First Avenue #1 1954

Ralston Crawford made this print called First Avenue #1 with lithographic ink on paper. Look at how Crawford simplifies the world into shapes and lines, reducing everything to its most basic form. It's like he's showing us the skeleton of the city. Crawford uses a limited palette of black, white, and gray. The contrast creates a stark and graphic quality. There's a section there near the upper left where he uses tiny little hatched lines, like he's shading with a pencil. It gives the flat shape a feeling of depth, making it almost three-dimensional. This print reminds me a bit of Stuart Davis, who also played with urban imagery. But while Davis's work is often playful, Crawford's has a certain severity, a kind of architectural purity. His work invites us to find beauty in the everyday, to see the world around us with new eyes.