Hopper was born in a shipbuilding community and had a passion for ships and boats. He wanted to be a nautical architect. The influence of ships and boats can be seen in his paintings, both directly and indirectly. Hopper made many paintings of boats and ships. Paintings such as The Cat Boat, Sailing, Tramp Steamer, The Long Leg, etc are such examples. There are four figures inside, three sit around the wooden countertop, which takes up most of the space inside the diner and appears almost triangular in its shape. The waitron, who wears a white uniform and hat, is on the inside of this space, behind the counter. He is looking ahead at something with his mouth partially open in a grimace of some sort busy with something behind the counter. If any one painting stands for mid-twentieth-century America, Nighthawks does. In fact, Edward Hopper’s 1942 canvas of four figures in a late-night New York City diner may qualify as the most vivid evocation of that country and time in any form. For Evan Puschak, better known as the video essayist Nerdwriter, the experience of Nighthawks goes well beyond the visual realm. “I’ve always thought of him in a sort of aromatic way,” says Puschak of the artist, “because his paintings evoke the same kinds of feelings and memories that I get from the sense of smell, as if he was channeling directly into my limbic system, excavating moments that were stored deeply away.” Hopper was also moved by Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Night Watch (1642) housed in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Hopper is reported to have said the following about Rembrandt’s The Night Watch painting: “[it is the] most wonderful thing of his I have seen, its past belief in its reality – it almost amounts to deception”. In Nighthawks, no one seems to be interested in communicating with anyone. While the barista seems to be asking or looking at the man with the cigarette, the man does not bother to look at him. There’s not even a visual connection. People are not even looking at other people. This enhances the isolating sensation one gets by looking at the painting.

Premiere: OMD, 'Night Café' (Vile Electrodes 'B-Side the C-Side' Remix)". Slicing Up Eyeballs. August 5, 2013 . Retrieved September 25, 2013.

Furthermore, this famous diner painting has been the inspiration for modern-day pop culture, from movies, literature, paintings, and many other artistic modalities. For example popular TV series like The Simpsons, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Joyce Carol Oates’ poem titled Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, 1942, the music album titled Nighthawks at the Diner (1975) by Tom Waits, and many others. are partly lit by an unseen streetlight, which projects its own mix of light and shadow. As a final note, the bright interior light causes some of the surfaces within the diner to be reflective. This is clearest in the case of the

During his time in Paris, Hopper was notably influenced by the Impressionists, namely by artists like Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, among others and how they painted scenes of modern life living in the city. Hopper also reportedly painted street scenes during his visits in Paris, a style called en plein air, which means “in the open air”; he also painted from live models. For an image so often associated with loneliness, Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (1942) is strangely seductive. Solitary, hunched figures perch on stools along the slender countertop of an all-night diner. Bright overhead lighting casts a theatrical play of shadows on the deserted sidewalk outside, with the sleek, curving form of the diner’s long window intersecting with the grid of storefronts behind. The famous painting offers a crucible of narrative potential, capturing the melancholic romance of city life: its endless possibilities—and inevitable failures—for connection. I mentioned earlier that you can hear the painting. Take a look and try to stand where the viewer is standing. Or perhaps go inside the cafe, get a stool, and sit down with the people. What can you hear? Perhaps the sound of porcelain being kept on wooden cabinets or the burning of the cigarette, or the man sipping his drink. One sound you’ll definitely listen to is the silence. Not a single word is being spoken, the streets are empty and the world is asleep. a b Gemünden, Gerd (1998). Framed Visions: Popular Culture, Americanization, and the Contemporary German and Austrian Imagination. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. pp.9–12. ISBN 0-472-10947-2. a b Jeremiah Moss (June 10, 2010). "Jeremiah's Vanishing New York: Finding Nighthawks, Coda". Jeremiah's Vanishing New York . Retrieved March 4, 2013.Known as one of the more popular, and widely reproduced, American oil paintings from the Modern 20th-century art is Nighthawks (1942) by Edward Hopper. Often described as a “timeless” painting, it depicts an every day – or every night – scene of four people in a diner. This is something almost everyone can relate to, but this painting touches on deeper meanings than a diner countertop. The lighting in Nighthawks (1942) by Edward Hopper; Edward Hopper, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Madrid, Museo Thyssen–Bornemisza, Edward Hopper, June 12–Sept. 16, 2012; Paris, Galeries nationales d’exposition du Grand Palais, Oct. 5, 2012–Jan. 28, 2013 (Paris only). If you were to make a list of all the most famous paintings, there’s a fair chance that the Nighthawks painting by Edward Hopper would be on the list. A cafe in the middle of a crossing, in the middle of the night with just four inhabitants, all together yet separated. And this brilliant structure and composition of the painting enable the viewers not just to see, but hear the painting as well. Jo's handwritten notes about the painting give considerably more detail, including the possibility that the painting's title may have had its origins as a reference to the beak-shaped nose of the man at the counter or that the appearance of one of the "nighthawks" was tweaked to relate to the original meaning of the word:

Hopper found a unique beauty in the “hideous” buildings of the city. But there is another emotion hidden in most of his paintings that makes viewers stare at them. That emotion brilliantly comes out of this painting, but we see it regularly in Hopper’s other creations. It is loneliness. But this is a different type of loneliness. The scene we see Furthermore, if we zoom in on the figures’ skin tones, we see the effects of the light, which gives them a “washed out” look. The light moves onto the pavement outside, illuminating the surrounding area, but as we move further into the street, it becomes darker suggesting more lifelessness around the diner.

Next, we will look at a formal analysis and Hopper’s artistic style in this painting, for example, the way he utilized color to depict light and dark, his use of line, and of course, the subject matter – just what are we looking at when we see four people sitting in a diner in New York City? Below we look at all these and more. Artist The entire diner is also viewed from an angle through the perspective of an unknown viewer, which is presumably us; there is an element of voyeurism in the way Hopper depicted the Nighthawks scene. Furthermore, Hopper utilized the placement of horizontal and vertical lines to create a focal point, which is the diner.