Content deleted Content added
Randy Kryn (talk | contribs) added Category:Mirrors in art using HotCat |
|||
(24 intermediate revisions by 17 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{Short description|1927 painting by Edward Hopper}}
{{Infobox Artwork
| image_file=
| image_size=300px
| title=Automat
| artist=[[Edward Hopper]]
Line 12 ⟶ 13:
| metric_unit=cm
| imperial_unit=in
|
|
}}
'''''Automat''''' is a
==The woman==
Line 31 ⟶ 32:
Whatever the hour, the restaurant appears to be largely empty and there are no signs of activity (or of any life at all) on the street outside. This adds to the sense of loneliness, and has caused the painting to be popularly associated with the concept of [[Urban sociology|urban alienation]]. One critic has observed that, in a pose typical of Hopper's melancholic subjects, "the woman's eyes are downcast and her thoughts turned inward."<ref>Iversen, Margaret, ''Edward Hopper''. [[Tate Publishing Ltd|Tate Publishing]], 2004, p. 57.</ref> Another critic has described her as "gazing at her coffee cup as if it were the last thing in the world she could hold on to."<ref>Schmied, Wieland, ''Edward Hopper: Portraits of America''. Translated by John William Gabriel. Munich: Prestel, 1999, p. 76.</ref> In 1995, ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine used ''Automat'' as the cover image for a story about stress and depression in the 20th century.<ref>''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine, August 28, 1995.</ref>
Art critic Ivo Kranzfelder compares the subject matter of this painting (a young woman nursing a drink alone in a restaurant) to [[Édouard Manet]]'s ''[[The Plum]]'' and [[Edgar Degas]]'s ''[[L'Absinthe]]''.<ref>Ivo Kranzfelder, ''Hopper''. Cologne, Germany: [[Benedikt Taschen]], 2010, p. 146.</ref>
==The viewer’s perspective==
The presence of a chairback in the lower right-hand corner of the canvas suggests that the viewer is sitting at a nearby table, from which vantage-point a stranger might be able to glance, uninvited, upon the woman.
In an innovative twist, Hopper made the
Hopper would make the crossed legs of a female subject the brightest spot on an otherwise dark canvas in a number of later paintings, including ''[[Compartment C, Car 293]]'' (1938)[http://artsandletters.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/hopper-compartment-c-car-293-image-geoffrey-clements-corbis.jpg] and ''[[Hotel Lobby]]'' (1943).[https://web.archive.org/web/20110707202148/http://ayiajavon.com/imd100/g2.jpg]<ref>The comparison between ''Automat'' and ''Hotel Lobby'' is made in Robert Hobbs, ''Edward Hopper.'' New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987, p. 137.</ref>
==The restaurant==
As critic Carol Troyen notes, "the title, rather than any detail within the picture, is what identifies the restaurant as an automat."<ref name="ReferenceB"/> Troyen continues on, however, to note a number of features which would have made the restaurant identifiable to a New Yorker of the 1920s: "They were clean, efficient, well-lit and—typically furnished with round Carrera marble tables and solid oak chairs like those shown here—genteel. By the time Hopper painted his picture, automats had begun to be promoted as safe and proper places for the working woman to dine alone."<ref name="ReferenceB"/> To a New Yorker of the 1920s, Hopper's interior would have been instantly recognizable as an Automat. A 1912 photograph of the Automat in [[Times Square]] reveals every detail of the chairs and the marble-topped tables to correspond with what Hopper has painted.<ref>See photograph in Lorraine B. Diehl and Marianne Hardart, ''The Automat: The History, Recipes, and Allure of Horn and Hardart's Masterpiece.'' New York: Clarkson Potter, 2002, p. 26.</ref> However, this is not the Times Square Automat; the ceiling lights at that location were significantly more ornate than the ones in the painting.
Automats, which were open at all hours of the day, were also “busy, noisy and anonymous. They served more than ten thousand customers a day."<ref name="ReferenceB"/> Moreover, the woman is sitting in the least congenial spot in the entire restaurant for introspection. She has, as Troyen notes, the table nearest the door, and behind her, on her other side, is the staircase to the
==The window==
By way of comparison, in ''Automat'' the window dominates the painting, and yet "allows nothing of the street, or whatever else is outside, to be seen."<ref name="ReferenceA">Mark Strand, ''Hopper''. New York: Knopf, 2007, p. 43.</ref> The complete blackness outside is a departure both from
The window conveys an impressionistic view, rather than one that is realistic, in another way. As [[Mark Strand]] notes, "The window reflects only the twin receding rows of ceiling lights and nothing else of the automat interior." It is possible that Hopper omitted these reflections in order to avoid distractions that might turn the
{{cquote|The painting suggests several things, but the most obvious and most resonant is that if what the window reflects is true then the scene takes place in limbo and the seated woman is an illusion. This is a troubling idea. And if the woman thinks of herself in this context, she cannot possibly be happy. But of course she does not think, she is the product of another will, an illusion, an invention of Hopper’s.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>}}
The focusing effect of the blank window behind the woman can be seen most clearly when it is contrasted with ''[[Sunlight in a Cafeteria]]'' (1958),[http://www.museumsyndicate.com/images/1/9792.jpg]<ref>The comparison between ''Automat'' and ''Sunlight in a Cafeteria'' is made in Ivo Kranzfelder, ''Hopper''. Cologne, Germany: Benedikt Taschen, 2010, p. 146, and in Lloyd Goodrich, ''Edward Hopper''. New York: Abradale Press / Harry N. Abrams, 1983, p. 133.</ref> one of
==See also==
* [[List of works by Edward Hopper]]
*''[[Chop Suey (painting)|Chop Suey]]'', 1929
*''[[Hotel Lobby]]'', 1943
*''[[Nighthawks (painting)|Nighthawks]]'', Hopper's most famous painting.
*''[[Office at Night]]'', 1940
*''[[Office in a Small City]]'', 1953
==
{{reflist}}
{{Edward Hopper}}
{{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Automat}}
[[Category:1927 paintings]]
[[Category:Paintings by Edward Hopper]]
[[Category:Paintings in Des Moines, Iowa]]
[[Category:Food and drink paintings]]
[[Category:Mirrors in art]]
|