Trying to survive beneath the surface of the Earth is some people’s idea of a nightmare, yet in many cities around the world urbanites do this on a twice-daily basis as they commute between home and work.
If not claustrophobic, the experience is at the very least dreary and depressing, as the lack of sunlight inevitably leads all travellers to ask themselves whether their journey is a close approximation of Hades.
Pleasingly, metro operators are also aware of this and have taken it upon themselves to commission artistic inspiration and bring hope to the affair.
A dash of colour and wonder can lighten the mood of the soul as it travels blearily through grinding metal darkness, and here are some places where artists have done exactly that.
New York, USA
World-famous pop artist and New Yorker Roy Lichtenstein was commissioned to create a large mural during the 1990s, and the result was to be one of his last pieces of work.
Proudly displayed above the rushing throng in Times Square Station, the mural depicts an Art-Deco vision of a train in Lichtenstein’s trademark cartoon style.
The city’s subway system is also home to a series of 100 bronze sculptures by Tom Otterness called Life Underground, which, as the name suggests, depicts life underground.
Stockholm, Sweden
The capital of Sweden’s metro system has been called the world’s longest art gallery and with good reason too.
Just about every station of the 100 that make up the network were designed to be decorated from the outset in more than 150 artists’ visions, with wild colours, unusual shapes and formations, and general arty atmospheres dominating every stop along the line.
Travelling around the Stockholm system has more akin with Alice entering the rabbit hole than a work commute.
London, England
The oldest tube in the world has a strong artistic contingent and for its 150th birthday the transport authorities commissioned Mark Wallinger to put a unique mural in each of its 270 stations.
The murals, fittingly, are based around labyrinths, mirroring one’s ability to get lost in London’s huge archaic underground – and possibly echoing the minotaur-like rage that the Tube sometimes induces.
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
One of the largest glass installations in the world was erected proudly as the ceiling of Formosa Boulevard station in Kaohsiung.
Narcissus Quagliata’s Dome of Light depicts the world and humankind’s evolution over 4,500 glass panels with scenes involving countries, planets, storms, oceans and everything else besides.
The existential nature of life is obviously a popular issue to mull over during rush hour.
Paris, France
Paris’ metro is well-known for its iconic art-nouveau stations, but the system contains real artworks in its innards, most notably at the Louvre-Rivoli and Varenne stations.
Varenne is themed around the sculptor Rodin, and recreations of his most famous works such as The Thinker line the platforms.
Meanwhile the Louvre station is unsurprisingly home to an abundance of pieces from the historic art museum’s gargantuan collection, almost as if they were running out of space above ground.
(Featured image courtesy of Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the State of New York: Artist Alyson Shotz created a series of artworks for the Smith-9th Streets Station, New York, which uses the local maritime history of the surrounding Gowanus and Red Hook communities.
