On planet Hopper there are no children, no humour, no action, no hugging, no sex but sensuality and perhaps cold eroticism, no aeroplanes and no sport, except for sailing and an isolated horse-riding scene. There is not a single television set to be seen and the moving images of cinema are barely hinted at in a single work, New York Movie. There are no happy people in Hopper's world and there is no optimism in anyone's gesture. Enthusiasm does not appear, nor does effort or activity. Efforts always seem to be at a standstill and movements frozen. Dejection, introspection, hieratism, immobility and boredom predominate. His nature has vegetation, trees, rocks, sea, skies and clouds, but no birds. Hopper's painting is defined by presence and absence and by the suspicion of what has happened before or after the scene he painted.