Nighthawks

Nighthawks (1942) is a table of the American painter Edward Hopper, showing people sitting in a to dine (American typical restaurant) on downtown area late in the night. It is not only the most famous table of Hopper, but also one of most outstanding of American art. It currently forms part of the collection of the Art Institute off Chicago .

The scene is inspired by a to dine (destroyed since) located at Greenwich Village, district where Hopper with Manhattan lived. The street is empty, and inside the to dine , none the characters to the air to look at or of speaking with others, all seem lost in their own thoughts. Two of them form a couple, while third sat only, showing only its back with the spectator. The single waiter of the to dine looks through the window, without looking at the customers. This portrait of the urban life, sometimes impressed of vacuum and loneliness, is a recurrent theme in the work of the artist. By looking at the table more attentively, one notices that one does not see a door allowing to leave the to dine , which illustrates the idea of containment and trap. Hopper denied to have intended to express that in Nighthawks , but it allowed that “unconsciously, probably, I painted the loneliness of a big city”.

According to Francoise Bore-Gall, in his work How to look at a table (editions EPA, 2006), the table would have been inspired Hopper by a news of Hemingway published in 1927 entitled has The Killers in which two killers in vain await their victim in a bar. The thoughtful woman contemplating a piece of paper (a banknote?) represent Joséphine Nivinson, the wife of Hopper as in much of other works.

Nighthawks inspired by many homages and parodies, whose widely diffused poster in which the three people accoudées with the bar are replaced by the pop icons of the American culture which are Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. The table also used in several cartoons, of which Pearls Before Swine , and also in several episodes of the Simpsons. It is also at the origin of the title of third album of Tom Waits, Nighthawks At the Diner . Finally it inspired a scene of the film The End off Violence of Wim Wenders.

Philippe Besson, as for him, used this image as starting point of its book: the back season (Julliard: Paris, 2002)

External bond

the table on the site of Art Institute off Chicago

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