Twee sleepboten bij de Pont des Arts 1927

Paul Signac made this print of two tugboats by the Pont des Arts with etching, a process that lends itself well to capturing detail. It’s interesting to see how Signac uses a pretty simple vocabulary of lines to create a whole world here. There’s a kind of energetic scumble to the marks, especially in the water around the boats. I love how the lines are so open, and how they almost dissolve as you look at them. Take a look at the way he's drawn the smoke, and the ripples in the water. There’s a real sense of movement there, but it's also just a bunch of squiggles. It reminds me of the way Guston used to make paintings, everything reduced to its most essential form. It's this tension between representation and abstraction that makes the image so compelling.