Frans Masereel — "Amerika"— 1926 print America, by German Expressionist
$ 23.76
Description
Frans Masereel — "Amerika"— 1926 print America, by German Expressionist. Skyscrapers, smokestacks, industrial smoke rendered as pure pattern — the city as an overwhelming, self-sustaining system. Relief, line-block composition printed in 1926 'after' original works — drawings and woodcuts — by Masereel. Frans Masereel — "Amerika" — 1926 No people. Just the machine. Skyscrapers, smokestacks, industrial smoke rendered as pure pattern — the city as an overwhelming, self-sustaining system. Masereel strips America down to its skeleton and finds no human scale anywhere. He made this without ever visiting. He didn't need to. The image of America was already being exported — in films, in illustrated press, in jazz records crossing the Atlantic. He assembled the parts and got the diagnosis exactly right. A century later the smokestacks are data centers. The composition is otherwise unchanged. Printed in Dresden by Petzschke & Gretschel, 1926. Sheet 7.25 × 10 inches. Ivory paper, lightly toned at edges. Printed both sides as issued. Image strong and clean. Relief, line-block composition printed in 1926 'after' original works — drawings and woodcuts — by Masereel The jazz age and the algorithm age rhyme uncomfortably well. 1926 to 2026, the subject remains unchanged: individual humans dwarfed and scrambled by the machinery of entertainment, capital, and finance. Simultaneously quaint, ominous, and familiar.
