Street Scene (New York) 1922

Jerome Myers created this image of a New York street scene with ink on paper. The textures! So many little hatched lines—thick, thin, dark, light—building up into a world. I can just imagine Myers out on the street sketching, trying to capture all the details of the architecture, the kids playing, the everyday life bustling all around him. I'm sympathetic to the artist's eye and the way Myers must have looked, really looked, at what was in front of him. You see that kid sprawled out on the sidewalk? I wonder if that was there for a second, and Myers caught that split second, or if it was something he saw in his mind's eye. It's so playful and gritty, just like the Lower East Side he was so fond of painting. It reminds me of Daumier or even some of the Ashcan School guys—that real, raw, urban energy. All of these folks are in conversation, a kind of painterly game of telephone, passing down ideas about how to see and feel the world. Myers, in his own way, invites us to pause, look closer, and find the beauty in the everyday chaos.