Exhibition of the week America’s Cool Modernism
Ashmolean, Beaumont Street, Oxford (01865-278000, www.ashmolean.org). Until 22 July
American culture flourished during the 1920s and 1930s, said Laura Cumming in The Observer. This was the era that gave us everything “from skyscrapers and jazz bands, to speakeasies and Scott Fitzgerald, mass production, hard-boiled gumshoes and Hollywood”. Strangely, though, the US art of the period is barely acknowledged on this side of the Atlantic; Britain’s public collections contain almost no American paintings created during the interwar years. Yet as a “powerfully atmospheric” new exhibition at the Ashmolean museum reveals, the period produced some fascinating artists who sought to create their own, distinctly American take on European modernism. The show brings together more than 80 works created by a group of painters and photographers loosely known as the “precisionists”, whose art was characterised by “exact, flat, hard-edged forms” reflecting their country’s industrial landscapes and urban skylines. While there are a few famous names – notably Edward Hopper and Georgia O’keeffe – the majority of these artists are “unknown” in the UK. The result is a “riveting” and revelatory exhibition that will introduce you to a “whole new chapter” of 20th century art history. metropolis”, taking in street lamps and smokestacks, billboards, skyscrapers and illuminated signage, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. Most of the paintings here are almost completely devoid of people, and the effect is “eerie”. Yet all too often, the clinically precise work produced by these artists is a “joyless, bloodless affair”, and not infrequently – Charles Sheeler’s “forgettable” picture of a water plant is a prime example – “straightforwardly dull”. While there are some “strong” paintings here, including George Josimovich’s “elegant” Illinois Central (1927) and two de Chirico-like canvases by Niles Spencer, the end result is disappointingly “flat”.
I don’t agree, said Marina Vaizey on The Arts Desk. These artists were united in their desire to make sense of “a rapidly changing society”, and the results are often “hypnotically compelling”. Highlights include George Ault’s “atmospheric” depiction of a Hoboken factory at twilight; a “vertiginous” photograph of Manhattan’s canyon-like streets by Berenice Abbott; and Charles Demuth’s “ferocious and beautiful” painting I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (1928), which aims to capture the “sight and sound of a red fire engine racing down the street”. Do not miss this “unprecedented” exhibition.