Ready to Start 1917

Joseph Pennell made this drawing, "Ready to Start," and it feels like a flurry of activity caught in a sketch. I love the way he used line to make the subject, a warship, look both solid and ephemeral. The drawing's surface is a playground of scribbled lines, a testament to Pennell's hand moving swiftly, decisively. Look at the smokestacks, those almost scribbled cloud forms, they give the sense of the warship ready to go. The contrast between the density of line marking out the hull and the lighter touches elsewhere brings the ship into focus. The planes in the sky seem to echo the same visual language as the smoke and the cranes on the harbour, all sketched from the same frenetic energy. This drawing reminds me of some of the futurist painters, like Boccioni. It's like Pennell's saying, "Here's progress, here's industry, here's where we're going, ready or not." Art, after all, is just one big conversation, a back-and-forth across time.