Nighthawks
Not the band.
Not the bird.
Not the internet router.
Not the movie.
Not the roller coaster.
Not the gun company.
What already?
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Nighthawks is the title of a painting by Edward Hopper. The title might have been drawn from one of the painting’s characters, whose nose is remarkably like the beak of a hawk.
Edward Hopper’s iconic 1942 painting of a diner at night in Greenwich Village, New York City, is austere. There is no hint that outside the world is in turmoil — America had just entered World War 2. So, we added a bottle of whiskey, one for the road, or a splash in his next cup of coffee. Hopper said of his paintings, “To me the most important thing is the sense of going on.”
Edward Hopper is one of the most famous American realist painters of the 20th century, who, in the words of one critic, “portrayed the commonplace and made the ordinary poetic.” Nighthawks is timeless, and it could be anywhere. At some point we have all felt the isolation and loneliness we see here.
Hopper’s paintings are a study in the effect of light on wood, buildings, objects, and occasionally people. His favorite subjects were houses and lighthouses in sunlight, but here we see him focused on artificial light at night. Fluorescent light had just been invented, hence the eerie glow from that source of light: It casts a “shadow” over the entire canvass.
It’s an extraordinary painting, but it doesn’t look like a fun place to be. We can’t get in. They can’t get out. There is no entrance, no exit — they are glassed in. We don’t know why there is no entrance. We don’t know what’s going on in there. No one is engaged, but the waiter may be asking if they want anything else. Regardless, Hopper achieved what he was after: We are drawn to the light and the effects of the light.
Nighthawks was a collaboration between Edward and his wife Josephine (Jo) who served as the model for the lady in red. She had an art background and served as his “scout.”
This is a must link if you have read this far. It’s detailed storyboards for the painting, sketches before they became the painting. Jo Hopper described the painting as “Night + brilliant interior of cheap restaurant. Bright items: cherry wood counter + tops of surrounding stools; light on metal tanks at rear right; brilliant streak of jade green tiles ¾ cross [sic] canvas at base of glass of window curving at corner. Light walls, dull yellow ocre [sic] door into kitchen right…
“Very good looking [sic] blond boy in white (coat, cap) inside counter. Girl in red blouse, brown hair eating sandwich. Man night hawk (beak) in dark suit, steel grey hat, black band, blue shirt (clean) holding cigarette. Other figure dark sinister back at left. Light side walk [sic] outside pale greenish. Darkish red brick houses opposite. Sign across top of restaurant, dark — Phillies 5c cigar. Picture of cigar. Outside of shop dark, green. Note: bit of bright ceiling inside shop against dark of outside street at edge of stretch of top of window.”
A fun project some years ago focused on Nighthawks was a 3-D installation of the painting at the famous Flatiron Building on the intersection of Fifth Avenue, Broadway, and 23rd Street. Here is a link to that installation by the Whitney Museum of American Art, and some images are included in the gallery below. I missed it, but I still remember seeing Nighthawks years ago at its permanent home at the Art Institute of Chicago. If you get a chance to see it, don’t pass it by.
If you are a Hopper fan, if you live in New York, or if you are planning a visit, here is an interactive Google map of all of Hopper’s New York-based paintings, with descriptions and where to find each location. A brilliant concept.
