Nighthawks Painting Essay

Artwork, such as paintings, can be a very delicate thing to produce, imagine, and understand. Not everyone can make a wonderful masterpiece nor can we all make the same exact replica of one piece of art. Every piece of art is different and unique and that is the beauty of creativity. One creative artwork would be Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. It is a 1942 oil painting that portrays people in a downtown diner late at night. The period in which this artwork was created would be the modernism period which is from the changes in the Western culture from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The style of this piece would be photorealism based upon the fact that this artwork looks like an actual photograph that I can simply hold up. Another great oil-painted restaurant-themed painting would be Café Terrace at Night created in 1888 by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. The time period for this piece would be post-Impressionist which was a French art movement from 1886-1905. The style of the artwork would be Cloisonnism which is a style of post-Impressionist painting with flat forms and are separated by dark colors.

When I look at Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks painting, I see a diner called ‘Phillies’ open late into the night when most people are asleep beside the night owls. I visualize myself being outside on the street corner looking in, almost wondering if I should go in. The man and woman may be a couple, married, or simply friends. From far away it gives the illusion that they may be holding hands but examining the painting from a much closer view shows that they are not. Perhaps they may be strangers and have just met, two lonely people looking for some comfort. The man and the woman seem to have blank emotionless faces, but it seems to be that they may be talking to the server. The server up close almost looks as if he may be uncomfortable due to his unusual facial features. Hopper made sure to add this characteristic into his piece and not give anyone else facial expressions besides him. It almost makes me want to go into the diner to say hello and strike up a conversation to get to know him more. The man who has his back turned to us also makes me want to question why he is there by himself, this late at night. Perhaps he may be talking to the server, but I feel as if he is not talking to anyone and he is just sitting there alone at the diner all hunched over. Not knowing his facial expression gives me the curiosity to go inside and see for myself if he is sad or not. Part of me does not want to know because somehow I feel like I may not like the answer.

Overall the people in this painting seem to be lonely and perhaps lost within their own worlds. Edward Hopper was known to make his characters this way throughout all of his paintings, “The people in these paintings seem isolated in the midst of a lonely world recorded by Hopper…” Courtney Graham Donnell (1981). Besides the people in this diner, I feel as if Hopper wanted us to focus more on the diner itself. It acts as if it is the island of light within the darkness of this town. It must symbolize hope in a way, making you know that there can always be lightly found even in the darkest of times. The diner makes you almost feel invited with its fluorescent lighting laying on the sidewalks as you stand outside, however, there is no door to enter. Perhaps he did not intentionally make the door visible, so the viewer never had a way to truly get closer to the characters.

Within the painting Nighthawks, there are also many different composition works within this piece. For instance, Hopper is very consistent with his line work. the sidewalk, Diner, chair seats, countertop, and windows are all lined up together throughout the painting. Hopper made a point to make only the diner be the only Illuminating object within the painting. The shadows outside of the diner give almost an Erie and sinister feeling as you have no idea what may lie within those buildings. However, with the darkness lurking and looming, the light within the diner does balance the painting out. This of course would bring the value of the painting to life by having the diner seem so inviting to the viewer, as it's there in the darkness. Even though there may not be many satisfying colors within this piece, Hopper creates a powerful message without having to say a word. “With all they contain, still everybody says how bare are the paintings Edward Hopper paints, and they are; but the emptiness is complete. There can be a kind of satisfaction in this.” Landers, J. (1986).

When I gaze upon the artwork of Vincent Van Gogh’s Cafe Terrace at Night, I am immersed in the beauty of this painting. Staring at it makes me feel as if I am standing just outside of this cafe and focusing on the nightlife going on just ahead. The dozen or so people sitting on the terrace seem to be having a grand old time. However many of those people are not strongly detailed as most, they are more so there to fill in the scenery. I noticed that the lines of the composition within this painting are drawing me towards the incoming horse and carriage in the center, again making me feel as if I myself was just strolling along and stopped to gaze down this streetway. Also as I analyzed the painting more, for a piece that is of the night there does not seem to be any black in the sky. Instead, he directs us towards the sky with his star-filled dazzling sky, one of the brighter pieces of the painting. “Although a night scene, the painting is devoid of the color black. Vincent states in a letter to his sister that, to him, the night is richer in color than a day”, as quoted from “Café Terrace at Night, 1888 by Vincent Van Gogh.” (2009).

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Within the painting Café Terrace at Night, There are also many different composition works within this piece. As you may notice there is so much yellow color within the nighttime atmosphere that it draws your eye to every aspect of the painting. There are also many dark spots and shadows looming around the buildings, however, the stars in the sky are brighter than ever to catch your gaze and have you shift your focus from the dark to light. Time and motion are also a composition work that Gogh has put into this piece. As you imagine yourself standing there on the cobblestones you can see the wind moving through the tree leaves, you notice the pedestrians walking and going about their night down the way, you notice the server in the cafe is interacting with the customers and many of them are immersed in their conversations. Gogh also paid attention to the textures of the cobblestone walkway, the tree leaves, the sides of the buildings, and most importantly the sky.

Edward Hopper's Nighthawks painting was made weeks after Pearl Harbor happened. With this being said perhaps he's portraying the atmosphere of America through this Diner at the time of the beginning of World War II. I would say the melancholy vibe that this painting is giving off is a sign of the times for the United States. I’m sure the subjects are meant to reflect the emptiness of so many young men overseas that would otherwise be out and about in town had they not been sent overseas. Looking next to the lonely man on his left side there appears to be some sort of paper. I would portray it as the newspaper and perhaps he is reading about the devastations of the war. This would explain why everyone has emotionless or down faces within the diner, the bad news was just beginning for them.

Vincent Van Gogh's Cafe Terrace at night was influenced by one of the cafes that he visited quite often. He decided to start painting at night as he preferred this look as opposed to the daytime. However, he did not want to use black in his painting for the sky. As he wrote a letter to his sister he expressed his enthusiasm about how he was able to come up and replicate the sky without using black. Allas the birth of the Starry Nights was born as this was the first time he used it. Perhaps initially there was no prior artwork to inspire him, but he created his own inspiration from this art piece. Leading to a series of beautiful paintings and creating a stigma in a society where his Starry Night pieces are on mugs and backpacks, who knew?

Hopper's inspiration for his paintings, and perhaps Nighthawks as well would have come from the social realism painters were using with their works at the time. He uses descriptive and creative realism in his paintings by how he saw the world from his studio. Hopper paints more of an alone aspect within his artwork but within this particular piece, he was attempting to make the feeling and mood of being alone, but also possibly sad of the start of the war.

In Gogh's Cafe Terrace at Night painting, I believe he referred to the styles of post-impressionism. He was an artist who regularly would paint things of an unnatural aspect and twist on things. He connected more deeply within his paintings and painted them how he wanted them to be viewed. “The impact of Impressionism in the artist’s art is apparent as there is the use of bright colors. This was the first time van Gogh drew, now known as his signature style, the blue sky with unrealistic stars which he used again in the same month in his other painting, Starry Night Over the Rhone, and in The Starry Night executed the year after.” Nitin. (2014). Gough is always stepping out of the norm with his art, he simply puts his own twist on his paintings that makes them more optimistic (for instance the use of yellow in all of his paintings is used to make things more cherishing) than other artists may have at the time.

Both of these works are astonishing and have made great impacts on artists after them. Each painting is portrayed and based on a real-life Diner/Cafe that the artists would usually visit. The perspectives in these paintings have the viewer looking towards the cafe or diner from a distance, which may be intended to give the feeling that the viewer is a passerby on the street. Both are paintings of cafes at night, which by today’s societal standards is not a common place to frequent, at least in our culture that is. Both are oil paintings, which were the most common use paintings in their times. The paintings have been replicated and parodied by various artists since they have been created, Nighthawks has many more references, however. These were painted during productive booms in the respective artists' lifetimes; Van Gogh's being during his time in Arles in 1888, and Hoppers being during the 1930s and 40s when he created some of his most famous works. Alas, unfortunately, both paintings were completed shortly before the artist's health began to decline. Van Gogh had a mental breakdown shortly after completing Cafe Terrace and Hopper had several surgeries due to prostate issues. Given the similarities of these paintings, they are both magnificent and both are in museums to this day. These two great painters will be recognized for their work for a long time.

Reference List

1. “Café Terrace at Night, 1888 by Vincent Van Gogh.” (2009). Retrieved January 12, 2019, from https://www.vincentvangogh.org/cafe-at-night.jsp
2. Courtney Graham Donnell. (1981). Edward Hopper: The Art and the Artist. Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago (1973-1982),75(4), 2-3. doi:10.2307/4104228
3. Landers, J. (1986). Nighthawks. Mississippi Review, 15(1/2), 56-67. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20134084
4. Levin, G., & Hopper, E. (1996). Edward Hopper's 'Nighthawks', Surrealism, and the War. Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, 22(2), 181-200. doi:10.2307/4104321
5. Nitin. (2014, March 20). Café terrace at night by Vincent van Gogh. Retrieved January 12, 2019, from http://artpaintingartist.org/cafe-terrace-at-night-by-vincent-van-gogh/