Edward Hopper
Nighthawks
1942
A painting that always struck me as both, cool and enigmatic. It adorned posters, it straddled the art world and the pop culture world, before pop art.
Painted in 1942 – during turbulent times in a worrying world, Hopper painted this iconic scene that illustrated the human condition of isolation and lonliness that so many of us can connect with.
Hopper later stated, “Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.”
In the light of a post Pearl Harbour New York, did Hopper see the diner as a beacon of hope, of safety in a drak world? Was it about a shared contemplation of what was to come?
What I do know is that it is beautiful and iconic and it’s stayed with me since the moment I first saw it.
What was it that grabbed me?
Narrative.
The painting forces you to create a narrative, You can’t just passively look at the painting – you have to engage and think about the people involved in the scene.
How does this approach inform my style?
I love Hopper’s style, and it definitely influences my own, but the thing I take from him is to think about narrative in a painting.
What clues do I want to give the viewer? What stories am I telling, or want the viewer to tell themselves?
About Edward Hopper
No other artist managed to capture solitude like Edward Hopper. The ‘artist of empty spaces’ was the perfect artist at the rgith time in America during the Great Depression.
Hopper used empty spaces, pauses, to set the tone and reflect a world that was pondering its present and future.
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