Concrete Foundations - 6th Avenue Subway 1938

Charles Keller made this print, Concrete Foundations - 6th Avenue Subway, using black ink on white paper. It’s a gritty scene and you can feel the artist's hand moving across the surface, building up these dark, almost scribbled lines. I imagine Keller down there in the pit, sketching furiously as the workers pour concrete to construct the subway. He must have thought about how the different marks could create the feeling of weight and texture; the heavy machinery, the rough planks, the sheer effort of the workers. You know, it's funny how artists look at the world. You try to capture what it *feels* like to be somewhere, not just what it *looks* like. I think about the Futurists or the Ashcan School guys, and how they were also drawn to industry and the city. It's like, every generation of artists tries to make sense of their world and what it means to be human in it. We’re all in conversation with one another.