Project 2: The initial sketches

Project 2: Draft Narrative

The man sits at his desk in his lofty office, pondering the room that cannot be entered yet cannot be ignored.



This narrative describes a man sitting alone in his office. He is high up, alone in his own little office world, away from everything except for a room that he cannot enter. This room could be thought of as a work problem he can’t solve, perhaps a woman he can’t have.

Project 2: Initial Ideas for Narratives

My initial narritives explored a literal story of the painting. I wanted my model to describe the tension, whether it be sexual or emmotional, between the man and the woman.

* ' The final meeting of the layer and his mistress in the office'

* ' In the office, he lawyer and his secretary work late into the night'

* 'Tension builds at the office as the lawyer and his secretary work late into the night'



However these narratives provide little to go on for the atmosphere/visualisation on an inetrior space. They also lack one effective character and an activity.

I did however gleam some key words of 'tension', 'strain', 'possibility' and 'penetration'


I then foucssed on one particular character...

* 'the young secretary ponders the adjacent room and ponders the possibilities.'


However this sentence is still ambiguous.

* ' The man looks upon the room that can't be entered yet can't be ignored'


This is getting closer but I still need to be more specific and create an atmosphere and an activity.

*'The man sits at his desk in his lofty office and ponders the room that cannot be enetered, yet cannot be ignored'

The artist: Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper was an American painter born in 1882, in Nyack, New York whose works are landmarks of American realism as well as voyagerism. His paintings portray a particular American 20th-century sensibility that is characterized by isolation, melancholy, and loneliness.
http://www.sai.msu.su/cjackson/hopper/hopper_bio.htm

Hopper studied illustration in New York City at a commercial art school from 1899 to 1900. Around 1901 he switched to painting and studied at the New York School of Art until 1906. He made three trips to Europe between 1906 and 1910 but remained curiously unaffected by current French and Spanish experiments in cubism.

He was influenced mainly by the great European realists—Diego Velazquez, Francisco de Goya, Honore Daumier, Edouard Manet—whose work had first been introduced to him by his New York City teachers. His early paintings, such as Le pavillon de flore (1909, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City), were committed to realism and exhibited some of the basic characteristics that he was to retain throughout his career: compositional style based on simple, large geometric forms; flat masses of color; and the use of architectural elements in his scenes for their strong verticals, horizontals, and diagonals.
http://www.sai.msu.su/cjackson/hopper/hopper_bio.htm

Although one of Hopper's paintings was exhibited in the famous Armory Show of 1913 in New York City, his work excited little interest, and he was obliged to work principally as a commercial illustrator for the next decade. Most of Hopper paintings portray scenes in New York or New England, both country and city scenes, all with a spare, homely quality—deserted streets, half-empty theaters, gas stations, railroad tracks, rooming houses. One of his best-known works, Nighthawks (1942, Art Institute of Chicago), shows an all-night cafe and its few uncommunicative customers, illuminated in the glare of electric lights.

The painting: Office at Night

How does one interpret "Office at Night" (1940), by Edward Hopper? This painting can be considered on so many levels. Does it depict a power struggle, a political comedy or the build-up of a forbidden office romance? It seems that Hopper preferred to leave the narratives to the viewer's imagination.

Or, as Hopper put it, "If you could say it, there'd be no reason to paint." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/arts/design/09shat.html

In "Office at Night" a man in his 30's or 40's sitting at a heavy desk in a sparsely furnished office room. A voluptuous secretary stands with her hand in a file drawer nearby. Is she twisted in a strained provocative way— both breasts and buttocks are visible.
Is she is looking at the man, or wondering how pick up the dropped paper on the floor in as much of a ladylike way possible?

A breeze enters an open window and rustles a blind as the man reads a document, apparently oblivious to the situation. Or is he?

In a letter to the Walker Art Center, which owns the painting, Hopper said the work was "probably first suggested by many rides on the 'L' train in New York City after dark glimpses of office interiors that were so fleeting as to leave fresh and vivid impressions on my mind."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/arts/design/09shat.html

Hopper leaves those impressions blurred and layered. Is the relationship between the man and the woman emotional? Sexual? Or have they simply become inured to each other after working together for so long?

At the time, the position of executive secretary was a relatively prestigious role for a woman, though still submissive. Still, this woman looks fashionable, her makeup and her come-hither pose, could be the one with the power.

Project 2

Model 1:100