THE ART OF THE MEANINGFUL
The Central Problem for the Modern Artist Seeking to Work Deeply
Take a look for a moment at Edward Hopper’s 1942 painting, Nighthawks. No doubt you’ve seen it before. But take another look.
Then ask yourself:
What’s up with this crowd?
I’m thinking especially of the man and woman sitting facing us at the counter.
Who goes to a diner at 2:00 a.m. to drink coffee?
And you know, that’s caffeinated coffee in those cups. In the 1940s, you didn’t go to a diner at 2:00 a.m. (in a hat and coat, in a red dress) and ask for decaf. (Sanka? Get outta here!)
Notice: no creamer on the counter, either. These two just want a cup of strong coffee and a cigarette.
Eggs Benny Goodman on toast? No thanks. Just the coffee.
The play they went to tonight at the Helen Hayes Theater on 44th Street ended hours ago. Maybe they had a late dinner afterward. Maybe they had an after-dinner drink, too.
But they still didn’t want to go home.
Wanna stop by the diner? Yeah sure.
I’m thinking: these people are trying to stay up all night.
But why?
Because they’re on the greatest date in the history of romance?
I’m doubtful.
Blow up the image and look closer. He’s just staring into space. She seems to be playing with a matchbook.
They’re not even talking to each other.
I suppose it’s possible they were chatting away with great joie de vivre just a moment ago.
But I’m doubtful.
They’re not kids, either.
Why don’t they want to go home?
I’m thinking it’s because maybe they don’t have a home.
Sure, the guy hangs that suit up somewhere. And she keeps her hair supplies and makeup in a bathroom somewhere.
But it’s not home.
About this painting, the philosopher Francis Slade has said: “It’s not just that nobody in the panting is at home. They aren’t at home—and they know it.”1
Hopper himself once said about Nighthawks: “Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.”
Not just any kind of loneliness, either. But the loneliness of the peculiarly modern self lost in the modern city.
The self conceived as raw autonomy.
The self that has tasked itself to create things of compelling, lasting value—to create a life—out of his or her own meager psychic resources.
That’s a tough assignment. Who can bear it?
Not, I don’t think, our couple at the counter.
In his excellent book, Deep Work, Cal Newport tells us that deep work should be meaningful.
Hopper, however, is painting the lack of meaning. Yet this can be salutary. Such a picture can be a cleansing experience in its own right. It can allow us to look justly and unflinchingly at the world as we happen to have made it.
But what would it mean to picture meaning itself?