"Nighthawks." That's the name of the painting. It seems appropriate. It reminds me of college students, late at night. Awake, but barely so. Drained from writing papers. Trickling in and out of the all-night breakfast joints.Nighthawks was painted in 1942 by Edward Hopper. Immediately after Pearl Harbor. It seems to be an accurate representation of human existence after tragedy: everything is distant, vacant, empty. We can't communicate, we can't socialize. We can only sit silently and wonder why it happened.
So why do we love the painting? Why is it famous? Why are prints of it so common?
Perhaps it brings comfort, when we are separated and apart. When we can't seem to connect, to understand what's going on. This painting makes us remember that others experience this too; it isn't just us.
Good ideas, Tyler. I like the connections you build between your age group and the painting, and larger groups (the "separated and apart")and the painting. You incorporate just enough history -- the period in which Hopper painted "Nighthawks" -- to ground your posting, and I like the series of questions you ask.
ReplyDeleteI wonder whether there isn't something about Hopper's work that goes farther than reassuring us that everyone feels isolated sometimes. Maybe it romanticizes that isolation too, making us feel noirishly sexy about our distance from others?