St. Germain-Des-Pres 1906

John Marin made this etching, St. Germain-Des-Pres, sometime around 1906. Just imagine him, perhaps standing on a bridge with his etching plate, trying to capture not just the church, but also the feeling of Paris. You can see the lines he’s scratched into the metal, almost like quick notes in a visual diary. There’s a nervous energy, right? It reminds me of the Futurists, trying to capture speed and movement, but Marin does it with this delicate touch. He’s not just showing us the church; he’s giving us a sense of its presence, its weight, and the way it sits in the city. It's like he’s saying, “Here’s this old, solid thing, but it’s also vibrating, alive.” And that’s what great art does, right? It makes you see the world in a new way. Artists are constantly riffing off each other like this, passing ideas back and forth across time, creating a kind of visual conversation that we’re all invited to join.