The drama is mundane, even trite, yet Edward Hopper, by elevating this ordinary space and these ordinary people to a realistic level of art makes their banal affair seem tragically lonely. This is why Hopper remains "the best-known American realist of the inter-war period." Hopper once said: "The man's the work. Something doesn't come out of nothing." ("Edward Hopper," Art Archive, 2005).

             In other words, humanity was still the appropriate subject of art, even while technology rendered human life increasingly regimented and materialistic-even farm work, in Sternberg"s painting of modern life threatened by technology on a Depression-era farm. But in contrast to the strident social critique of Sternberg, and the enthusiastic affirmation of technology of Rockwell, critics describe Hopper"s work of art is as "intensely private." Hopper himself is described as a man and an artist who made the "solitude and introspection" of modern life "important themes in his painting." When asked in later life if he met Picasso in Paris, as Hopper he went to study in France as a young man, Hopper shrugged and said, "Whom did I meet? Nobody. ("Edward Hopper," Art Archive, 2005).

             In contrast to the sunny, sublimely social portraits of Middle American small-town life, Hopper"s visions are desolate, urban, yet still, like Rockwell and Sternberg, focused on humanity-but in contrast to Rockwell, humanity in isolation rather than in sense of social connection. Hopper was based in Greenwich Village, where he lived most of his life, unlike Rockwell, although like Rockwell, he did work as a commercial illustrator. "The Office at Night" is of two people whose work have ended but have nowhere else to go afterwards-except to turn to one another"s arms, perhaps. Even if the male executive has a home, clearly he is more interested in the female charms of his colleague than his family or his employment, in contrast to the delighted fascination with the television set in Rockwell, or even the common social bleakness of the united family in the Sternberg.