Nighthawks (Hopper)

For other uses, see the painting by Edward Hopper.

Painting information
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Nighthawks (1942) is a painting by Edward Hopper that portrays people sitting in a downtown diner late at night. It is not only Hopper's most famous painting, but one of the most recognizeable in American art. It is currently in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The scene was inspired by a diner (since destroyed) in Greenwich Village, Hopper's home neighborhood in Manhattan. Hopper began painting it immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, after this event there was a large feeling of gloominess over the country, a feeling that is portrayed in the painting. The urban street is empty outside the diner, and inside none of the three patrons are apparently looking or talking to each other but are instead lost in their own thoughts. Two are a couple, while the third is a man sitting alone, with his back to the viewer. The diner's sole attendant, though looking up from his work, appears to be peering out the window past the customers. This portrayal of modern urban life as empty or lonely is a common theme throughout Hopper's work. If one looks closely, the diner has no visible door leading to the outside which illustrates the idea of confinement and entrapment. Hopper denied that he had intended to communicate this in Nighthawks, but he admitted that "unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city." At the time of the painting, fluorescent lights had just been developed, perhaps contributing to why the diner is casting such an eerie glow upon the almost pitch black outside world.

Nighthawks in popular culture

Nighthawks has inspired many homages and parodies.

• The painting "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" -widely sold later as a poster- by Austrian painter Gottfried Helnwein in which the three diner patrons are replaced by American pop culture icons Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, and the attendant by Elvis Presley. The illustrations were apparently taken from photographs. Bogart's pose is clearly from a publicity still from Casablanca. Regardless, the parody has oddities of its own: Bogart and Dean are grim and depressed-looking like the original customers, while Elvis and Marilyn are smiling; while Bogart not only lived much longer (though not long, 57 years) than the other three (Dean died at 24, Marilyn at 36 and Elvis at 42), but was of the generation that preceded the other three.

• The tv series That '70s Show recreated the painting in the first season episode Drive-In, with Red (with a hat and a black suit) and Kitty (in a red dress) at a diner called Phillies.

• The twelfth episode of the first season of the television series Dead Like Me is titled Nighthawks. The painting is very much central to the concept of the episode.

• It has been said that director Ridley Scott used a photo of "Nighthawks" to illustrate to crewmembers the mood he wanted to create in the film Blade Runner.

• The diner in the film The Sting also resembles the Nighthawks diner.

• The diner (or one similar to it) also appeared in Superman comics, and was the location where Clark Kent and Mxyztplk determined the identity of Superman's foe, Ruin.

• Ben Edlund's comic book The Tick, and the associated animated TV series, use the Nighthawks diner as a recurring setting. In the first issue and first episode, the diner patrons from the painting are part of the "action".

• Nighthawks has also appeared in several comic strips, including Pearls Before Swine, la cucaracha, and Cat and Girl

• It has been recreated as a scene on a model railroad layout (as documented in John Armstrong's article, "Modeling a mood," in the January 1989 issue of Model Railroader magazine).

• There is also a Christmas card painting depicting a half-asleep Santa Claus and his team of equally tired reindeer drinking coffee in the "Nighthawk Cafe."

• There was a joke greeting card showing a group of wide-eyed ducks in the diner with a hungry alligator or crocodile waiting outside.

• Starbucks has created promotional material including take home mugs with the Nighthawks painting on them. The Phillies Cigars sign has been changed to make the diner a Starbucks.

External links

• Nighthawks at The Art Institute of Chicago.
• Sister Wendy's American Masterpieces discussion of Nighthawks at The Artchive.