The Tragedy of Seeing Through the Artist in Soir Bleu (1914) by Edward Hopper

Soir Bleu: You are set to deliver a performance you had been losing sleep over for months. You get ready on the final day with your heart beating violently with excitement – You nervously walk up to the stage, begin to deliver the performance with your heart and soul thinking this would be your breakthrough moment and you reach up to the point where you see nothing but white lights flashing in your face… and silence.

Through the lights you see blank faces that see right through you. Some even get up to leave. And there is just you in the room. Alone in front of an unimpressed crowd. What do you do?

If this scenario raises a sense of embarrassment in your chest, there is a fair chance that you understand Edward Hopper and his attempt to seek success with his painting Soir Bleu (1914) and failing.

The Possible Sad Clown Paradox

An entertainer who places the worth of all his abilities into the hands of his audience and gives his all when it comes to bringing joy to their face. Even though there is a storm of misery within him, he puts on a mask of emotions he does not feel to do a job he no longer connects himself with.

That is the sad clown paradox, a state where one is forced to come to terms with the harsh reality that his real emotions do not matter when he has a performance to deliver. One of the best examples of the sad clown paradox is Jan Matejko’s Stańczyk (1862), which shows a performer minutes before his performance, seeming depressed and lost in deep thought with a crowd in the next room waiting to be entertained.

Hopper’s Soir Bleu is often interpreted as one of those paintings that explore the sad clown paradox. While that could very well be the case, if we look at it through the lens of Hopper’s actual situation at the time he painted it, we would have a different outlook on this work.

Before diving into the other side of the interpretation, let’s look at the Soir Bleu through the sad clown paradox. A man dressed in a white costume with clown make-up sits in a Parisian café. He is looking down with a cigarette in his mouth, purposely not making eye contact with the people around him. There is a big blue sea behind him, which could represent the overwhelmingly huge emotions he tries to conceal behind those white walls/exterior but are visible to the viewer, behind him as well as on his face.

Nobody in the painting seems to notice his face. As they are all too occupied in their own tasks that even the idea of a clown struggling does not occur to them. By the look on the clown’s face, it seems as if this is nothing new to him. The expectation of concern from other people seems a far-fetched idea. He is aware that he has to go do his job that no longer gives him life and then go home to his reality that takes a lot of life out of him. A cycle he finds himself trapped in.

The sad clown paradox draws attention to the struggle that goes behind the happy exterior of an entertainer who cannot afford to let his emotions get in the way of his profession. This often gets to the point where the person feels suffocated from suppressing too much of his feelings and eventually chooses to put an end to his suffering by taking his own life. There are several examples of this that are often seen in actors and comedians whose tragic lives are hidden behind a smile.

The Artist’s Soir Bleu

Edward Hopper (1882-1967) was an artist widely known for his realist style paintings on themes like alienation, isolation and loneliness that he mostly painted in an American setting. But before gaining recognition for his paintings such as Chop Suey (1929), Nighthawks  (1942) and Rooms by the Sea (1951), he painted an artwork at the time he had just returned from Paris, and was struggling for recognition which he thought he would get from his Soir Bleu (1914).

Painted in a Parisian setting, the painting shows 7 figures in it – a couple, a man, a woman, a military man, a bohemian and a clown. All engrossed in their own lives. The eyes of the viewer go straight to the clown, perhaps first because of his attire, but mainly because of his expression. He is detached from his surroundings, more like lost in his own world. What goes on in his head, who can tell? But if we look at this painting from the lens of Hopper’s life at the time, we could come up with an answer to what the clown conveys in the painting.

The clown is an artist. His work is to make people laugh and spread joy – A task that gives him a sense of self-fulfilment and a motivation to get even better with his tricks and get more people to gather around him to watch. He seeks recognition. But what happens if nobody sees the work he puts into his job and is simply unimpressed by the show? What does he have if not the ability to grab the attention of the crowd and be appreciated for it?

Hopper painted this painting while he himself was struggling for recognition and thought that this particular work would get him the much deserved praise. However, things did not go according to his plan and the painting was not well received at that time. This incident made Hopper to never revisit this painting again while he was alive and never again paint any of his paintings in a Parisian setting. But Hopper did end up getting widely recognised later for his other works, just not for Soir Bleu, which once gave a struggling artist some hope.

Soir Bleu, The Clown and Edward Hopper

Hopper gathered every bit of courage in his chest to show the world the vulnerability of being an artist – and went unnoticed. Hopper is one of those artists whose life story lies largely in his paintings, from painting emotionally distant couples because of problems in his own marriage to portraying himself as an unappreciated clown because he was himself a struggling artist, he had opened himself for the world to read.

But the saddest part of this particular painting is the fact that he painted what he was scared of and ended up facing just that. One can only imagine the devastation he must have felt when his fear of getting overlooked, came to life.

The painting portrays accurately the desperation to be seen. Everything about the clown makes him loudly visible – the blinding white extravagant attire, the clown makeup and the expression that tells a different story.  The viewer sees the clown when he is not looking, when he is lost in thought, and especially when he is not expecting to be watched. It is almost as if Hopper does not want us to see the clown like that – vulnerable and possibly tired.

He is taking his time away from the public eye to perhaps prepare himself for a performance or sit in disappointment after a performance. The painting remains open for both the interpretations, indicating the former scenario to fit well in the sad clown paradox and the latter in the artist-clown relation.

Even after Hopper’s immense success that he later received in his life, what truly connects with the viewer is the ability of an artist’s art to tell a story while giving the viewer room to place their ideas in it. In my personal view, no other artist does the job of making himself as well as the viewer feel seen better than Edward Hopper.