm on Cape Cod or an Ohio neighborhood transcend limitations of time and place to become general symbols for the small town and rural community that were the foundations of the United States.

Many of the "American Scenes" of Hopper and Burchfield are desolate and lonely, but the view they give of a once vital and prosperous time and place is no less patriotic a view than that of strong men and women plowing the rolling fields of a romantic landscape.  Painted more than fifty years ago, the images of Hopper and Burchfield can be uncannily duplicated in any rural community across the country today, foreshadowing what the future held for an American institution.  The neglected farms and declining small towns during the 1930s reflected the economic crises of the Depression, but the same scenes are present today as a result of  progress as new technology, better wages and the modern conveniences of the city proved too great a lure.  While often read with a sense of nostalgia and sentiment, the images of small towns and rural communities in the work of Edward Hopper and Charles Burchfield can both be seen as a commentary on America's vanishing past and as the presentation of an ideology that helped shape the American identity.

I.  Progress

Hopper's House by the Railroad presents "an image of progress and obsolescence" (Hobbs 72). Even in 1925, the Victorian house with a Mansard roof, part of America's architectural vernacular, found itself growing out of fashion. Gail Levin describes the home as "recalling America's more innocent past—a simpler time that has been left behind by modern urban life and its complexities" (Levin 48-49). The grand house in the Second Empire style represents a world and view that was being replaced by progress.  Nineteenth-century ideals were personified in the Victorian home. Technological improvements facilitated the significant revolution that occurred when a more "casual and informal modern American" replaced the "formal" Victorian ideology (Ames 60). Train tracks hint at the modernization initiated by the railroad and advanced transportation. The tracks run parallel across the picture plane, emphasizing the continuity of the scene, at the same time drawing attention to the rootless society that has left behind this relic from another era (Levin 49). Intruding into the space and the surrounding land, the tracks lie almost dangerously close to the home. "Victims of progress," the original proprietors may have had to sell their land to the railroad company (Strand 17). Standing against a stark landscape, the front of the house is hidden in shadow. With the door concealed, it becomes impossible to determine whether the home is inhabited. Here, the past has caught up with the future, but with a discordant result. 

One of the links to the past in American architecture is the Victorian style. This style is featured prominently in small towns across the country. On tree lined boulevards surrounding the Main Street, these homes were occupied by the prosperous middle-class citizens. With the decline of industry and the small businesses that provided the subsistence for those well-to-do residents, the houses were abandoned and a future sought in the city. Countless Victorian mansions are now left in various stages of ruin and decay, too expensive to renovate, with only a small percentage of the population having the means and desire to repair and restore these stately homes to their original glory. This disconnect between past and present is related to those ideas explored in a work of art such as Hopper's House by the Railroad.

House by the Railroad becomes timeless and universal in part through film director Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock admitted the influence of Hopper's painting in his creation of the eerie house inhabited by Norman Bates and his "mother" in the film Psycho (Iversen 413). The Psycho house will be forever associated with old Victorian homes and their now static ideals abandoned by their former owners because the progress of the next generation demanded something more modern.

II.  Main Street

"Main Street with its two-story brick shops, its story-and-a-half wooden residences, its muddy expanse from concrete walk to walk…" as recounted in Lewis Sinclair's 1920 novel Main Street becomes an iconic description of Main Street and epitomized in Hopper's Early Sunday Morning (Lewis 33). Essential necessities such as the bank, general store, doctor or lawyer, and grocer were readily located along the central thoroughfare of the town, typically designated "Main."  Diverging from the Main Street were roads named after trees and historic figures that would constitute the neighborhoods and blocks.  As the primary business district, the Main Street remained the vital component of the town, where goods were bought and sold and services exchanged.  Hopper became attentive to Progressive concepts and venerated the small independent business in Early Sunday Morning and his other paintings focusing on barbershops, drug stores and gas stations (Hobbs 48).  

A quiet street absent of all life, only the white curtains and half drawn shades in the upper story suggest human presence.  The horizontal façade extends beyond the canvas underscoring the continuity of the scene across the painting and its prevalence across the country.  After traversing the entire Main Street of Gopher Prairie, the principal character, Carol Kenicott, in Lewis' Main Street observes that "She was within ten minutes beholding not only the heart of a place called Gopher Prairie, but ten thousand towns from Albany to San Diego" (Lewis 34). Hopper remarked that the street scene "was almost a literal translation of Seventh Avenue" (Hobbs 83). Although set in a particular locale in New York City, Early Sunday Morning becomes a universal symbol of Main Street and American values represented by the hard work and perseverance found in the small business owner. The windows and doors of the lower storefronts are dark and uninviting.  Signs announcing the names of the establishments are present but obscured, leaving the barbershop pole the only certainty as to the goods or services provided.  The title was added later by someone else; Hopper did not originally name the canvas Early Sunday Morning (Hobbs 83). Ambiguity exists. If Hopper did not intend for the painting to depict Sunday, or an early morning, why then does one view such a lonely and desolate street?  Are the shops dark because they are closed, or are they out of business?  Instead of reading the image as serene, could one read the image as somber?  Early Sunday Morning comes close to representing the current day Main Street, one that sees its shops folding and sidewalks bare due to the decline in population and loss of profit.

III. The General Store

A permanent fixture on Main Street in the American small town was the general store, a market that contained a unique inventory that offered assorted goods to consumers. Hopper presents an ordinary general store in Seven A.M.

 Unlike Early Sunday Morning, the time of day is carefully recorded on the clock hanging in the window. Pictured in the morning hours, the store has not yet open--an explanation for the melancholy scene. Like Early Sunday Morning though, a large amount of vagueness still exists as to the function and future of this store. The shelves behind the cash register are empty and only a few items are on display in the front window. The shade on the right window is half drawn and the viewer is unable to access the dark recesses of the store.  Furthermore, no storefront sign is visible to announce the goods sold at this small business (Hobbs 139).

Hopper has positioned the store on a corner, and a stark contrast occurs between the bright white of the building and dark green of the woods behind. The forest becomes menacing, threatening to engulf the structure. A few twisted branches and trunks are visible, but the trees and foliage act as a large mass, an ominous and foreboding presence. The future is uncertain for the general store. The 1970s saw the advent of the "Age of Wal-Mart," where small businesses where assailed by the large corporation (Davies 43). Buying in bulk allowed the chain stores to drive down prices while offering a larger selection of goods, and the shops along Main Street found themselves unable to compete. A common scene across the country, a Wal-Mart moves into a rural area and builds a mega-store on the outskirts of town. Soon, all new businesses and homes are constructed surrounding the Wal-Mart, creating a new central location for the community. Traffic is routed away from the Main Street and the small stores can no longer survive. 

IV.  The Country Church

Every small community contains at least one church, often more to accommodate multiple religions. Outside of the village limits, countless congregations spring up at minor intersections, dotting the countryside. The monotony of the flat farmland is occasionally penetrated by a steeple signifying the presence of a village. The church provides a foundation for the spiritual and social life in a small town (Davies 47). On Sunday, the daily activities of the town halt, stores close, and the community comes together to rest and worship. The church offers services and aid to those in need and provides numerous societies and affiliations that allow all members of the parish and town to unite and socialize. The much-anticipated church fairs would draw people across the whole region. In general, "Religion provided a vital sense of social cohesion that reached throughout the town and into the adjacent farmlands" (Davies 48). Given the esteem and prominence the church held in the community, the sinister quality evident in Burchfield's Country Church in June seems jarring and unusual.

Many of Burchfield's landscapes are infused with religious and symbolic content, and fantastical apocalyptic visions appear toward the end of his career. Completed in 1918, Country Church in June occupies a period in which the artist concentrated on frightening "haunted houses" in an atmosphere of gloom and loneliness (Baigell 87). The church is infused with "demonic qualities" and "tormented spirits," characteristic of the architecture of the "haunted houses" (Ames 37). With a white façade and steeple piercing the treetops, Country Church in June represents a typical church found in many rural communities. The lower half of the church contains oversized dark gothic windows, echoed in the tree branches, which threaten to consume the viewer. Not unusual is the cemetery with the assortment of grave monuments and tombstones in front of the church. Many parish cemeteries are located on church grounds. The ornate and ostentatious rural cemeteries maintained a connection with Victorian culture and customs (Ames 59). While the cemetery comments on the transience of life, the death of the community may also be implied. With overgrown bushes and weeds engulfing the church and the dense grass obscuring the gravestones, this is a congregation that has lost parishioners. In rural communities, many parishes are founded on relatively few members, so even the loss of one can mean its demise. 

V.  The Farm

Once the foundation for American economy, the farm now stands in ruin.  Nowhere is this more prophetically portrayed than in Burchfield's Abandoned Farmhouse. Painted in 1932, the deserted farm has now become a ubiquitous presence in rural areas across the country. Burchfield admitted to routinely exaggerating the age of the subjects and buildings that he painted. This predisposition allowed him to present a house not in its current condition, but as it might exist in the future (Ames 51). With this in mind, one must wonder how the farmhouse appeared during Burchfield's time, before the artistic "aging."  The siding is weathered and gray and the windows dark with cracked glass. The porch is sagging and the column is buckling under the weight of the roof; collapse is eminent. In somber shades of red and brown, the overgrown fields obstruct any access to the home. The neglected pastures and vacant house hint that no labor has taken place in some time.

The young populations disinterest in inheriting the family farm has caused them to flee to the city in the hopes of finding a better future. With the advancing age of the farmer and the growing inability to effectually compete with the large corporate farms, many are simply opting to desert the farm and search for employment elsewhere (Brown 12A). New technological innovations have created more efficient means of mass farm production and small independently owned farms no longer remain profitable. Without a profit, the farm becomes less viable and the dilapidated farmhouses stand as a testament to a fading way of life.

VI.  Industry

Driving along an open expanse of highway, grain elevators become a beacon signaling a nearby town. To many Great Lakes Regionalist painters like Burchfield, "freighters, bridges, blast furnaces and grain elevators" sustained the regional economy and became "icons" (Hall 18). In Grain Elevators, Burchfield paints the vitality and commerce of many small towns across the mid-west. He uses a dreary palette of browns and blacks to depict industry and the smoke laden sky. The elevators themselves are dark, rendering them nearly indiscernible. Nature makes itself evident in the small patch of green grass and gray water in front of the elevators and in the birds flocking and hovering around the buildings. Burchfield, describing the industry around Buffalo wrote, "Like great gaunt, prehistoric birds, these elevators rear themselves up blackly against the sky" (Adams 118). With smoke seen billowing out of the chimneys, these elevators are still operable.

Local industry is the foundation of a small community, and with its disappearance, the town itself meets the same fate (Brown 12A). When the farms are abandoned and the fields become overgrown, the community loses its subsistence.  The grain elevators stop operating and the industry of the town diminishes.  The relics remain standing, the monoliths a legacy to a bygone era.

We leave the past behind in Hopper's painting Route 6 Eastham. He has positioned us as viewers in a vehicle driving along a stretch of highway that unfolds before us on a trip through the countryside. Passing by open fields, we come across an ordinary white farmhouse with dark shutters and outbuildings surrounding the property. A line of shadowy trees appears behind the house, the forest bordering the farmland. A series of telephone poles follow the road on the left, receding into the distance. Technology has touched an area far from modern urbanization. As we approach the house, we will glance towards the left before continuing with our journey. Because the viewpoint has been constructed to enable the viewer to look at the house in a moving vehicle, it is understood that in a moment, the image will vanish. We will race past the scene without a second thought, a common image played out thousands of times before, to be stored in our memories.  But this temporary scene will leave a vivid and lasting impression.

Country life has always been a desirable alternative to urban living for a large part of the American population. A slower, simpler lifestyle that appealed to the "small town" personality, where familiarity was welcomed and life's joys and hardships shared with the community. Both Edward Hopper and Charles Burchfield captured rural America, allowing the viewer to visualize a flourishing past and fading future facilitated by inevitable progress.

 

Works Cited

 

Adams, Henry. "Charles Burchfield's Imagination." In Charles Burchfield:  North by Midwest, edited by Nannette V. and Michael D. Hall Maciejunes. In Association with the Columbus Museum of Art: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997.

Ames, Kenneth L. "Of Times, Places, and Old Houses." In Charles Burchfield:  North by Midwest, edited by Nannette V. and Michael D. Hall Maciejunes. In Association with the Columbus Museum of Art: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997.

Baigell, Matthew. Charles Burchfield. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1976.

Brown, DeNeen L. "Canadian Prairie Towns Fade Away." The Detroit News 2003, 12A.

Davies, Richard O. Main Street Blues:  The Decline of Small-Town America. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998.

Hall, Michael. "Inlanders and the American Scene:  Modern Great Lakes Painting." In Great Lakes Muse:  American Scene Painting in the Upper Midwest 1910-1960, edited by Michael D. and Pat Glascock Hall. Flint, Michigan: The Flint Institute of Arts, 2003.

Heller, Nancy and Julia Williams. Painters of the American Scene. New York: Galahad Books, 1982.

Hobbs, Robert. Edward Hopper. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1987.

Hopper, Edward. "Charles Burchfield:  American." The Arts 14, no. 1 (1928): 5-12.

Iversen, Margaret. "In the Blind Field:  Hopper and the Uncanny." Art History 21, no. 3 (1998): 409-29.

Levin, Gail. Edward Hopper. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1984.

Lewis, Sinclair. Main Street. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1920.

Psycho. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Perf. Anthony Perkins. Universal Pictures, 1960.

Strand, Mark. Hopper. Hopewell, New Jersey: The Ecco Press, 1994.