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拍品专文
Born in Ontario, Canada, Ralston Crawford studied art at several institutions, including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, where he encountered the Precisionist art of Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth. Their depictions of modern America utterly fascinated Crawford, inspiring him to begin working in a similar mode. Striking in both scale and color, Crawford’s Ice Plant explores classic Precisionist subject matter and style with the increasingly abstract approach that would shape the artist’s subsequent oeuvre.
While he began painting more traditional landscapes, “Crawford ultimately found beauty in the industrial landscape, especially shipyards, grain elevators, bridges, highways, tanks, and the like. In about 1934-35 he begun to treat those subjects as large, simplified shapes, which he painted as sharp-edged planes of broad, smooth areas of color.” (I.H. Shoemaker, Adventures in Modern Art: The Charles K. Williams II Collection, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2009, p. 102) Indeed, works such as Ice Plant characterize this “unflinching simplicity from which [Crawford] had eliminated all extraneous detail in favor of large simple shapes silhouetted against a clear blue sky.” (B. Haskell, Ralston Crawford, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1985, p. 37)
The sharp, geometric nature of the composition reflects Crawford’s careful planning and preparation for the present work. A related study in the collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum provides further insight into Crawford’s exacting approach to painting. While forms are reduced and abstracted, with the planes of flat color—carefully modulated to mimic effects of light and shadow—Crawford creates a stylized depiction of industrialization that is still recognizable. Emblematic of Crawford’s continued fascination with the industrial environment, Ice Plant is a striking work of Modernism, elevated by its bold coloration and simplification of form.
While he began painting more traditional landscapes, “Crawford ultimately found beauty in the industrial landscape, especially shipyards, grain elevators, bridges, highways, tanks, and the like. In about 1934-35 he begun to treat those subjects as large, simplified shapes, which he painted as sharp-edged planes of broad, smooth areas of color.” (I.H. Shoemaker, Adventures in Modern Art: The Charles K. Williams II Collection, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2009, p. 102) Indeed, works such as Ice Plant characterize this “unflinching simplicity from which [Crawford] had eliminated all extraneous detail in favor of large simple shapes silhouetted against a clear blue sky.” (B. Haskell, Ralston Crawford, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1985, p. 37)
The sharp, geometric nature of the composition reflects Crawford’s careful planning and preparation for the present work. A related study in the collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum provides further insight into Crawford’s exacting approach to painting. While forms are reduced and abstracted, with the planes of flat color—carefully modulated to mimic effects of light and shadow—Crawford creates a stylized depiction of industrialization that is still recognizable. Emblematic of Crawford’s continued fascination with the industrial environment, Ice Plant is a striking work of Modernism, elevated by its bold coloration and simplification of form.