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Staying Up Much Too Late: Edward Hopper's Nighthawks and the Dark Side of the American Psyche
Staying Up Much Too Late Edward Hopper's Nighthawks and the Dark Side of the American Psyche Author:Gordon Theisen Staying Up Much Too Late discusses the painting Nighthawks and the painter Edward Hopper and their central importance to twentieth-century American culture. This super-hip survey canvasses topics including individualism, New York City, technology vs. nature, diners (freedom/transience), lust, women, money/capitalism, experience (as a defining th... more »eme of American philosophy and aesthetics), and film noir. What links all these together is the paintings pessimistic take on American culture, which it also seems to epitomize. Until Nighthawks, American art centered on the optimistic. Until Hopper there was no one to draw out the relationship between the contradictory sides of the American psyche. Nighthawks, as dark and desolate as it is, actually manages to speak to both.« less