This painting is actually done in colour, similiar to "Government Bureau". Part of this image can be seen as the cover of Blackwater 1, tales of the fantastic. Tooker here depicts the subway station as an imprisioning maze full of bars, and the citizens in it full of paranoia. They seem paralyzed and confused. Notice again the repetition of the man hiding behind the wall. Tooker is a very meticilous painter, and the numerous sketches done in advance show his attention to perspective, his love of a geometric order. Here, the mass of perspective lines from the walls and bars, reflected so well by the lights, echo the feelings of confusion and enclosure.
It is his egg tempera technique which again brings this painting beyond its everyday subject matter. The colour here radiates. Another example of his social critique, Tooker uses the row upon row of workers to reflect the empty loneliness of the urban workforce. Like horses eating in their stables, the people in this lunchroom bend their heads, minding their own business, oblivious to each other. There is no contact, no touch of the human.
It is unclear what the function of this waiting room is. Half railway station, half cloakroom, the people here seem to just linger about, equally without a purpose. The man on the far left turns to the viewer, paranoia behind his opaque glasses. The waiting stalls, with its numerical tagging, gives the scene a morgue-like atmosphere. Tooker himself describes this scene as a sort of purgatory, "people just waiting, waiting to wait. It is not living. It is a matter of waiting -- not being one's self. Not enjoying life, not being happy, waiting, always waiting for something that might be better -- which never comes."
Lithographs: click for some of Tooker's prints.
