Building 1904

Muirhead Bone made this etching called ‘Building’ using black ink on paper, and it looks like a photograph but it isn’t. I can imagine Bone with his plate, working the acid, proofing it, wiping it back, trying again. He’s interested in the way the lines can construct a scene, and the emotional weight that a city in construction can have. The city is alive, you know? It’s messy. Just look at all those beams and scaffolds. All that industry, all that possibility, and also the threat of collapse. Painters, etchers like Bone, they’re always looking at other artists. I can see echoes of Piranesi's architectural fantasies in this image. I can imagine him and other artists sharing ideas, pushing the limits of what lines can do, what they can say. What kind of world they can build.