Automat (painting)
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| Artist | Edward Hopper |
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| Year | 1927 |
| Type | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 71.4 cm × 91.4 cm (28 in × 36 in) |
| Location | Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines |
Automat (1927) is a painting by Edward Hopper which portrays a lone woman staring into a cup of coffee in an Automat at night. The reflection of identical rows of light fixtures stretches out through the night-blackened window.
The restaurant appears to be empty and there are no signs of activity 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 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."[1] 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."[2] In 1995, Time used Automat as the cover image for a story about stress and depression in the 20th century.[3]
Art critic Ivo Kranzfelder compares the subject matter of this painting (a young woman nursing a drink alone in a restaurant) to Edouard Manet's Plum Brandy and Edgar Degas's L'Absinthe[4]—although unlike the subject in Degas' painting, the woman is introspective, rather than dissipated. In an innovative twist, Hopper made the woman’s legs the brightest spot in the painting, thereby “turning her into an object of desire” and “making the viewer a voyeur.”[5]
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 Hotel Lobby (1943).[6]
[edit] References
- ^ Iversen, Margaret. Edward Hopper. Tate Publishing Ltd, 2004, p. 57.
- ^ Schmied, Wieland. Edward Hopper: Portraits of America. translated by John William Gabriel. Munich: Prestel, 1999, p. 76.
- ^ Time, August 28, 1995
- ^ Ivo Kranzfelder, Hopper. Los Angeles: Taschen, 2010, p. 146.
- ^ Robert Hobbs, Edward Hopper. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987, p. 72.
- ^ The comparison between Automat and Hotel Lobby is made in Robert Hobbs, Edward Hopper. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987, p. 137.
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