1953, Edward Hopper, Office in a Small City -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)
From the museum label: This haunting painting exemplifies Hopper's dedication to chronicling the isolation of city life. The austere flatness and rigid geometry of the office building, combined with the oversized rectangular windows, convey the sense of a solitary worker contained, and displayed, within a concrete cage. A lack of ornamentation and color exaggerates the contrast with surrounding urban details such as the curved roof finial at lower right or the facade of the historic tenement building, which the man gazes at longingly. Hopper insinuates that the rising tide of modern urbanization will encroach on the existing city, as emphasized by the threatening concrete wall that looms in the distance.
1953, Edward Hopper, Office in a Small City -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)
From the museum label: This haunting painting exemplifies Hopper's dedication to chronicling the isolation of city life. The austere flatness and rigid geometry of the office building, combined with the oversized rectangular windows, convey the sense of a solitary worker contained, and displayed, within a concrete cage. A lack of ornamentation and color exaggerates the contrast with surrounding urban details such as the curved roof finial at lower right or the facade of the historic tenement building, which the man gazes at longingly. Hopper insinuates that the rising tide of modern urbanization will encroach on the existing city, as emphasized by the threatening concrete wall that looms in the distance.