She unwittingly invites the viewer to imagine stories for her, stories of betrayal or loss. The woman looks self-conscious and slightly afraid, unused to being alone in a public place. The décor is functional, with a stone-topped table, hard-wearing black wooden chairs and white walls. The room seems large, brightly lit and empty. It is late and, to judge by her hat and coat, cold outside. In Automat 1927, a woman sits alone drinking a cup of coffee. It is sad books that console us most when we are sad, and the pictures of lonely service stations that we should hang on our walls when there is no one to hold or love. Yet despite the bleakness Hopper’s paintings depict, they are not themselves bleak to look at – perhaps because they allow us as viewers to witness an echo of our own griefs and disappointments, and thereby to feel less personally persecuted and beset by them. It is often night, and through the window lie the darkness and threat of the open country or of a strange city. They are in search of work, sex or company, adrift in transient places. They may have just left someone or been left. Their faces are vulnerable and introspective. They gaze out of the window of a moving train or read a book in a hotel lobby. They stand reading a letter beside a hotel bed or drinking in a bar. His figures look as though they are far from home. Loneliness is the dominant theme in his art. Edward Hopper belongs to a particular category of artist whose work appears sad but does not make us sad – the painterly counterpart to Bach or Leonard Cohen.
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