Room in New York- Edward Hopper

When I first received this assignment I knew straight away which painting from Edward Hopper I would select, as this has always interested me and I have it to be a multi-dimensional image which has several layers and ideas that i could work with.

The selected work is: Room In New York- By Edward Hopper 1937.

Also the era in which it was painted helped to paint a clearer picture of the storey Hopper was trying to portray.
Expressive planarity dominates The Room in New York oil painting. He uses the figures as social puppets to portray sentiment for the scene. The woman seems to give a sense of awareness to the situation rather than the man who appears to be self consumed and preoccupied by the world around him. Although life has subsided in the figures the walls and the scene in the background has a vibrant sense, with lively colours. My eyes were automatically drawn to the pale female figure and the daydream she seems to be caught in. It may help her escape.


My original Narrative Sentence:
Voyeurs peer at a vibrant cage containing a lifeless couple, although they are contained together they are worlds apart. She is a dreamer trapped in a dungeon of his age-old obligations.

I edited my original sentence so that it told a clearer storey but through a more poetic sense.


NARRATIVE:

A woman placed on a pedestal, by the voyeuristic eyes from the world beyond her window, her obligations are her cage, her cage is her theatre. Faceless to her voyeurs, her truth, her comfort lies beneath the facade of this stage which 'they' call "her life".