For that reason, the work is often seen as an expression of wartime alienation. Ī review of the page on which Nighthawks is entered shows (in Edward Hopper’s handwriting) that the intended name of the work was actually Night Hawks and that the painting was completed on January 21, 1942.Įditors’ Tip: Staying Up Much Too Late: Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks and the Dark Side of the American Psyche by Gordon TheisenĪccording to the journal kept by Hopper’s wife Josephine, the Nighthawks painting was completed on January 21st, 1942 in New York, within weeks following the bombing of Pearl Harbour. Erik Jendresen and Stuart Dybek also wrote short stories inspired by this painting. ![]() ![]() A special issue of Der Spiegel included five brief dramatizations that built five different plots around the painting one, by screenwriter Christof Schlingensief, turned the scene into a chainsaw massacre. Wolf Wondratschek’s poem “ Nighthawks: After Edward Hopper’s Painting” imagines the man and woman sitting together in the diner as an estranged couple: “I bet she wrote him a letter/ Whatever it said, he’s no longer the man / Who’d read her letters twice.” Joyce Carol Oates wrote interior monologues for the figures in the painting in her poem “Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, 1942″. Several writers have explored how the customers in Nighthawks came to be in a diner at night, or what will happen next. ” data-medium-file=”×430.jpg” data-large-file=”×430.jpg” src=”×430.jpg” alt=”Edward Hopper’s preliminary sketch of Nighthawks” data-lazy-srcset=” 644w, ×100.jpg 150w, ×90.jpg 135w” data-lazy-sizes=”(max-width: 644px) 100vw, 644px” data-lazy-src=”×430.jpg?is-pending-load=1″ srcset=”data:image/gif base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7″> Edward Hopper’s preliminary sketch of Nighthawks ” data-medium-file=”×430.jpeg” data-large-file=”×430.jpeg” src=”×430.jpeg” alt=”Edward Hopper, Close-up of Nighthawks, 1942″ data-lazy-srcset=” 644w, ×100.jpeg 150w, ×90.jpeg 135w” data-lazy-sizes=”(max-width: 644px) 100vw, 644px” data-lazy-src=”×430.jpeg?is-pending-load=1″ srcset=”data:image/gif base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7″> Edward Hopper, Close-up of Nighthawks, 1942 Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue (1931) by Georgia O’Keeffe. It is a picture of city life in the small hours when an unnatural silence and an uncanny stillness take hold, tugging suggestively at the senses of hearing and vision. ![]() Psychologically speaking, these people are isolates, thrown together as a group, but also locked within themselves, prey to their own fears and fancies. Beyond its reach, anything might be happening in the darkness. Several individuals – the nighthawks of the title – are gathered together in the brightly lit window of a downtown diner or cafe that spills its pale bluish light out into the street, casting a shadow on the pavement, yet barely holding a threatening inrush of darkness at bay. It is a picture that speaks of the alienating presence of the modern city. It is hard to know precisely why, except, perhaps, for the fact that we all recognize something of its truthfulness from within our own life experience. Hopper’s stunningly cinematic picture Nighthawks is one of the most reproduced paintings in the history of art. Nighthawks edward hopper meaning of the stillness
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