To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America Opens at Nelson-Atkins

Kansas City, MO. Sept. 15, 2011

Clarity, Composure of Art Offsets World in Crisis

George Ault Bright Light at Russell’s Corners, 1946. Oil on canvas. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Lawrence

During the turbulent 1940s, artist George Ault (1891-1948) created eerie and evocative paintings that are some of the most original made during those years. To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America, organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., will be on view at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Oct. 15 through Jan. 8, 2012.

The first major exhibition of Ault’s art in more than 20 years, To Make a World recreates a moment in America when the country was rendered fragile by the Great Depression and made anxious by global conflict. Although much has been written about the glorious triumph of the World War II, what has dimmed over time are memories of the tenor of life on the home front, when the country was distant from battlefields yet profoundly at risk.

The art Ault created while living in relative isolation in rural upstate New York became a personal world of clarity and composure that offset a real world he felt was in crisis.

“George Ault’s world is very different from the world of the can-do spirit embodied by Rosie the Riveter,” said Stephanie Knappe, assistant curator of American art at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. “He felt the world was disintegrating before his eyes and tried to control the chaos around him through his art.”

This exhibition of 48 paintings, drawings and prints presents Ault in context with 22 of his contemporaries. Although many of these artists, like Ault, worked far from the wartime turmoil felt in large cities, they nevertheless confronted the devastating uncertainty of the times. Paintings by celebrated artists Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth as well as by those less widely known today, such as Edward Biberman and Dede Plummer, present an aesthetic vein running through 1940s American art not previously explored and reveal affinities with and contrasts to the world Ault so carefully made in his studio.

Central to the exhibition are four paintings Ault made between 1943 and 1948 depicting the crossroads of Russell’s Corners in Woodstock, New York, not far from Ault’s home. The mystery in Ault’s Russell’s Corners pictures and other paintings in this exhibition, such as the Nelson-Atkins’ own haunting January Full Moon, evoke the mood of life on the home front, while the meticulous control with which they were rendered offers a counterbalance to civilization at the brink during the war years.

“Beyond shedding light on forgotten memories and rekindling lost emotions, To Make a World resonates strongly today as we all strive to make our own worlds while so much around us is constantly changing,” said Knappe.

To Make a World revisits 1940s America, drawing in visitors in through the least likely of places—not grand actions or cataclysmic events, not epoch-making posters and headlines, but quiet spots where some mystery seems always on the verge of being disclosed.

In honor of their service, the exhibition will be free for veterans and active duty military and their families on Veterans Day, November 11.

Alexander Nemerov, the Vincent Scully Professor of the History of Art at Yale University, is the guest curator of the exhibition. Nemerov will come to Kansas City to present a talk on the exhibition at the Nelson-Atkins on Oct. 20.

Visitors to the Museum will be able to continue their journey into George Ault’s world with Ault on Paper, an installation of a recent gift that spans student work in a realist vein to abstractions made in the year of the artist’s untimely death.

“These drawings and watercolors not only reveal a range of styles and subject matter, but also shed light on the Ault’s working methods. Together, these sheets offer an intriguing retrospective of Ault’s poetic vision and independent spirit,” says Knappe.

New Jersey photographer and collector Donald Lokuta, donor of the generous gift from which this installation is drawn, recognizes the revelatory quality of Ault’s art on paper:

“I have always believed that you can understand George Ault the man and the artist more completely by looking at his works on paper,” said Lokuta. ―The drawings show a curious mind; a person who was searching and always willing to try something new.”

Ault on Paper will be on view in the Nelson-Atkins Building, Gallery 214, Oct. 5, 2011 – April 29, 2012.

To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum with generous support from Dolores and John W. Beck, Joan and E. Bertram Berkley, Diane and Norman Bernstein Foundation, Janet and Jim Dicke, Sheila Duignan and Mike Wilkins, Barney A. Ebsworth, Tania and Tom Evans, Kara and Wayne Fingerman, Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund, Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason Foundation, Joffa and Bill Kerr, Robert S. and Grayce B. Kerr Foundation, John and Gail Liebes Trust, Paula and Peter Lunder, Betty and Whitney MacMillan, Margery and Edgar Masinter, Oriana McKinnon, Susan Reed Moseley, and Betty and Lloyd Schermer. Additional funding is provided through the museum’s William R. Kenan Jr. Endowment Fund and Gene Davis Memorial Fund. The C.F. Foundation in Atlanta supports the museum’s traveling exhibition program, Treasures to Go.

In Kansas City the exhibition is supported by the Hale Family Foundation, Daniel P. Winter and the Campbell-Calvin Fund and Elizabeth C. Bonner Charitable Trust for exhibitions.

There are several programs associated with this exhibition.

Presentations
To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America
Thursday, Oct. 20, 6–7 p.m.
T Atkins Auditorium

Dr. Alexander Nemerov, exhibition curator and Yale University’s Vincent Scully Professor of the History of Art, shares insights about George Ault’s meticulously rendered paintings, rich in meaning and emotion. Book signing follows.

A World Unhinged: Angst, Anger & Adjustment in Hollywood Films of the Forties
Saturday, Dec. 3, 1 – 2 p.m.
T Atkins Auditorium

“America’s greatest generation” is how Tom Brokaw described the men and women of the 1940s who fought the World War II both at home and abroad. It was an era fraught with unprecedented personal and societal dislocations, a time when basic bedrock assumptions underlying the American experience were probed as never before.

Using excerpts from classic Hollywood films ranging from The Maltese Falcon (1941) to The Men (1950), University of Kansas Professor Chuck Berg will examine the dark side that haunted America’s greatest generation as represented in the film noir and social problem film—a dark side thematically and visually echoed in the paintings of George Ault.

Saturday Movie Matinee

Mildred Pierce
Saturday, Nov. 19, 1 – 3 p.m.
T Atkins Auditorium

Mildred Pierce, a long-suffering 1930s middleclass housewife and mother, is caught in the crossfire of a murder investigation while trying to maintain her social position during the Great Depression. Joan Crawford won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as the title character in this dramatic 1945 film noir based on the novel by James M. Cain. Introduction by University of Missouri–Kansas City film historian Tom Poe. (Director, Michael Curtiz, 111 minutes)

In Kansas City the exhibition is supported by the Hale Family Foundation, Daniel P. Winter and the Campbell-Calvin Fund and Elizabeth C. Bonner Charitable Trust for exhibitions.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

The Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City is recognized nationally and internationally as one of America’s finest art museums. The Nelson-Atkins serves the community by providing access and insight into its renowned collection of more than 33,500 art objects and is best known for its Asian art, European and American paintings, photography, modern sculpture, and new American Indian and Egyptian galleries. Housing a major art research library and the Ford Learning Center, the Museum is a key educational resource for the region. The institution-wide transformation of the Nelson-Atkins has included the 165,000-square-foot Bloch Building expansion and renovation of the original 1933 Nelson-Atkins Building.

The Nelson-Atkins is located at 45th and Oak Streets, Kansas City, MO. Hours are Wednesday, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.; Thursday/Friday, 10 a.m.–9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Sunday, Noon–5 p.m. Admission to the Museum is free to everyone. For Museum information, phone 816.751.1ART (1278) or visit nelson-atkins.org/.