Talk:Automat (Hopper)

Thanks
Thank you to the person or persons who wrote this awesome article. 216.254.116.207 (talk) 04:37, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

A symbolic bowl of fruit?
Maybe I'm reading more into this than is appropriate, but doesn't it seem odd that the only decoration in the entire restaurant is a bowl of fruit on the windowsill, directly behind the woman? I don't normally think of Hopper as a user of symbols, but I wonder if the point of this is to hint at her being full of fruitful possibilities---a bit like a cornucopia? Fruit also ripens and goes bad rapidly, perhaps symbolizing the fleeting nature of the moment during with the viewer could walk over to her, introduce himself, and start a friendship (or more?).

Or perhaps the painting just needed a splash of colour, which the bowl of fruit provided.

Anybody have any thoughts on this? I'd love to see something like this make its way into the article, if there's any hard evidence at all that the bowl of fruit is not, like Freud's cigar, just a bowl of fruit.

Seaside rendezvous (talk) 12:47, 23 March 2009 (UTC)


 * One of the rules of Hopper's work, is that the more you stare at it, the less it makes sense. I think he did use symbols, but he talked very little about the meaning, leaving it up to the audience (and the critics) to make heads or tails of it. Viriditas (talk) 00:28, 28 January 2024 (UTC)