Kanger and Geseking 1926

Kenneth Callahan made this print called ‘Kanger and Geseking’ using etching on a plate sometime in the twentieth century. What I like about etching is the way it translates tonal modulation into line, because when you look at the darks and lights, it’s all lines, even the dark areas are made up of millions of lines packed together. I think Callahan had a real thing for machinery and industry because you can see the big machine depicted in the foreground, like some metal beast that's half buried into the landscape. Then further back, there's a cityscape, like this weird harmony between nature and industry. What Callahan does here, and something that a lot of printmakers and painters do, is to try and bridge the gap between realism and something more stylized. You can see how the lines become quite scratchy in places. The print almost breaks down into abstraction. This to me makes it more of an idea, rather than a clear representation. I think it's this ambiguity, this uncertain conversation, that makes painting so exciting.