Construction of West Side Highway 1937

Mortimer Borne made this etching called 'Construction of West Side Highway' and it’s a flurry of lines and shapes that just pulls you right into the grit and muscle of building something big. I'm thinking about Borne, bent over that plate, scratching away, digging into the metal the same way those workers are digging into the earth. The way the composition tilts and strains, all those lines pushing every which way, it's like he’s wrestling with the subject, trying to capture the energy of a city on the move. It's got that Ashcan School vibe, right? Like John Sloan or Isabel Bishop, finding beauty in the everyday, the ordinary. Borne’s really capturing the raw energy, the human effort that goes into making a city, and reminds us that artists are always building on what came before.