Sammon, Paul M. (1996), Future Noir: the Making of Blade Runner, New York: HarperPrism, p.74, ISBN 0-06-105314-7 Kuh, Katherine (1962). "The Artist's Voice: Talks With Seventeen Artists". Harper & Row. p.134 . Retrieved January 15, 2021. The eery scene has captured the imagination of viewers, sparking intriguing and mystery around the unidentifiable figures who all seem to not know each other. The figures are modelled on Hopper himself and his wife Jo. The cinematic drama of the scene with the three strangers up late at night is created by Hopper’s intense use composition and light, which are common to his other works including ‘Chop Suey’. Hopper also succeeds in keeping the narrative on the scene open-ended. From Jo’s notes about the painting, the ‘Nighthawks’ title refers to the seated man with the beak-like nose next to the woman. “Ed has just finished a very fine picture--a lunch counter at night with 3 figures. Night Hawks would be a fine name for it. E. posed for the two men in a mirror and I for the girl. He was about a month and a half working on it.” These influences, fused with his longtime interest in stage sets and film, would ultimately surface in Hopper’s work. Skillfully deploying dramatic lighting, Hopper conjured the complex psychological states of his subjects. For example, in his late work Intermission (1963), a woman sits alone in a seemingly empty movie theater. Her absent, downward gaze is mirrored by the strong diagonal shadow that runs along the wall to her left. The very edge of a curtained stage is visible to the right of the frame. It is up to the viewer to imagine if she is waiting for the feature to resume, or for something else outside the picture plane.

If analyzing a painting is thought to be analyzing the mindset and thoughts of the painter while he/she made the painting, it is very wrong. Analyzing a painting means that the analyzer (viewer) is trying to find what is that he/she is feeling.

A tempestuous marriage leads to success

Ed has just finished a very fine picture--a lunch counter at night with 3 figures. Night Hawks would be a fine name for it. E. posed for the two men in a mirror and I for the girl. He was about a month and a half working on it. The diner is based on a street in Greenwich Village, New York, however, research into the exact location the painting was based on has shown that the painting depicts not an actual place but an amalgamation of inner-city diner’s. The painting’s timeless and ambiguous setting makes it feel like the work could be a depiction of any lonely urban city. In January 1942, Jo confirmed her preference for the name. In a letter to Edward's sister Marion she wrote, "Ed has just finished a very fine picture--a lunch counter at night with 3 figures. Night Hawks would be a fine name for it. E. posed for the two men in a mirror and I for the girl. He was about a month and half working on it." Nina Baym et al., eds., The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th edition (W. W. Norton & Company, 2012), ill. Edward Hopper's Nighthawks painting depicts four characters sitting in a sparsely furnished diner at night - a woman and three men.A single light source illuminates the diner interior and spills outward toward the exterior of an empty street where the world seems to have shut down. Placed in ambiguous relationships, none of the four figures in this picture interact with one another. With characters appearing disconnected from each other and the viewer, the Nighthawks painting suggests a chilling revelation that each of us is completely alone in the world.

Deborah Lyons, Edward Hopper: A Journal of His Work. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1997, p. 63 Near the kitchen door to the far-left corner inside the diner, the only corner we can visibly see inside the diner, we also notice two large silver coffee urns including how much coffee is in each; the left urn appears to be on empty and the right urn has about a third of coffee left in it. Although this was not the sole reason for why Edward Hopper painted Nighthawks, it is an important consideration to bear in mind when looking at his painting as it is depicted with a sense of quiet, dimness, and eeriness that can easily be attested to the prevalent mood of that time, which was undoubtedly one of foreboding.

A reclusive teenager finds his voice

In this article we will explore a brief contextual analysis, we will provide some historical context of how this work is part of the American Realism movement and what may have influenced Hopper to paint it. Moss, Jeremiah (July 5, 2010). "Nighthawks State of Mind". The New York Times . Retrieved May 22, 2013. The closing scene of Turner Classic Movies (TCM)'s “Open All Night” intro sequence, which was used to open overnight movie presentations from 1994 to 2021, is based on Nighthawks. [46] Nighthawks is a 1942 painting by Edward Hopper that portrays people sitting in a downtown diner late at night. It is Hopper's most famous work and is one of the most recognizable paintings in American art. Within months of its Furthermore, if we zoom in on the figures’ skin tones, we see the effects of the light, which gives them a “washed out” look. The light moves onto the pavement outside, illuminating the surrounding area, but as we move further into the street, it becomes darker suggesting more lifelessness around the diner.

Another detail of the props in Nighthawks (1942) by Edward Hopper; Edward Hopper, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons While we cannot say where this cafe is, we can see an easter egg. Look at the red and green buildings on the other side of the road. That building is very similar to the building in the painting Early Sunday Morning painted in 1930. Perhaps this is where the cafe is as well? Who knows, but it is an interesting reference that people often miss. The cafe in the painting

Pioneers

He is remembered as saying, “I guess I’m not very human. All I really want to do is paint light on the side of a house”. Hopper in most of his paintings that involved human subjects used eye-searing, garish color combination. Although the colors in this painting are subdued to show the shower of night, one can clearly see the use of fluorescent tinge in the greens and reds and yellows. The symmetry of Nighthawks Tom Waits's album Nighthawks at the Diner (1975) features a title, a cover, and lyrics inspired by Nighthawks. [39]

Depicting light was one of Hopper’s goals and loves. We see this not only in the way he depicts artificial man-made light but sunlight too in many of his other paintings. Some include Rooms by the Sea (1951), Morning Sun (1952), and Second Story Sunlight (1960), among others. The entire diner is also viewed from an angle through the perspective of an unknown viewer, which is presumably us; there is an element of voyeurism in the way Hopper depicted the Nighthawks scene. Furthermore, Hopper utilized the placement of horizontal and vertical lines to create a focal point, which is the diner. In a variation on this, one could paint one side of a thermally conductive panel with this heat radiating paint, and the other side with ordinary heat absorbing paint. This, in place of window glass would provide free air conditioning, or heating, depending on which side faced in. Judith A. Barter, “Prolog: Eine neue Welt der Kunst” and Susanne Scharf, “Bilder von Amerika: Edward Hoppers Äesthetisierung des Alltäglichen,” in Es war einmal in Amerika – 300 Jahre US-amerikanische Kunst [Once Upon a Time in America: Three Centuries of American Art], eds. Barbara Schaefer and Anita Hachmann (Cologne: Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud/Wienand Verlag, 2018), 25, fig. 12 (ill.); 219, fig. 1 (ill.). Shanghai Museum, Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945, Sept. 28, 2018–Jan. 6, 2019, cat. 71.For an image so often associated with loneliness, Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (1942) is strangely seductive. Solitary, hunched figures perch on stools along the slender countertop of an all-night diner. Bright overhead lighting casts a theatrical play of shadows on the deserted sidewalk outside, with the sleek, curving form of the diner’s long window intersecting with the grid of storefronts behind. The famous painting offers a crucible of narrative potential, capturing the melancholic romance of city life: its endless possibilities—and inevitable failures—for connection. Although this scene appears very simplified and solitary, there are detailed props and cues that give us a scene filled with life. Hopper was also moved by Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Night Watch (1642) housed in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Hopper is reported to have said the following about Rembrandt’s The Night Watch painting: “[it is the] most wonderful thing of his I have seen, its past belief in its reality – it almost amounts to deception”.