New York 1927

Curator: So, here we have Abraham Walkowitz’s "New York," a print made with ink and graphite around 1927. What's grabbing you about this one? Editor: Immediately, a sense of unease, but in a beautiful way. Like the buildings are simultaneously rising and crumbling. An urban gothic feel. Curator: Walkowitz was deeply influenced by modernism. You see it in his abstraction of the city, breaking down familiar forms into these dynamic lines. There's this sense of… ecstatic disintegration, maybe? Editor: Definitely, and there's a lot of tension embedded there. Modernity’s promises versus its discontents, perhaps. Also, this vantage point is interesting. We’re looking *up* at this seemingly endless cityscape that gives me both exhilaration and existential dread. Whose perspective are we even seeing? Curator: Good point. I've always read the city as an almost organic being, a force, you know? Walkowitz was deeply immersed in the artistic circles around Alfred Stieglitz, where they were grappling with expressing the energy of modern life. Editor: It is powerful how he uses very simple media—ink and graphite—to suggest such immensity. I wonder about who gets represented, or more accurately erased, in images like these that so emphatically depict industrial ambition. Who suffers so that New York can grow like this? The cityscape soars and at the base are those almost trembling grounds, perhaps symbolizing an anxious working class? Curator: He was exploring something so fundamentally American, I think. That Promethean drive to build and reach, often without reckoning with the consequences. I’m drawn to his intuitive lines and I don’t think Walkowitz fully ignores class consciousness, even as he is exploring other ideas like the grandeur of the city. Editor: His "New York" offers a captivating image—haunted, beautiful, fraught with power—definitely food for thought. Curator: Agreed, a visual poem, capturing a moment of tremendous possibility and impending…something else. A really interesting snapshot into that time and place.