Danbury Fair 1936

James Henry Daugherty made this print, Danbury Fair. You can imagine him working the plate, pushing the needle in, line after line, a sort of meditative mark-making that slowly builds the image up. I wonder what it was like to be Daugherty. Maybe he was at the fair, soaking up the atmosphere, feeling the energy of the crowd. You see how he captured it, the jostling, the noise, a slice of American life in all its chaotic glory. The composition's amazing: figures piled on top of each other, a real sense of depth. There's a kind of frenzy in the line-work, as if he was trying to get everything down as quickly as possible, every detail. It makes me think about Hogarth, another artist who loved to capture the hustle and bustle of city life, with a similar eye for the grotesque and the humorous. Artists are always talking to each other, across time, across styles. This print is a record of a moment, but it's also part of a much longer conversation about what it means to be human, to be alive, to be part of a crowd.