Cancelling Machine c. 1938

Samuel Fineman made this drawing of a cancelling machine. I’m curious about this object! What it does and the time it takes to do it. Fineman has delicately rendered this object, and it's as if he’s given it a life of its own. I can imagine the quiet concentration, the focused attention required to bring this machine to life on paper. It must have been slow work. The careful build-up of tones and forms, a meditation on its functionality, and perhaps even on its obsolescence. The machine is obsolete, the hand made image of it is not. It’s amazing to think about artists having conversations with one another across time, inspiring and cross-pollinating each other's work. Art offers us a way of seeing the world through someone else's eyes, inviting us to engage with its ambiguity. We create meaning through this exchange.