Sixth Avenue and Thirtieth Street 1908

John Sloan made this image, Sixth Avenue and Thirtieth Street, using etching on paper. Look closely, and you can feel the gritty energy of the street coming through. The texture here is all in the marks. Sloan uses these tightly packed lines to build form, to create light and shadow, and to give a sense of the bustling city. The ink is applied to the plate, wiped away, and then pressed onto the paper. This process, in a way, is like watching a city grow: layer upon layer. Notice how the woman in the foreground is more defined, while the background sort of dissolves into a mass of lines. There's this one spot, right by the kid peeking out on the left. See how dark it is there? Almost like a little void. It’s like a secret, a little mystery hidden in the everyday. Sloan's work always makes me think of the Ashcan School; artists who weren’t afraid to get down and dirty with their subject matter, capturing the real lives of everyday folks. Art, after all, is about embracing the mess, the ambiguity, and the endless possibilities of interpretation.