Communications Outpost 1951

Herbert K. Kane made this print called Communications Outpost, and I love the way he's piled these shapes on top of one another. It makes me think about the architecture of connection, like a building that’s constantly being added onto. I'm imagining Kane in his studio, maybe listening to the radio, and puzzling out a way to capture the feeling of messages traveling through space. You can see him working through the layers, scratching and scraping to find the right forms, the essence of a signal. Those geometric shapes feel a bit like they’re trying to send information, but maybe the message is scrambled, or just for us? It reminds me of some of the early modernist painters and printmakers who were grappling with similar questions of form and meaning. This piece really shows how artists borrow from each other, building on ideas across time. The feeling you get from this work is ambiguous and uncertain, leaving space for endless questions.