Wall Street 1930

Gottlob Briem made this etching, "Wall Street", in the early twentieth century. It's all about the drama of scale, of looking up, way up, at these towering buildings that seem to press down on the tiny figures below. I'm imagining Briem, standing there, craning his neck, trying to capture the immensity of it all. It makes me think about how artists are always wrestling with perspective, trying to flatten a three-dimensional world onto a two-dimensional surface. The criss-crossing lines give you a sense of depth and density, like he's building this world with strokes, one by one. It reminds me a bit of Piranesi’s architectural prints, that same feeling of being dwarfed by these massive structures, a kind of sublime terror. Artists are always in conversation with each other, riffing on the same themes, finding new ways to see and feel the world around them.