HSC English (Standard)

Module A: Experience Through Language

Elective 2: Distinctively Visual

Related Material Analysis

Automat

Edward Hopper

Text Type: Oil Painting

Publication details: 1927

Works best with:

Henry Lawson’s Short Stories

Douglas Stewart’s Selected Poems

Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run

©Into English 2012

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Student Activities

1. What is an ‘automat’?

2. Consider the depiction of the lone woman and the empty surrounds. What do you

think the artist is suggesting about the impact of ‘automat dining’?

3. Automat was painted in the context of the American Jazz era of the 1920s. Whilst

the ‘Roaring Twenties’ was a period of economic boom, urban expansion,

gregariousness, pleasure seeking, extravagance and delight in the ‘new’ or modern,

it also produced feelings of personal isolation and detachment.

a. Considering the image presented to us and its context, what characteristics of

the Jazz Age has Edward Hopper exposed in this painting? Make a list below:

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b. What do you think is the artist is suggesting about the nature of human

existence in the ‘Roaring Twenties’?

4. Explain how Edward Hopper has used distinctively visual techniques to convey the

impact of urban existence and the consequences of the pursuit of profit in the

emerging modern consumer society of 1920s America. In your answer, refer to:

a. Setting

b. Use of colour

c. Salience

d. Facial expression and gazes (offer/demand)

e. Visual symbolism

f. Positioning

g. Foreground

h. Background

i. Organisation of space

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