If the old saying is right, and imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, then Edward Hopper just may be the most adulated artist of all time. And Nighthawks , his 1942 painting of a desolate late-night diner, is his magnum opus.Â
In addition to being one of the American art worldâs most recognizable masterpieces, Nighthawks is also one of its most imitated. From art to film to music to poetry, Hopperâs ode to loneliness has been honored, copied, satirized, and analyzed for more than 70 years. As New York Cityâs Whitney Museum of American Art readies â Hopper Drawing ââthe first major exhibition to highlight Hopperâs creative process, including a film series of the movies that inspired the realistâs workâweâre taking a look at 10 artists who have paid tribute to Hopperâs best-known painting in their own work.Â
Image courtesy Walker Art Center
Pop artist George Segal adapted the same process used to make orthopedic casts to create his life-sized tableaus, which he called âsituation sculptures.â In the case of The Diner , completed in 1966, he used salvaged parts of a real diner to create a Nighthawks -esque sense of isolation .Â
The title, album cover, and lyrics of Tom Waitsâ first live album are all Hopper-inspired. Its working title, Nighthawk Postcards from Easy Street , was changed to reflect the opening line to âEggs and Sausage (In a Cadillac with Susan Michelson),â the third song on the album.
So frequently have filmmakers attempted to give character to Hopperâs famous diner scene that itâs actually considered a television tropeâcalled the âNighthawks Shotââwith its own listing on TVTropes.org . Italian master of horror Dario Argento went there in 1976, when he re-created the diner and its patrons as a set for the giallo film Deep Red .
Image courtesy RalphGoings.com
Tiled Lunch Counter is just one of many diner scenes painted by 85-year-old photorealist Ralph Goings, whose work takes a brighter approach than Hopper in its lighting scheme but evokes a similar sense of alienation.
Five years after Argento did it, director Herbert Ross created a replica of Hopperâs diner for the musical Pennies from Heaven , starring Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters.
Though futuristic in its content and set design, director Ridley Scott cites Nighthawks as a major influence on the look of Blade Runner . In Paul M. Sammonâs Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner , Scott notes, âI was constantly waving a reproduction of this painting under the noses of the production team to illustrate the look and mood I was after.â
Image courtesy Life? Seriously. Funny!
In 1984, Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein told his own pop culture-inspired version of Nighthawks when he painted Boulevard of Broken Dreams , an almost exact replica of Hopperâs original painting, with the former patrons replaced by James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, and Marilyn Monroe, who are being served by Elvis Presley. (Helnweinâs work, in turn, inspired the Green Day song of the same name.)
Only Hopper himself knows for sure what the characters in Nighthawks are thinking about. But Joyce Carol Oates tried imagining those interior monologues in her poem, Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, 1942, focusing mainly on the paintingâs sole female. It begins:
In 2001, Oates revisited Hopper with the essay Nighthawk: A Memoir of Lost Time .
Perhaps Wim Wenders summed up the fascination filmmakers have with Hopper when he told Smithsonian Magazine itâs because, âYou can always tell where the camera is.â In 1997, he was yet another director to re-create Hopperâs unnamed diner for a film-within-a-film in The End of Violence .
Image courtesy iCanvas ART
Legendary street artist Banksy added his own bit of fun to Hopperâs painting with his 2005 parody , in which a shirtless soccer hooligan smashes the dinerâs window in a drunken stupor.
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