Reflection
The diner’s sharp light brightens the sleepy streets. The windows are half shut. It feels like the scene unfolds in the moonlight; I can’t really tell. Maybe the whole painting is lit by the artificial lights.
Now I turn to four strangers, lonely in the night. One man sits there alone, drinking his fill, his back to the glass window. A couple stares into the nothingness. The woman holds an indiscernible object in her hands, her drink steaming (I wonder how the smoke escapes: there is no entry door). The gentleman next to the woman holds a parched cigarette in one hand and an empty glass in another. The waiter, at first glance, looks eager to serve the customers, but with another glance, he too looks lonely, staring outside, to some point in infinity. Each character seems drawn to idle fixation. No one exhibits intimacy, not even the couple standing next to each other.
The glass windows provide no privacy; this setting is a feast for our voyeuristic eyes. We can see the expressions so closely and in vivid detail.
What lies within their expression is harder to conceptualise: the diner remains like a light in the dark. It provides shelter.
I read later that this piece is about urban loneliness. The painting was completed just after the Pearl Harbor attack, a time when people were told to stay alert and indoors.
Overall, this painting evoked a feeling of late-night loneliness.