Men Atop Manhattan Skyscraper 1945

William Wolfson made this drawing of men working high above the city, sometime in the mid-20th century. I imagine him, perched somewhere high up, squinting in the sun. It's all line and tone, made with what looks like graphite, maybe a bit of charcoal for the deep darks. The composition is daring. A low angle looking way, way down. It has a journalistic feel, like something you might find in a newspaper of the time. The architecture is simplified into shapes and the figures are small and doll-like, the men like flies on a stick. The way Wolfson’s used line to create depth is just amazing! The buildings below feel so far away and the sky so empty. Wolfson creates a sense of vertigo and I’m thinking about how drawings like this were precursors to the paintings of Gerhard Richter and other photo-based painters. It’s like the image is slightly out-of-focus, a little bit blurry. Like all artists, Wolfson was in conversation with what came before and what was happening at the time, taking a specific approach to recording what he saw.