Construction of West Side Highway 1937

Mortimer Borne made this etching titled Construction of West Side Highway, and it’s all about lines, hatching, and cross-hatching building up this vision of urban progress. You know, it's a reminder that artmaking is a process, not just a product. The material aspect here is all about the ink on paper – the way Borne coaxes depth and texture out of simple lines. Look at the way he renders the scaffolding. It's like a frantic dance of tiny marks, but somehow it all comes together to create a sense of weight and structure. There's a tension between precision and looseness, between the sharp angles of the machinery and the soft curves of the human figures. It's like he's trying to capture the energy of the city itself – the push and pull of chaos and order. This piece reminds me a bit of Joseph Stella’s futurist visions of New York. There’s that same sense of awe and excitement about the modern world, but also a kind of underlying anxiety about the human cost of progress.