Chop Suey

Two women sit across from each other at a table in a modest second-floor Chinese restaurant, bathed in the flat, revealing light that became Edward Hopper's signature. A teapot rests between them, and another couple is visible in the background, yet the scene radiates an unmistakable sense of emotional distance. The foreground woman's face, heavily made up, takes on an almost mask-like quality, while her companion is shown largely from behind.

Hopper likely based the setting on an inexpensive Chinese restaurant near Columbus Circle that he and his wife Jo frequented. Jo herself probably served as the model for the female figures. The painting captures a quintessentially modern psychological state: people sharing physical space yet remaining profoundly separate, their inner lives sealed off from one another.

The composition is characteristically selective in its detail, sharpening certain elements while leaving others vague, much as memory preserves only fragments of a scene. The partially visible restaurant sign outside the window, cropped by the frame, reinforces the feeling of a glimpsed moment rather than a posed tableau. The work sold at auction in 2018 for 91.9 million dollars, a record for any Hopper painting.