Flying Solo: World War II Art at the Brandywine
Ralston Crawford’s “Plane Propeller Tarmac.”
During the pandemic, many museums have used the downtime to reconfigure their galleries and facilities; the Brandywine River Museum is among them. It has reopened with new exhibitions, and their most recently installed is Ralston Crawford: Air & Space & War, a worthy perspective on a World War II artist.
Ralston Crawford’s “Bikini Tour.”
Crawford, who lived from 1906 to 1978, was already an established artist when he was drafted in 1942. He served in the Army Air Force’s weather division and worked on visual projects throughout the war. The exhibition is a collection of his drawings, photography, lithographs, maps, magazine designs, and oil paintings—the work of a man who was able both to stay on his creative path and support the aerial-war effort at the same time.
Crawford’s black-and-white illustrations from early in the war reveal the potentially deadly effects that weather could have on military aircraft. Once air force strategists realized that bad weather could interfere with their military goals, the role of the artist became mission critical. It became important to visualize the problem—and seek a quick solution. To that end, Crawford crafted maps and display panels by hand, using pencil, gouache, ink, and airbrush.
Crawford was also commissioned to visually document the Curtiss-Wright aircraft plant in Buffalo, New York, using both camera and pen. His eye was drawn to the myriad geometric forms, angles, and patterns angles within the factory. Although they include many shapes and themes that are immediately recognizable as Modernist, it’s possible that few of the military personnel, executives, and workers connected with the factory noticed the 20th-century art that surrounded them.
Ralston Crawford’s “Factory with Yellow Center.”
While Crawford was stationed in England, he created drawings of airplanes and airplane parts—and notably, of the twisted debris of a P-47 Thunderbolt fighter that had crashed into a residential home, killing the pilot. In 1946, just after the war, Fortune magazine hired Crawford to witness an atomic bomb test at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. He created a series based on his impressions of the resulting explosion’s iconic, terrible mushroom cloud.
Crawford’s compelling, boldly colored oil paintings depict simple, brutal shapes of crashed aircraft amid toppled masonry walls and mangled metal. The paintings are considered Precisionist in style, similar to those of his older contemporaries, Charles Demuth and Charles Sheeler. Their flat forms may also remind you of Henri Matisse’s paper cut-outs.
The Crawford exhibition, small and concisely laid out, nicely captures the story of an artist who both had the chance to observe the industrial backbone of World War II (often underappreciated by history buffs) and to portray it as an artist and as an illustrator. It’s not a blockbuster, but it’s a stimulating summer show that’s very much worth an excursion down Route 1.
Ralston Crawford: Air & Space & War runs through September 19 at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, PA. More information: brandywine.org.
Pete Prown is a writer and artist at Heron Crest Studios in Aston, Pennsylvania (peteprown.com).
