American art underwent a transformation during the period 1940-55, and
nowhere is that change better exemplified than in the work of Ralston
Crawford (1906-1978). Crawford worked in a variety of media throughout
his career, and his wartime and early postwar art ranged from designing
camouflage and creating weather infographics for the US Army to
documenting the detonation of the atomic bomb for Fortune magazine. This
exciting new book explores Crawford's influences and the ideas and
experiences he had during World War II and its aftermath, and chronicles
a period of change, during which Crawford gradually moved away from
celebrating feats of engineering and industrial development to creating
imagery that was more abstract and far more personal, expressing the
grief and anxiety of the postwar world. Crawford's painting during the
1930s had largely been a dazzling series of Precisionist works that
reflected American advances in industry, engineering and technology.
After the United States entered World War II, Crawford served in the
Weather Division of the Army Air Forces. He created pictorial
representations of weather patterns for airplane pilots, and was exposed
to countless photographs of air crashes. He continued working as an
artist throughout the conflict, receiving a commission to paint the
Curtiss-Wright aircraft plant in Buffalo, New York, and, in 1946, an
assignment to observe and record one of the atomic bomb tests at Bikini
Atoll. These experiences had a profound impact on Crawford, and marked a
major turning point in his life and art. Published to coincide with an
exhibition opening at the Dayton Art Institute, Ralston Crawford: Air &
Space & War presents a remarkable selection of Crawford's paintings,
drawings, photographs and prints from this time. These vary from
powerful images of chaos and devastation to ordered and precise
paintings of airplane assembly at the Curtiss-Wright plant and cover
illustrations and charts related to weather, flight and radar for
Fortune magazine. The evolution of many of the works can be traced from
photograph and drawing to the finished painting, revealing Crawford's
decisions about form and space, which were informed by his experiences
with airplanes and flight. Accompanying the artworks is a series of
perceptive essays. Rick Kinsel considers Crawford's war years in the
context of developments in both aviation and American art. Emily
Schuchardt Navratil reflects on aerial views by Crawford and on his
Curtiss-Wright commission. Amanda Burdan looks at Crawford's work for
Fortune, while Jerry Smith surveys various American and European
abstract renditions of airplanes and flight as a means by which to place
Crawford's interest in aviation during World War II into a broader
historical context. In the final essay, John Crawford examines the
importance of photography in his father's work, and explores collage as
both a compositional technique and as a term that may be used to
describe the series of intense experiences that contributed to
Crawford's development as an artist in the 1940s and early 1950s.
