Office in a Small City, 1953

Narrator: Kambui Olujimi has explained that one of the things he finds most interesting in Hopper’s work is figures—like the office worker you see here—who turn away from the viewer. 

Kambui Olujimi: I'm interested in figures that have their own interiority. And often you'll see that where they're occupied or engaged in the world, not in the world of the viewer, in their world. You know, whether it's looking out a window or engaging with another character subject in the painting, there's a way in which, and perhaps it's voyeuristic, but it seals and actually gives cohesion to that alternate space. 

So in Office in a Small City, you have this businessman that is like looking almost into the rapture with this light that comes down, this long twilight, which is another classic Hopper, you know, these diagonal lights as the sun drifts away.

Something that I find very interesting with this twilight play or this long light that you see in many Hopper works is it describes the city, the geography and the bounds of New York City as a place that is perpetually in flux. That is, if you look at it, it's already changed. And the paintings are an attempt to both slow that, or capture that in an instant. But to also acknowledge that this won't be here in your next breath, it's going to be something else.