City 1936

Harold Haydon made this intriguing print called 'City' in 1936. It's a wood engraving, so Haydon would have used a sharp tool to cut lines into a block of wood, which was then inked and printed. The angular shapes and dynamic lines give us a sense of a bustling modern metropolis. This kind of abstraction was common in the 1930s, especially in art influenced by the social realism movement. As the US was grappling with the Great Depression, artists often grappled with the question of how to represent the changing urban environment. Haydon's print can be seen as part of a broader cultural conversation about industrialization and urbanization. What does the city mean for society? How is it represented in art? These are the kind of questions an art historian might explore, using resources like period newspapers, exhibition catalogues, and artists' writings. Only then can we really understand the role of art in shaping our understanding of the world around us.