Restless Night - New York City 1940

Mortimer Borne's print of a New York cityscape is wrought with tight, insistent lines, hatching and cross-hatching, which feel both feverish and exact. The process of etching involves a physical, almost combative relationship with the plate, and the whole image feels tense, like a sleepless night. All of the inhabitants are awake, restless, and caught in the grid of the city. You can almost feel Borne scraping away at the metal, trying to exorcise his own unease. I wonder if Borne ever looked at Max Beckmann? Beckmann also used the tight confines of the picture plane to suggest that urban anxiety, as well as Otto Dix and George Grosz who made etchings. There’s something deeply human about how all these artists worked through their feelings of unease with their surroundings. In this print, that tension is palpable. It serves as a reminder that, as artists, we're all in conversation with one another.