Zuiderzeewerk 1932

This drawing of the Zuiderzee Works comes to us from Johan Hendrik van Mastenbroek. Look at the scratched marks and the way they describe form. You can almost imagine him there, hunkered down, maybe even on a boat, squinting at the light, trying to capture this industrial scene. I love the big, strong horizontals and diagonals. I am thinking about the way the artist contrasts the chaotic, choppy marks of the water and the delicate lines of the crane. It’s interesting to think about how this work exists as a record of a landscape, but it’s also about a moment in time, a feeling, an experience. It's like he’s saying, “Hey, check this out—the modern world is kind of beautiful, in its own way." Like Marsden Hartley or Charles Sheeler, but Dutch. I love the honesty and the lack of pretension. Mastenbroek just gets right to the point, and I really admire that.