Elevated Station 1926

Wanda Gág made this lithograph, titled Elevated Station, sometime in her career, using stone and crayon, plus a whole lot of graphic sensibility! The way she builds up the tones with these almost scribbly, directional marks – it’s a physical record of her looking, her thinking, and her hand moving. Look at the top right, see how the crayon creates the illusion of texture in the dense foliage. It reminds me that artmaking is a process, a journey of discovery rather than just a means to an end. Then notice how the forms warp and tilt, creating a kind of unease or distortion. I love that ambiguity, that sense of things not quite lining up. It’s like Gág is inviting us to question our perceptions. Her work reminds me a little of Piranesi's etchings, in that they both play with scale and perspective to create these strange, dreamlike spaces.