Visual Criticism of Nighthawks Painting by Edward Hopper

Type of Visual & Meaning in Visuals: 

Edward Hopper, as the artist, depicted the loneliness of existing in such a large city, which is seen through the four individuals lost in their thoughts rather than engaging with one another.

 

One of the potential meanings of this painting is the isolation of living and how it can be so consuming to feel alone despite people always being around you, yet the loneliness outwins. 

 

Another meaning derived from the art is this sense of paranoia and existentialism that is representative of the character's emotions, which is more connected to the American reaction to living in a world after Pearl Harbor was attacked.  

• Symbolic Sign: 

  • Nighthawks seem representative of a symbolic sign because the painting has a deeper meaning that can be decided from the viewer's perspective, which makes it arbitrary.

    • Nighthawks potentially refer to the isolation of living and how it can be all so consuming to feel alone despite there always be people around you, yet the loneliness outwins. 

• Visual Metonymy: 

  • It is also a Visual Metonymys because the image has cultural, historical, and emotional implications discovered through analysis. 

    • Emotional & Cultural: The implication of holding paranoia as a burden and dealing with existentialism due to the painting's birth during the attack of Pearl Harbor. 

    • Historical: living through World War II and what it means for Americans as our country finally plays a significant role.

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Signified of the Visuals:

• Landscape: The darkness outside illustrates the inability of the public to enjoy being outside. 

  • The outside world lacks a sense of joy due to the hyper-focus on death and destruction from war. 

• Dinner: The only light source comes from inside the dinner. 

  • A sense of hope?:

    • The notion that communal spaces are still necessary because they provide community space to grieve and exist together, even if those mental processes must be conducted alone.

  • Human vulnerability (Art In Context, 2022):

    • People are still expected to a certain extent, to live business as usual, making it harder to connect since thoughts of war consume people. It is, then, difficult to be vulnerable verbally, but it shows in one's physical nature.

  • The Characters (Art In Context, 2022):

    • There are four leading figures in the painting. They all seem lost in their world and have no ability or intention to connect. However, there is a need to still be around others. 

      • This sensation of solitude and needing to concentrate on one's thoughts.

    • The woman:

      • She is miserable.

        • Her face is emotionless and downcast.

        • She is dolled up and out, yet, she cannot fake her struggle. She seems to be experiencing a lack of joy. 

  • The Man with the Women: 

    • He has features expressing a sense of stoicism and detachment from his current reality. 

      • Lack of presence.

    • He is smoking, trying to seek a release, but he cannot grasp it. 

  • The Man Near the Window: 

    • He is a bit of a mystery since he is faceless. 

    • He is representative of someone seeking comfort in the normalcy of an environment like dinner, even if they want to sit in their solitude. 

  • Employee: 

    • He is focusing his energy on work. 

    • He appears tired from having to put on a face that appeases the customer all-day. 

      • His work presence slowly breaks as he becomes more tired by the night's end. 

• Cultural Implications (Art In Context, 2022):

  • While World War II and the bombing of Pearl Harbor were not at the forefront of Hopper's mind while creating NightHawks, it serves to understand the unconscious cultural mindset of that time. The painting's overall eeriness and somber mood reflect the feeling of living durian WWII. 

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My Opinion on Audience Analysis: 

​​I found visual criticism compelling and beneficial when examining visual works because it allows one to draw in-depth and nuanced meaning from the images. Visual criticism is not limited to what is occurring in the painting but also the coloring, special features, and lighting of images to garner further meaning. Unlike some rhetoric scholarship, visual criticism does not just study the artifact but the circumstances that the artifact was created, which may highlight cultural and sociological elements of the images. One limitation of the method is that it depends on the analyzer's perspective and can be altered depending on who is examining the visual artifact. There may never be one concise, agreed-upon meaning for the image. Visual criticism allows one to explore the work without any boundaries of average rhetorical analysis since there are visual and contextual elements to study.