Stay informed with free updates
Simply register at Life and arts myFT Digest – Delivered straight to your inbox.
The other day I was sitting in my living room getting ready to call a friend I hadn’t seen in over a year. We’ve known each other for decades and although we live in different countries with busy lives, we try to catch up regularly every six weeks or so. I was alone in my apartment, but I still got up and closed the living room door. I tend to do that before starting a meaningful conversation on the phone. I guess it’s a way of trying to create a space to contain the energy of a conversation.
My friend, a doctor, had recently opened her own private practice, and while this represented an important goal achieved, during the call she talked to me about how to deal with the new challenges this brought. I, in turn, shared with him a personal and professional decision I was trying to make. After the call, I started thinking about the closing and opening of doors and how often we use that language to contemplate the events of our lives.
There is something very moving about Edward Hopper’s 1951 painting “Rooms by the Sea.” It was originally titled “The Jumping Place”, but Hopper noticed that people thought it was too sinister a title, so he changed it. A seemingly simple painting composed of sharp geometric shapes, it depicts two rooms divided by a large white wall and a door on the right that leads directly to the ocean. Behind the white wall we see parts of a living room: the end of a sofa, the edge of a closet, a painting on the wall, and a green rug. I especially like how Hopper paints the perspective as if we were the ones in the room looking out to sea. All we see through the door is the blue sky above and the deep blue water below. Sunlight streams into the room through this door.
This work catches my attention because it immediately makes me think about the complex situation when a door opens unexpectedly in our lives and seems to call us towards the unimaginable. Many times I felt as if I were standing in front of this door, drawn to the vitality of what lay beyond the comfort of my familiar surroundings. These were often times when I felt compelled to follow an inner compass that required me to leave a place that seemed safe.
A few years after graduating, for example, I got an interesting job, working with students and running a small department at a university. The role included many of the safety aspects, but I felt something was deeply missing. At that time, I really wanted to start a writing career. But it took me a couple of years before I risked leaving the safety net of what was comfortable and predictable and stepping into the door of the unknown.
Hopper’s painting makes me think more broadly about what lies beyond what we can see. The ocean is deep and unknown, and without the right equipment we wouldn’t survive in it for long, but it is also a thriving world in itself, full of life. Walking through the box door without proper preparation or forethought would be foolish. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take that risk.
“By the Open Door” is a film from the early 20th century. work of the Norwegian artist Nikolai Astrup. In this painting we see two women positioned very differently in a doorway. The figure on the left stands with one hand on her hip and the other supporting her as she leans on the edge of the door. Her gaze seems to rest on the other woman, who is sitting perched on a chair, either expectant or melancholic, with her feet resting on the door frame so that part of her body is slightly outside. He is looking down a winding garden path that leads from the house to the street.
It is natural to assume that this is a painting of women awaiting the arrival of someone. But I see something different. I think about the many ways in which women have historically been defined by domesticity and regulated by the boundaries of such spaces, whether they wanted to or not. So I imagine the body language of the standing woman toward the seated woman is one of curious impatience, as if she were asking, “So, are you going to sit there all day or are you going to do something about your situation and do it?” “Whatever you are?” Are you thinking?
This interpretation leads us to another question: when have we found ourselves waiting for someone else’s permission to venture where others may not imagine we belong, or to do what others may not consider us capable of doing? Who do we allow to decide where our boundaries fall and what doors we are allowed or encouraged to walk through? It is moving to me that the door in Astrup’s painting is wide open and that both women seem to be about to leave. Sometimes I wonder if we prevent ourselves from taking advantage of these types of opportunities.
Dorothea Tanning was a surrealist artist who used doors as a recurring motif in his work. I find his 1943 painting, “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,” compelling because it invites us to consider the doors that lie at the threshold of our inner worlds. In this painting, two girls, or dolls, stand in a long red-carpeted hallway with four numbered doors against the wall. All the doors are closed, except the last one, which is slightly ajar and through which a ray of light can be seen. One of the girls leans against the first door, dressed in a tattered white skirt, white stockings and shoes, and her red shirt open to reveal her upper body. In her hand she holds the enormous petals of a sunflower. The other girl, also dressed in rags, is standing in the middle of the hallway, her hair standing on end. There is a monstrous-sized sunflower on the rug that appears to have been knocked to the ground.
Whatever dimension this scene is intended to represent, both girls seem to have gone through something that is not only exhausting but life-changing. It makes me think about the inner battles we sometimes have to face to find a door that takes us to the next stage of our lives.
I wonder to what extent we consider that some doors only open to us when we have done a particular kind of inner work, the task of facing our fears or considering necessary feelings, or even past experiences. Like the figures in Tanning’s painting, we will find many doors in our lives; Knowing which to open and pass through and which to leave closed is the ongoing challenge for all of us.
Email Enuma at enuma.okoro@ft.com
Discover our latest stories first: follow the FT weekend on instagram and unknownand subscribe to our podcast Life and art wherever you listen