Automat (painting) - The Restaurant

The Restaurant

As critic Carol Troyen notes, "the title, rather than any detail within the picture, is what identifies the restaurant as an automat." Troyen continues on, however, to note a number of features which would have made the restaurant identifiable to a New Yorker of the 1920s: "They were clean, efficient, well-lit and—typically furnished with round Carrera marble tables and solid oak chairs like those shown here—genteel. By the time Hopper painted his picture, automats had begun to be promoted as safe and proper places for the working woman to dine alone." To a New Yorker of the 1920s, Hopper's interior would have been instantly recognizable as an Automat. A 1912 photograph of the Automat in Times Square reveals every detail of the chairs and the marble-topped tables to correspond with what Hopper has painted. However, this is not the Times Square Automat; the ceiling lights at that location were significantly more ornate than the ones in the painting.

Automats, which were open at all hours of the day, were also “busy, noisy and anonymous. They served more than ten thousand customers a day." Moreover, the woman is sitting in the least congenial spot in the entire restaurant for introspection. She has, as Troyen notes, the table nearest the door, and behind her, on her other side, is the staircase to the restaurant’s below-ground level. Even if the restaurant were relatively empty, there would have been constant foot-traffic past her table. Thus, "the figure’s quiet, contemplative air," which is "out of step with the city’s energy, its pace and its mechanized rhythm," is made even more noteworthy by the particularly busy spot in which she has chosen to sit.