Revisiting an American Masterpiece • NIGHTHAWKS

What was this painting about? According to artist Edward Hopper, it wasn't urban alienation or loneliness. It was about something darker.
Painted in 1942, Nighthawks was meant to be about ‘predators in the night’, not loneliness.
Nighthawks is one of the most recognizable paintings in American art. Hopper's best-known work, it took him about a month and a half to complete. It was sold to the Art Institute of Chicago on May 13, 1942, for $3,000 (over $43,000 today).
Though Hopper is best known for capturing urban isolation and loneliness, this was not the intent behind Nighthawks, according to the artist. Hopper said, Nighthawks, “has more to do with the possibility of predators in the night than with loneliness.” Hopper may have been inspired by an Ernest Hemmingway short story-either “The Killers”, which Hopper greatly admired, or from the more philosophical “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”.
This was the atmosphere in which Nighthawks was created. There were new and ominous predators on the world stage in 1942. The future was very uncertain-as uncertain as the darkness surrounding the characters in this painting. And yet, the light of the Nighthawks diner is an island of warmth and safety-a ‘clean, well-lighted place’. That could be a more optimistic view of this painting. What is there to do in a time of darkness and doubt, but to keep living, and working? Congregate in the light, and be alone, together. A message for contemporary times.
Hopper believed that, “In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people.” The subjects in Nighthawks seem to represent the character of 1940s America, romanticized or not.
The painting also evokes a sense of nostalgia for an America of days gone by. However, Nighthawks is more than just a masterful painting. It remains relevant even today as a subtle critique of the modern world, and a portal into a darker side of the American psyche.
Nighthawks may be seen at the Art Institute of Chicago, in Gallery 262. Along with Grant Wood’s American Gothic, it remains the most requested and sought-after painting in their collection, and one of the most recognizable paintings of 20th-century American art.

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Wonderful video! Thank you