Edward Hopper’s oeuvre appears like a record of a parallel-universe mid-century America… the mood, the architecture, the fashions of its residents all seem familiar, but it’s cleaner, emptier, lonelier than anything of this world.
Nighthawks, his most famous piece, was completed soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, as the whole of America wondered where the next attack might be coming from. And doesn’t this fact just shine a different light on the ennui in the faces and postures of these characters?
Decades of sleuthing have failed to uncover the location of this specific diner, making it most likely to be an amalgamation of the local staples of the artist’s Greenwich Village neighbourhood.
Josephine, Hopper’s wife, modeled for the woman in the painting.
This is just one of Hopper’s many works that focuses on a window, a transparent pane separating the inside from the outside, offering us unprotected, voyeuristic glimpses into the lives of others.
The framing of our four characters — all window, no door — sets them afloat on an island of light, in the sea of lonely darkness surrounding. The diner, a lighthouse, shining out into dimming America on the precipice of war.
The waiter seems to be wearing a ‘Soda Jerk’ hat… but without the usual tell-tale stripes.
“The term Soda Jerk came from the action the fountain attendant made when pulling the soda draft arm. This jerking motion coined the phrase “Soda Jerk.” The origin and date of the phrase are unknown” — sodajerksusa.com
You can buy a pack of 4 on Amazon for $4.08 (+ $7.00 Shipping & Import Fees Deposit to Canada)
‘Phillies’ is not the name of the diner, but rather a brand of American cigars. “America’s No1 Cigar” according to the sign.
Only 5¢ at the time!
Amazon doesn’t cell cigars, but you can buy a Phillies Blunt elsewhere, for 95¢. One review, by Shahid, reads: i am phillies lover. i love cigar
A shadowy silhouette of someone in the second window on the second floor with the open blinds?
The triangular shadow the solitary man casts on the sidewalk…
The empty storefront, with a lone cash register.
Does that sign in the window read “Closed” or “For Sale”?
What light casts that shadow beneath the cash register in the empty store?
Is it me or does that water bottle looks like a baby bottle from this distance?
I like to imagine there’s a baby sitting alone on the stool besides the couple, but she’s just too little for us to see.
The server is asking the baby if she wants a refill.
The coffee is 73.3% gone. The hot water is half-way there.
“On its first showing in late 1942, the painting which took Hopper a month-and-a-half-to complete, was bought for $3,000 by the Art Institute of Chicago where it remains to this day.” — The Search for Edward Hoppers Nighthawks Diner
