For a recent site-specific installation, British artist Cornelia Parker reimagined Edward Hopper’s House by the Railroad. She used materials from a real barn to build a house, based on Hopper’s painting, on the roof of New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. She captures the bold silhouette and dramatic shadows in Hopper’s work, rendering them in three dimensions.
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Hopper's House in 3-D
Cornelia Parker pays homage to the painter in a recent sculpture
Cornelia Parker (b. 1956), Transitional Object (PsychoBarn), 2016. Image: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images.
How does Cornelia Parker reference Hopper’s work with a contemporary spin?
©Julian Anderson/eyevine/Redux.
Cornelia Parker
Parker wanted to explore the relationship between the urban landscape surrounding the museum and the country home in Hopper’s painting. "I was very daunted, because the skyline is so amazing," she explains. "I wanted to put something architectural on the roof—a kind of incongruous, domestic house."
At nearly 30 feet tall, the house gives the impression that you could walk up the steps and open the front door of Parker’s sculpture. But like a house on a movie set, Parker built only two façades. Visitors who walk around the back of the work can see the scaffolding that supports the false walls.
The movie-set reference is intentional. Parker knew that Hopper’s House by the Railroad also inspired filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock. She wanted to capture some of the same creepiness that Hitchcock did with the house in his movie Psycho.
Hopper depicted bright light on a house’s exterior, while shrouding its interior in mystery. Parker creates a similar sense of mystery through her sculpture’s darkened windows, aged materials, and unexpected location.
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