Lithograph #2 1934

William Judson Dickerson made this lithograph with delicate, dark lines. The scene is moody and somewhat abstracted: factories and buildings loom, barely visible through the haze. I can imagine Dickerson out on location, squinting to see through the mist, working fast to capture the image before the light changed. What I like about this image is the way he abstracts the scene. The details have disappeared into shadows and the forms seem to blend together. I wonder if he was thinking about those hard-working American artists, like Charles Sheeler or the photographers from the Farm Security Administration? The mood and style is similar, but Dickerson puts his own spin on it. It’s like he saw the world as a series of dissolving shapes, and just translated that to the page. And because he did that, we can see it too.