Arena

Episode Synopsis

Arena marks a major retrospective exhibition at London's Hayward Gallery with a film about the great American realist painter EDWARD HOPPER. His subject is the face of America - haunting, unforgettable images of late-night bars, lonely hotel rooms, sunlit buildings and isolated figures. Through them we glimpse an aspect of America, austere and un-idealised, which we now recognise as familiar. But Hopper was not a recorder of externals. ' I believe that the great painters have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions .