I
So here are the rough notes I came up with while looking at the artwork:
Edward Hopper's Nighthawks (1942) displays the bleak sterility and cold isolation of modern life. I suppose they could all be having coffee before work, but I can’t write a paper on this. Either way, there’s certainly not a party going on in there. I am not going to look at what anyone else has written about Hopper or anything about Hopper’s life. The date of composition for an art work, advertisement, or cd cover is fair game, I think.
If you pick an advertisement, you might talk about the target audience—the visual text’s intended viewer, which includes such details as race, gender, class standing, age, education level, nationality, and so forth—and how the advertisement establishes that target audience. Additionally, if you pick an advertisement talk for a moment about what magazine it appears in. The reader of Cosmo is different than that of Sports Illustrated.
Color—somber, muted, dark hues dominate the scene and suggest darkness and emotional coldness. The scene is night or very early morning.
Sterility—nothing is out of place or unclean inside or outside. For example, the twin coffee pots are polished to a high silver sheen with no trace of human contact.
Position of the figures—four figures.
(2) A man and woman sit beside one another—the couple
(1) guy behind the counter
(1) guy off by himself
The couple—Are their hands barely touching? She stares at something that looks like a piece of paper.
The guy is hunched behind the counter. Is he looking at the man with the woman? Is he doing something behind the counter, or sitting in a chair with his hands resting perhaps on his knees?
Then there is the solitary figure with his back to us sitting at the edge of the bar. Is anyone talking to anyone else? Do we have any idea of what he is doing?
Random ideas—they are together only in their aloneness. No one seems to be doing anything but sitting and staring. Everyone seems to be dressed up, which suggests that they are in a city. The name above the shop, "Phillies," suggests Philadelphia but since there is a cigar with the caption "only 5 cents" underneath it, most likely this is an advertisement rather than the name of the diner.
Outside everything is closed. We see what looks like abandoned shops. No activity on the street.
voyeur—the viewer (us) looks from a distance as if he or she spies on these four figures. The spatial perspective itself further suggests aloofness, solitude, and estrangement.
II
Okay, so now I have some rough notes, I need to decide on a thesis and how I want to arrange the topics. In other words, can I group some of these ideas based on an organizing principle, or can I find an implied order within the visual text itself?
This is the note I made about the order:
I’ll work from the inside of the picture out since the focus of the art seems to be in the center. People/shop --> scene outside the shop --> the viewer. Critics debate about whether there can be a text or not without a reader or viewer, but I’m going to say that without a viewer there isn’t a text.
So here’s my initial idea and this is as much of an outline as I ever make:
1. Introduction.
2. setting.
3. The shop itself.
4. The people in it. I’ll probably break this into several paragraphs.
5. The outside of the shop.
6. The viewer.
7. Conclusion.
III
Let’s see what I can cut and paste from my unedited notes to fill in here:
Introduction: I’ll use “Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (1942) displays the bleak sterility and cold isolation of modern life” as my thesis. I’ll need to fill in something at the start to get the reader’s attention, so I’ll use a statistic, a quote, or (a) descriptive image(s).
Setting: I want to figure out such things as year, time of day if I can, and geographical location. Color—somber, muted, dark hues dominate the scene and suggest darkness and emotional coldness. The scene is night or very early morning.
The name above the shop, “Phillies,” suggests Philadelphia but since there is a cigar with the caption “only 5 cents” underneath it, most likely this is an advertisement rather than the name of the diner. Since the caption is written in English, I going to say we are in America and not, say, France. Hopper did the painting in 1942 and I can also make some educated guesses about the year based on what the people in the picture are wearing. I’m going go with the idea the scene in the picture take place somewhere around the late thirties to mid forties.
The shop itself: Sterility—nothing is out of place or unclean inside or outside. For example, the twin coffee pots are polished to a high silver sheen with no trace of human contact.
Position of the figures—four figures.
(2) A man and woman sit beside one another—the couple
(3) guy behind the counter
(4) guy off by himself
The couple—Are their hands barely touching? She stares at something that looks like a piece of paper.
The guy hunching behind the counter. Is he looking at the man with the woman? Is he doing something behind the counter, or sitting in a chair with his hands resting perhaps on his knees?
Then there is the solitary figure with his back to us sitting at the edge of the bar. Is anyone talking to anyone else? Do we have any idea of what he is doing?
Everybody seems hunched over as if they have been sitting there awhile.
Outside of the shop. Outside everything is closed. We see what looks like abandoned shops. No activity on the street.
The viewer. The viewer (us) looks from a distance as if he or she spies on these four figures. The spatial perspective itself further suggests aloofness, solitude, and estrangement.
Conclusion: I’ll always write this last, but I already have one idea that I will stick in here. Finally, it is ironic that the bare and lifeless cityscapes that dominate so much of Hopper’s art serve as the inspiration and creative breath for his work.
IV
All right enough cutting, pasting, and outlining. I’m going to start expanding out what I have. As I go through, I may come up with new ideas, connections, or an entirely different interpretation and I will revise accordingly. Also, I may discover that I can combine paragraphs or that what I though would take one paragraph needs several.
One last thing: I am not going to use “I.” Instead of saying “I think that Nighthawks is about loneliness,” I would say “Nighthawks is about loneliness.”
People of the Urban Wasteland: Images of Sterility in Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks
“If God were suddenly condemned to live the life
he has made for man, he would surely kill himself” –Alexander Dumas
Somewhere in the darkness of late evening or early dawn four people sit passively in a diner. A man and woman sit barely or perhaps not even aware of one another while a younger man busies himself with some menial task behind the counter. Off to the left, a figure sits with his back towards us seemingly unaware of anyone else’s presence. What savage thought smolders waiting to erupt in flames, in raw words? What festering anger threatens to break the quiet, thick and cold as unheated steel? What cataclysmic, apocalyptic, action will shatter the stillness of this scene? Edward Hopper might answer “none.” Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (1942) displays the bleak sterility and cold isolation of modern American life.
Although pinpointing the exact day, time of day, year, and geographical location of Nighthawks is futile, the painting does give us enough clues to make a fairly educated guess. Hopper completed the painting in 1942. Most likely the action (or lack thereof) in the painting occurs around 1942, give or take a few years. Also, we can see that the two men sitting at the bar wear the type of hats fashionable in that era. “Phillies,” the name above the shop, suggests Philadelphia but since there is a cigar with the caption “only 5 cents” underneath the name, most likely it is an advertisement rather than the name of the diner. Since the caption is written in English, the viewer can logically assume that the diner’s location is America. Obviously, the scene does not take place in the middle of the afternoon. The somber, muted, dark hues outside of the diner suggest the darkness of late evening or very early morning. Furthermore the deep black, dusky blue, and faded gray coloring that painting employs amplify the theme sterility and somberness that fills this piece.
The diner also displays characteristics of sterility. Nothing inside of the diner is out of place or unclean. For example, the twin coffee pots are polished to a high silver sheen with no trace of human contact. Also what is present the picture is as important as what is lacking from the picture. Specifically, the countertop is very clean and free from refuse. The viewer notices saltshakers, a few glasses, napkin holders, a pair of coffee cups, and an empty glass. Where are the dirty dishes, the balled up napkins, the pieces of silverware with bits of food on them, and the menus? Moreover, there is nothing on the walls or windows—no advertisements, menus, welcome signs, smudges, or smears of any kind. The absence of these aforementioned items and telltale traces of human use continue to suggest immobility and lifelessness. The diner looks more like a museum than a restaurant.
[Okay folks, so you see what I am doing in here so far. This is a page and a half in Times New Roman one-inch margins just in case you are wondering].