The Camp, the New Architecture 1917

Joseph Pennell made this piece, "The Camp, the New Architecture", using etching, and it feels like a flurry of activity captured in ink. The marks are so immediate, so responsive. You can almost feel him trying to keep up with the scene unfolding before him. I love the way the lines build up the forms. It’s all about layers, a kind of organized chaos. The scratchy lines remind me of Cy Twombly, but instead of scribbles on a canvas, Pennell's got this industrial landscape emerging from a swarm of marks. Look at the sky, it’s like a storm brewing, rendered with such light touch! It’s funny, because you could almost call this architectural drawing abstract expressionism. There is a real play with perspective here, it feels as though he is saying that reality can be both, a construction site and a dream.