Nighthawks

The piece I chose, Nighthawks drawn by Edward Hopper, is one of the most famous pieces of art created in the 20th century. The piece is an image of a diner in Greenwich Village in New York City which has since been knocked down. It is well know that Hopper began to draw his piece after the attacks on Pearl Harbor. There is a consensus among art historians that the emotional effects of that disaster on our country’s soil created a movement of art surrounding painting urban landscapes and pictures of Americana in general. Hopper’s work mainly focused on these themes in his matured career, yet he also focused many of his pieces on aspects of the human figure. As an American contemporary artist, Hopper shared similar themes with the work of John Solan and George Bellows; however he did not place as much detail on the enormity and glamour of the urban landscape, but more on the shape and light-quality of the city to represent his vision of a desolate and dangerous environment. The influence of Nighthawks can be seen in many painters’ pieces of art in usually a straightforward way as homage to Hopper’s image of the bar.

Sources:
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/111628
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nighthawks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Hopper