Nighthawks in the imagination

Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks" "an emblem of New York City"? Really? I always thought it looked like Chicago or LA or somewhere else. I guess I was mistaken.

I don't usually skim the op-ed pages of the NYT, but today, I saw yesterday's, and stopped at this essay about trying to find the actual location of Hopper's most famous work, which I'm sure you remember from dorm rooms everywhere. And no, it doesn't really depict Marilyn, James Dean, and Elvis after hours.

["Nighthawks", Hopper said in an interview..., “was suggested by a restaurant on Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet.” The location was pinpointed by a Hopper expert, Gail Levin, as the “empty triangular lot” where Greenwich meets 11th Street and Seventh Avenue, otherwise known as Mulry Square. This has become accepted city folklore. Greenwich Village tour guides point to the lot, now owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and tell visitors that Hopper’s diner stood there.} Jeremiah Moss, NYT Monday, July 5, 2010.

I'm looking at it in a book right now. Too much sidewalk, which is too clean. My eye keeps being drawn to the empty space in the lower left foreground, which seems slightly distended, as if by a fisheye lens.

When I think of Hopper, I think of more of the wide open spaces, which I imagine to be in other, less crowded parts of the country. A house bordered by weedy fields. A first floor motel room. So looking at the plates in "Edward Hopper and the American Imagination", I realize my memory does not match the reality exactly. As I page through the book, I see that he did paint New York scenes, but the harsh, clear sunlight of the daytime paintings which are set elsewhere are more vivid in my memory. My imaginary NYC, my imaginary Edward Hopper paintings, and Edward Hopper's imaginary NYC do not line up.

The consensus seems to be that the "Nighthawks" diner existed only in his imagination.