Nighthawks, Nova York, Estados Unidos (Nighthawks) - Edward Hopper

                                                     
Nighthawks (Nighthawks) - Edward Hopper
Nova York - Estados Unidos
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Estados Unidos
OST - 84x152 - 1942

Nighthawks (literalmente, "Aves da Noite", "Gaviões da Noite" ou "Falcões da Noite") é uma pintura de 1942 de Edward Hopper que retrata pessoas sentadas num restaurante do centro da cidade durante a noite. É considerada a obra mais famosa de Hopper, assim como uma das mais reconhecidas da arte americana.
Alguns meses depois de ser concluído foi vendido ao Art Institute of Chicago por $3,000 e tem permanecido lá desde então.
Hopper começou a pintá-la imediatamente após o ataque a Pearl Harbor, num Domingo a 7 de Dezembro de 1941. Após o evento, houve um sentimento generalizado de tristeza por todo o país, um sentimento que é retratado na pintura. A rua está vazia fora do restaurante e no interior nenhuma das três pessoas no balcão está aparentemente olhando ou conversando com os outros, todos estão perdidos nos seus próprios pensamentos. Dois são um casal, enquanto o terceiro é um homem sentado sozinho, de costas para o espectador. O trabalhador do restaurante, olhando por cima do seu trabalho, parece estar a olhar para fora da janela, para trás dos clientes. O canto do restaurante é de vidro curvado ligado em ambos lados. O clima será quente, com base nas roupas usadas pelos clientes. Não há sobretudos em evidência e a blusa da mulher é de manga curta. Do outro lado da rua são o que parecem ser janelas abertas numa segunda loja. A luz do restaurante abunda pela rua fora apanhando até uma das janelas do outro lado da rua. Este retrato da vida urbana moderna, como o vazio ou a solidão é um tema comum em todo o trabalho de Hopper. É nitidamente delineada pelo fato de que o homem de costas para nós parece mais solitário por causa do casal sentado ao lado dele. Se olharmos com mais atenção, fica evidente que não há maneira de sair da zona do bar, como as três paredes formam um triângulo que cria uma espécie de armadilha que encurrala os clientes. É também notável que o bar não tem porta visível para o exterior, o que ilustra a ideia de confinamento e aprisionamento. Hopper negou que tinha a intenção de o comunicar em Nighthawks, mas admitiu que "inconscientemente, provavelmente estava a pintar a solidão de uma grande cidade." Na altura da sua produção, as luzes fluorescentes tinham acabado de ser desenvolvidas, talvez por isso a luz que está a contribuir para o jantar está lançando um brilho estranho sobre o mundo exterior, quase breu preto. Um anúncio para os cigarros "Phillies" é destaque em cima do restaurante.
O termo "falcão da noite" ou "gaviões da noite", é usada figurativamente para descrever alguém que fica acordado até tarde, e é um nome compartilhado com a família real de pássaros chamados (naturalmente) Falcões. A cena foi supostamente inspirada por um restaurante (já demolido), em Greenwich Village, lar de Hopper no bairro de Manhattan. O lote agora vago, é geralmente associado com o local que é conhecido como ex-Mulry Square, no cruzamento da Seventh Avenue South, Greenwich Avenue e West 11th Street. No entanto, segundo o The New York Times, isso não pode ser o local do jantar, que inspirou a pintura, porque um posto de gasolina esteve a ocupar o lote durante 1930 a 1970.
Upon completing the canvas in the late winter of 1942, Hopper placed it on display at Rehn's, the gallery at which his paintings were normally placed for sale. It remained there for about a month. On St. Patrick's Day, Edward and Jo Hopper attended the opening of an exhibit of the paintings of Henri Rousseau at the Museum of Modern Art, which had been organized by Daniel Catton Rich, the director of the Art Institute of Chicago. Rich was in attendance, along with Alfred Barr, the director of the Museum of Modern Art. Barr spoke enthusiastically of Gas, which Hopper had painted a year earlier, and "Jo told him he just had to go to Rehn's to see Nighthawks. In the event it was Rich who went, pronounced Nighthawks 'fine as a Homer', and soon arranged its purchase for Chicago." The sale price was $3,000. The painting has remained in the collection of the Art Institute ever since.
The scene was supposedly inspired by a diner (since demolished) in Greenwich Village, Hopper's neighborhood in Manhattan. Hopper himself said the painting "was suggested by a restaurant on Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet." Additionally, he noted that "I simplified the scene a great deal and made the restaurant bigger."
This reference has led Hopper aficionados to engage in a search for the location of the original diner. The inspiration for this search has been summed up on the blog of one of these searchers: "I am finding it extremely difficult to let go of the notion that the Nighthawks diner was a real diner, and not a total composite built of grocery stores, hamburger joints, and bakeries all cobbled together in the painter's imagination." A Bickford's Restaurant a few blocks from Greenwich Avenue has been proposed as one possible location."
The spot usually associated with the former location is a now-vacant lot known as Mulry Square at the intersection of Seventh Avenue South, Greenwich Avenue, and West 11th Street, about seven blocks west of Hopper's studio on Washington Square. However, according to an article by Jeremiah Moss in The New York Times, this cannot be the location of the diner that inspired the painting as a gas station occupied that lot from the 1930s to the 1970s.
Moss located a land-use map in a 1950s municipal atlas showing that "Sometime between the late '30s and early '50s, a new diner appeared near Mulry Square." Specifically, the diner was located immediately to the right of the gas station, "not in the empty northern lot, but on the southwest side, where Perry Street slants." This map is not reproduced in the Times article but is shown on Moss's blog.
Moss comes to the conclusion that Hopper should be taken at his word: the painting was merely "suggested" by a real-life restaurant, he had "simplified the scene a great deal," and he "made the restaurant bigger." In short, there probably never was a single real-life scene identical to the one that Hopper had created, and if one did exist, there is no longer sufficient evidence to pin down the precise location. Moss concludes, "the ultimate truth remains bitterly out of reach."
Starting shortly after their marriage in 1924, Edward Hopper and his wife Josephine (Jo) kept a journal in which he would, using a pencil, make a sketch-drawing of each of his paintings, along with a precise description of certain technical details. Jo Hopper would then add additional information about the theme of the painting.
A review of the page on which Nighthawks is entered shows (in Edward Hopper's handwriting) that the intended name of the work was actually Night Hawks and that the painting was completed on January 21, 1942.
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 bar, or that the appearance of one of the "nighthawks" was tweaked in order to relate to the original meaning of the word:
Night + brilliant interior of cheap restaurant. Bright items: cherry wood counter + tops of surrounding stools; light on metal tanks at rear right; brilliant streak of jade green tiles 3/4 across canvas--at base of glass of window curving at corner. Light walls, dull yellow ocre door into kitchen right.
Very good looking blond boy in white (coat, cap) inside counter. Girl in red blouse, brown hair eating sandwich. Man night hawk (beak) in dark suit, steel grey hat, black band, blue shirt (clean) holding cigarette. Other figure dark sinister back--at left. Light side walk outside pale greenish. Darkish red brick houses opposite. Sign across top of restaurant, dark--Phillies 5c cigar. Picture of cigar. Outside of shop dark, green. Note: bit of bright ceiling inside shop against dark of outside street--at edge of stretch of top of window. In January 1942, Jo confirmed her preference for the name. In a letter to Edward's sister Marion she wrote, "Ed has just finished a very fine picture--a lunch counter at night with 3 figures. Night Hawks would be a fine name for it. E. posed for the two men in a mirror and I for the girl. He was about a month and half working on it."