Automaton (painting)
| Automat |
|---|
| Edward Hopper , 1927 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 71.4 x 91.4 cm |
|
Des Moines Art Center , Iowa
Link to the picture |
Automat is a painting by the American painter Edward Hopper from 1927. It was shown for the first time on Valentine's Day 1927 at the opening of Hopper's second solo show at the Rehn Galleries in New York City . By April it had been selling for $ 1200. The painting is now owned by the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa .
The woman
The painting shows a lonely woman staring into a cup of coffee at night in a fast-food vending machine. The reflection from identical rows of lights extends through the night-blackened window.
Hopper's wife Jo served as a model. However, Hopper changed her face to make her younger (Jo was 44 in 1927). He also changed her figure; Jo was a curvaceous, figure-hugging woman, while one critic described the woman in the painting as "boyish" (ie flat-chested).
As is often the case in Hopper's pictures, the woman's circumstances and mood are ambiguous. She is well dressed and has makeup on, which could suggest that she is on her way to or from work on a job where personal appearance is important, or that she is on her way to or from a social occasion.
She just removed a glove that either indicates that she is distracted, that she is in a rush and can only stop for a moment, or just that she has just come in from outside and hasn't warmed up yet. But the latter possibility seems unlikely, because on the table in front of her cup and saucer there is a small, blank plaque indicating that she may have had a snack and had been sitting there for some time.
The time of year - late autumn or winter - is obvious because the woman is warmly dressed. But the time of day is unclear as days are short at this time of year. It is possible, for example, that it is just after sunset and early enough in the evening that the machine could be the place where she met a friend. Or it could be late at night after the woman has finished a shift at work. Or again, it could be early in the morning, before sunrise, as a shift is to start.
Whatever the hour, the restaurant appears largely empty and there are no signs of activity (or any life at all) on the street outside. This adds a sense of loneliness, and has popularly linked painting with the concept of urban alienation. One critic noted that in a pose typical of Hopper's melancholy themes, “the woman's eyes are downcast and her thoughts turned inward”. Another reviewer has described her as "looking at her coffee cup as if she were the last thing in the world to hold on to." In 1995, the time magazine Automat published the cover image for a story about stress and depression in the 20th century.
The art critic Ivo Kranzfelder compares the subject of the painting (a young woman drinking alone in a restaurant) with Édouard Manet's The Plum and Edgar Degas's L'Absinthe, although in contrast to the motif in Degas's painting, the woman is introspective, instead of dissipated.