Staalfabrieken before 1903

Eduard Arning made this image of steel factories sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. It’s black and white, but you can almost feel the gritty air and the weight of the industrial landscape, right? I think about Arning, standing there, maybe sketching, trying to capture this scene. What was he thinking? Was he in awe of the scale, or critical of the pollution? The smoke billowing from the chimneys feels heavy, like a sigh. It reminds me of other artists who grappled with modernity, like the Ashcan School painters in New York, but with a more restrained, almost scientific eye. This image feels so specific to its time, but it also speaks to our present moment, where we're constantly negotiating our relationship to industry and the environment. Artists are always in conversation, you know, building on what came before, responding to each other across time. Painting, like any art form, is a way of thinking through these big, messy questions.