Battle Wagon - U.S.S. Alabama 1943

"Battle Wagon - U.S.S. Alabama" is an engraving on paper by John Taylor Arms. I'm curious about the artist's intentions here, since they are working in a monochrome, painstaking style. The cross-hatched lines and neutral tones remind me of earlier reproductive engraving, and make the battle ship and the war machine seem solid and, well, monumental. It makes me wonder if Arms felt conflicted or perhaps wanted to make the battleship appear heroic. The artist's mark-making lends a documentary quality to the image, as if he's saying, "Look, this exists." This is a time when painting began to embrace looser, more expressive abstraction. How does the way we depict something change how we understand it? The question echoes through time. From the engravers of the past to today's digital artists, we are constantly reimagining what it means to represent the world around us.