Oil Man's Christmas Tree 1941

Alexandre Hogue made this print, Oil Man’s Christmas Tree, in 1991. Looking at it, I’m thinking about the careful and considered mark-making that went into this image. Imagine Hogue, puzzling over how to balance the natural with the industrial; a Christmas tree of oil pipes surrounded by regular trees, and in the background, more oil derricks. He’s thinking about our relationship to the land, and how we’ve changed it irrevocably. I wonder if he was thinking about other artists too, like the German photographers, Bernd and Hilla Becher, who took deadpan, grid-like photographs of industrial structures. The regular marks which build the image are beautiful and communicative. The hatch marks on the pipe work give it volume and a kind of gritty reality, but the careful consideration given to the foliage suggests something else. The print becomes an eloquent and ambiguous conversation about progress and what it means for us.