Detail of Government Bureau by George Tooker in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2019

Government Bureau
1956


Object Details

Title: Government Bureau

Artist: George Tooker (American, Brooklyn, New York 1920–2011 Hartland, Vermont)

Date: 1956

Medium: Egg tempera on wood

Dimensions: 19 5/8 x 29 5/8 in. (49.8 x 75. 2cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: George A. Hearn Fund, 1956

Accession Number: 56.78


While Tooker’s paintings typically convey his passionate desire for social harmony and justice, Government Bureau represents a darker, more pessimistic dimension of his art. The work takes the viewer inside a cold, starkly lit interior filled with anonymous bodies and cubicles. Eerily, the circular windows in the cubicle walls reveal nothing but the tired, sad eyes of government employees staring blankly. The scene’s unsettling remoteness is accentuated by Tooker’s fine and detailed technique, rooted in Italian Renaissance egg-tempera painting.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/488943