Nighthawks

According to Edward Hopper, Nighthawks was inspired by "a restaurant on New York's Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet." The image, with its carefully constructed composition and lack of narrative, has a timeless quality that transcends its particular locale. The painting shows an all-night diner with its three customers, all lost in their own thoughts. Fluorescent lights had just come into use in the early 1940s, allowing this all-night diner to emit an eerie glow like a beacon on the dark street corner. Hopper eliminated any reference to an entrance and the viewer, drawn to the light, is shut out from the scene by a seamless wedge of glass. The four anonymous and uncommunicative night owls seem as separate and remote from the viewer as they are from one another. One of the best-known images of 20th-century art, it has been reworked and parodied countless times. Nighthawks has become an icon of American culture.