To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America
From the Publisher. An American painter usually associated with the Precisionist movement, George Copeland Ault (1891–1948) created works that provide a unique window onto the uncertainty and despair of World War II. Despite early commercial success in the 1920s, Ault eventually withdrew from both artistic and political worlds in 1937 and set up his studio in a tiny house in Woodstock, New York, where he produced evocative scenes of barns, telephone wires, and streetlights that utilize precise alignments and geometries to impose a symbolic order on a world in crisis.
To Make a World is the first publication on Ault in more than two decades, and it features nearly 20 of Ault's paintings alongside those of his contemporaries, including Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent, and Andrew Wyeth. Author Alexander Nemerov explains that despite Ault's remote location and reclusive lifestyle, his paintings represent his fear for the precarious state of the world and reflect an emotional response shared by many artists and the nation at large.
Written to accompany an inspired exhibition first mounted at the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C.; currently at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri; and due at the Georgia Museum of Art next year, the book reveals a powerful overlooked artist, George Ault. The book and the exhibition focus on five paintings made between 1943 and 1948 depicting the crossroads community of Russell’s Corners near Woodstock, New York. Ault was a sort of darker, deeper cousin of Charles Sheeler or Charles Demuth or even Edward Hopper. Poor, critically neglected, isolated, he committed suicide in 1948.
Ault’s paintings, like those of Sheeler, Demuth, and Hopper, also have a lot to teach us about architecture and space and the emotions associated with both. The space Ault painted is also cinematic, or theatrical—it could be a set for a darker, never-performed Thornton Wilder play. Nemerov sees Ault in the context of Precisionism or Neue Sachlichkeit and ambitiously uses him as a lens to look at visual thinking in America in the 1940s. The wide-ranging text is perhaps overreaching but also intriguing with its references to film noir and documentary photography.
Announcements
Designers & Books Tours
Designers & Books Tours:
Customized tours providing the opportunity to explore the places, meet the people, and see the books of the design book world in New York City.
For information:
PH: 212-777-9080
or
info@designersandbooks.com
What is Universal Everything? edited by Adrian Shaughnessy and Tony Brook
What is Universal Everything?
Edited by Adrian Shaughnessy and Tony Brook; designed by Spin
Publisher: Unit Editions
Published: June 2019
Matt Pyke, founder and creative director of Universal Everything, calls his studio a “digital art and design collective.” Now, after 15 years of revolutionary work in the digital realm, the studio has its first book. For anyone interested in the future of digital design, the book features a unique cover for each copy of the book (limited to 2,000)—every buyer owns a one-off.
The Future of Design: Global Product Innovation for a Complex World by Lorraine Justice
The Future of Design: Global Product Innovation for a Complex World
by Lorraine Justice
Publisher: Nicholas Brealey
Published: June 4, 2019
Internationally recognized product design expert, TED speaker, and consultant to companies like Microsoft and Levi’s, shares the ten global factors that directly impact product design success and failure.
Ballpark: Baseball in the American City by Paul Goldberger
Ballpark: Baseball in the American City
By Paul Goldberger
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Published: May 2019
An illustrated, entirely new look at the history of baseball: told through the stories of the vibrant and ever-changing ballparks where the game was and is staged, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic.
Charleston Fancy by Witold Rybczynski
Charleston Fancy: Little Houses and Big Dreams in the Holy City
By Witold Rybczynski
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: May 2019
Charleston, South Carolina, which boasts America’s first historic district, is known for its palmetto-lined streets and picturesque houses. The Holy City, named for its profusion of churches, exudes an irresistible charm. Award-winning author and cultural critic Witold Rybczynski unfolds a series of stories about a group of youthful architects, builders, and developers based in Charleston: a self-taught home builder, an Air Force pilot, a fledgling architect, and a bluegrass mandolin player.
Recent Articles
