The Solitude of the City -- America's Cool Modernism

It must have been a disorienting era, the early 20th century in America, one of rapid change amid the onward march of the skyscraper and the automobile. That sense comes over clearly and strongly in America's Cool Modernism at the Ashmolean in Oxford. Here is art that is largely devoid of people, highlighting the strange new shapes of the technological revolution and the dislocation of the individual in a confusing new world.

You'll discover names new to a European audience in a fascinating line-up of paintings, prints and photographs from the Met in New York and other American collections. Many of the works have never crossed the Atlantic.

The familiar sunflower of the Impressionists takes on a new more abstracted form as we enter the show with Le Tournesol (The Sunflower) by Edward Steichen, from about 1920. It's a rare painting by an artist who destroyed most of his others and leaves you wondering what striking images he committed to canvas are lost.

Plants and flowers, as well as man-made objects, are portrayed here in a new way. Displayed alongside the Steichen, Paul Strand produced a series of intriguing pictures in 1916 that are regarded as being among the earliest abstract photographic work, including Porch Shadows, Twin Lakes, Connecticut. Reminiscent of Georgia O'Keeffe are Helen Torr's painting Crimson and Green Leaves, as well as Imogen Cunningham's flower photographs like Two Callas.

However, looming at the back of this first room is a very different O'Keeffe: It's called Black Abstraction and dates from 1927. The story here is that it was inspired by her experience of going under anaesthetic for an operation. As she lost consciousness, the skylight above shrank to a concentrated white dot of light.

The Ashmolean has entitled the second section the Emptiness of Precision, and it's here that those deserted cityscapes come into play. First of all, though, there are a group of works that seem to echo early Soviet art in their concentration on the technological progress of the period. Joseph Stella's pictures, including Telegraph Poles with Buildings from 1917, look as if they wouldn't have been out of place in the Royal Academy's show last year on the art of the Russian Revolution.

We also get a first taste of Charles Sheeler, who has a big role in the rest of this exhibition. Water, from 1945, presents the industrial building as the cathedral of the age. You can see why he and his fellow artists were called the Precisionists.

It's George Ault who really seems to embody the spirit of this middle third of the show. In New York Night, No. 2, only a few street lights and lit-up windows break up the greyness. The city that doesn't sleep appears dormant. This is one of three eerily silent pictures by Ault.

More emptiness is to be found in Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series, but this time the unpopulated panels tell a decidedly different story, depicting the movement of blacks to the urban north at the start of the 20th century.

And then there are the skyscrapers. These are best captured in a series of prints. Perhaps they were just too big to paint. In a carefully thought-out display, you look up at Sheeler's Delmonico Building or down into Man's Canyon in an etching and aquatint by Samuel Margolies. Look hard and you can make out some ant-like people....

Sheeler collaborated with Strand in 1921 on a silent movie, Manhatta, that showed the pace of change in the city, and it's projected here. In this film, if not in the rest of the show, New York teems with life.

There's one more image in this section that will provide some pause for thought. When did Pop Art begin? In 1924, it seems: Stuart Davis's Odol takes a bottle of mouthwash and hangs it in a frame....

Into the last room, then, and out of the city for a while to the countryside. But the feeling of isolation continues, whether in a series of lithographs by Grant Wood (of American Gothic fame) or in paintings of barns and grain silos by Sheeler and Ralston Crawford.

Sheeler paid homage to a simpler era in this work, Americana, from 1931, with its celebration of Shaker furniture, but it's again somehow disturbing in its lack of people and disconcertingly high viewpoint.

O'Keeffe, who also contributed a snow-clad view across the East River in the second section, makes one final appearance with a picture of Ranchos Church in New Mexico. So strangely organic, it appears flesh-coloured....

But on to Edward Hopper, the great chronicler of American solitude. Some early 1920s etchings set the scene, and the titles are so evocative: Night Shadows, Night in the Park. Hung beside them, Martin Lewis's aquatint Which Way? dates from the Great Depression.

There are three Hopper paintings to end the show, and as ever you can supply your own narrative to fill the sparse yet finely detailed mystery of the images. Here, it's Dawn in Pennsylvania:

As so often at the Ashmolean, this is an excellent exhibition, and a worthy crowd-puller. If you were stimulated by the Royal Academy's show on American 1930s painting last year (the one that included American Gothic) you'll want to take in this one in Oxford as well.

Practicalities

America's Cool Modernism continues at the Ashmolean until July 22 and is open from 1000 to 1700 daily except Mondays. Full-price tickets are £13.50 including a Gift Aid donation and can be bought online here. There's a direct train every half an hour from London Paddington to Oxford, taking an hour or so, and the museum is less than 15 minutes' walk from Oxford station.

While you're at the Ashmolean

Don't fail to take a look at perhaps the gallery's best-known painting, The Hunt in the Forest by Paolo Uccello. A stunning example of the use of perspective in early Renaissance art, as the horses, the dogs, the huntsmen, the deer they're pursuing and the river in the background converge on the vanishing point deep in the dark wood. 

Images

Edward Steichen, Le Tournesol (The Sunflower), c. 1920, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. (c) 2017 The Estate of Edward Steichen/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Georgia O'Keeffe, Black Abstraction, 1927, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (c) 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
George Ault, New York Night, No. 2, 1921, The Jan T. and Marica Vilcek Collection. (c) The Estate of George Ault

Samuel Margolies, Man's Canyon, 1936, Terra Foundation for American Art. (c) Estate of the artist

Charles Sheeler, Americana, 1931,  Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (c) Estate of Charles Sheeler

Edward Hopper, Dawn in Pennsylvania, 1942, Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, Chicago. (c) Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper, licensed by the Whitney Museum of American Art