{"data":{"id":"3052","type":"artwork","attributes":{"id":3052,"topgoose_id":2530,"portfolio_id":null,"tms_id":3052,"title":"The Subway","display_artist_text":"George Tooker","display_date":"1950","accession_number":"50.23","dimensions":"Overall: 18 1/2 × 36 1/2 in. (47 × 92.7 cm)","medium":"Tempera on composition board","department":"collection","classification":"Paintings","credit_line":"Purchase, with funds from the Juliana Force Purchase Award","is_virtual":false,"is_portfolio":false,"portfolio_tms_id":null,"portfolio":null,"edition":null,"publication_info":"","description":"\u003cp\u003eGeorge Tooker, \u003cem\u003eThe Subway\u003c/em\u003e, 1950. Tempera on composition board, overall: 18 1/2 × 36 1/2 in. (47 × 92.7 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Juliana Force Purchase Award 50.23. © Estate of George Tooker. Courtesy DC Moore Gallery, N.Y.\u003c/p\u003e","object_label":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Subway\u003c/i\u003e is the best known of the figurative paintings George Tooker made in response to the social injustices and isolation of postwar urban society—paintings that find an analogue in the period’s existentialist philosophy. In \u003ci\u003eThe Subway\u003c/i\u003e, Tooker employed multiple vanishing points and sophisticated modeling to create an imagined world that is presented in a familiar urban setting. Whether closed off in tiled niches or walking down the long passageway, each androgynous, anxiety-ridden figure appears psychologically estranged, despite being physically close to others in the station. The central group of commuters is locked in a grid of the metal grating’s cast shadows, while the labyrinthine passages seem to lead nowhere, suspending the city’s inhabitants in a modern purgatory. As Tooker remarked, he chose the subway as the setting for this painting because it represented “a denial of the senses and a negation of life itself.”\u003c/p\u003e","ai_alt_text":"A worried woman in a red dress stands in a crowded subway concourse near turnstiles.","alt_text":null,"visual_description":null,"on_view":true,"created_at":"2017-08-30T15:40:36.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-06T06:00:08.403-04:00","images":[{"id":94874,"url":"https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/3052/50_23_cropped.jpg"}]},"relationships":{"artists":{"data":[{"id":"1336","type":"artist"}]}}}}