De graveur 1929

Johanna Machwirth made this etching, "De graveur," using very fine marks, the kind that come from sustained concentration. I’m thinking about the artist, head down, peering through a magnifying glass. It’s a drawing of someone doing a craft, a real old-school job with tiny tools, and Machwirth is carefully rendering every tiny tonal shift with etching and drypoint. It looks like she’s using a pretty dark ink and really wiping it back to get those crisp lines and rich blacks. I can almost see the burr of the drypoint giving a velvety texture to the shadows. There’s this tradition of artists depicting themselves or other artists at work. It’s like they’re saying, “Hey, look at what we do. We make things by hand!” Machwirth is participating in this legacy, celebrating the labor and skill involved in making art, or craft, visible. It’s a kind of artistic solidarity.