Nighthawks 1942 by Edward Hopper – Slightly Sharper Capture

Nighthawks
Edward Hopper
Date: 1942
Style: Social Realism
Series: ‘Window’ paintings
Genre: cityscape
Media: oil, canvas
Location: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, US
Dimensions: 84.1 x 152.4 cm
Fair Use.

I love Edward Hopper’s New Realism/American Realism/Social Realism paintings, and I miss The City. That’s what New Yorkers call Manhattan! In my teens in Sea Gate, Brooklyn, New York City, we used to say I’m going to The City when we were going to Manhattan.

Nighthawks, a painting by Edward Hopper, has always captivated me.

Edward Hopper said that Nighthawks was inspired by "a restaurant on New York’s Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet," but the image, with its carefully constructed composition and lack of narrative, has a timeless quality that transcends its particular locale. One of the best-known images of 20th-century art, the painting depicts an all-night diner in which three customers, all lost in their own thoughts, have congregated. Fluorescent lights had just come into use in the early 1940s, and the all-night diner emits an eerie glow, like a beacon on the dark street corner. Hopper eliminated any reference to an entrance, and the viewer, drawn to the light, is shut out from the scene by a seamless wedge of glass. The four anonymous and uncommunicative night owls seem as separate and remote from the viewer as they are from one another. Reworked and parodied countless times, Nighthawks has become an icon of American culture.

Posted by Chic Bee on 2020-12-27 01:28:01

Tagged: , Nighthawks