The Moonlight Attack, Jelil 1920

James McBey made this etching, The Moonlight Attack, using a pretty narrow range of tones to describe a night scene with soldiers in tall grass. You can really feel the physicality of the process here, right? Look at the way he's used these tiny hatched marks to build up the form of the soldiers. It’s all about addition, a process of layering where the final image emerges through repetition, and a kind of patient intensity. And notice how the grass in the foreground isn't just "there," but feels alive, almost vibrating. Those upright marks form this chaotic screen, which obscures and reveals the soldiers, giving us this ambiguous, kind of unnerving feeling. You wonder, are they hiding or are they stuck? McBey's etching reminds me a little of Käthe Kollwitz and her powerful anti-war prints, where a limited tonal range becomes a kind of expressionistic code. Both artists show how beauty and horror can coexist and how art lets us hold difficult feelings in suspension, without having to resolve them.