Photo By Gail

For The Subway (1950), George Tooker used a claustrophobic, labyrinthine subway station to portray the alienation and the isolation of contemporary urban life.  These urban dwellers — all of whom seem to have the same face — seem frozen, trapped by the architecture of the subway station. Tooker rendered this distinctly modern subject in egg tempera, a medium associated almost exclusively with the Renaissance.

The technique creates a smooth, matte surface and is ideal for making sharp, clear lines, which together lend the anxious scene an eerie placidity. The artist said that he attempted to paint reality in a way that would impress it  “on the mind so hard that it returns as a dream.” I love this painting.

Photographed in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s new home at 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY 10014, in the Meatpacking District, adjacent to the Highline.