Seeing America In Isolation: American Artist George Ault Showed Us The America He Saw In Shades Of Darknes – Design You Trust

Seeing America In Isolation: American Artist George Ault Showed Us The America He Saw In Shades Of Darknes

George Ault (October 11, 1891 – December 30, 1948) was on the outside but rather than banging on the widows, he withdrew a pace and watched in silence, an artist with what poet Charles Bukowski called “this terrible itch for solitude”.

h/t: flashbak

Ault shares his view of looking in at the America of factories, business, homes and machine-processed things through his realistic paintings. His America is quiet and still, where the lonely everyday beauty of the world is ‘caught in a moment of absolute stillness and ever so slightly abstracted’.

Often it’s night and we’re looking at the clear, smoothed, clean-edged, flat-toned buildings in a chiaroscuro of shadow and a single artificial street light.

“The setting is the same in each case,” writes Roberta Smith in The New York Times, “a solitary streetlight, the same bend in the road, the same collection of barns and sheds – but seen from different vantage points. In them, Ault has summoned up the poetry of darkness in an unforgettable way – the implacable solitude and strangeness that night bestows upon once-familiar forms and places.” His solitude is felt keenly in the series of five paintings based on Russell’s Corners from different vantage points, four at night when the place is punctured by a “piercing seemingly sourceless light”. Sanford Schwartz notes in the The New York Review of Books: “Ault fine-tunes your eyes. He makes you aware of delicate light effects that happen, as it were, behind your back.”


















If you want more awesome content, subscribe to 'Oh, Design You Trust,' our brand new Facebook page! Trust me, you won't be disappointed.

More Inspiring Stories

Artist Shawn Huckins Hand Paints Early American Portraits With An Internet Twist
Exploring the Multifaceted Beauty and Fascination of Andrew Cadima's Oil Paintings
Sushi Chef Crafts Awesome Star Wars Veggie Sculptures
An Illustrated Guide To Our Deepest Desires
This House Is Currently Listed for $828K In Queens, NY Right Now
The Brilliant, Provocative Trump Ad That Had Cannes And Social Media Buzzing
Beautiful Feminine Photo Portraits By The Russian Fashion Photographer Svetlana Belyaeva
"Time For Your Extraction Honey": The Incredible Bizarre 3D Collectibles by Heal Bell
Here Are 40 Really Bad Cat Drawings To Make You Laugh
Artist Uses Coffee Spills To Create Cute Coffee Monsters
Surreal And Dreamlike Manipulations By Herri Susanto
Funny Illustrations About Two Kinds of People
"Christmas In Yemen" – This Street Artist Reminds Us That These Children Are Living A Real Hell
Artist Brilliantly Imagines What Disney Villains Would Look Like in Real Life
"Schoolgirl Nightmares": Bizarre And Horror Paintings By Kazuhiro Hori
"Deep, Dark And Dangerous": Outstanding Fantasy, Sci-Fi & Comic Book Illustrations By David Palumbo
Tales Of The Otherworld: Discover Nikolai Lockertsen And His Amazingly Painted Artworks
What If World Political Leaders Were Cars?
Old School Spirit: Superb Anime Illustrations by David Liu
Artist Wil Hughes Shows How Pop Culture Icons Would Look In Real Life, And It Will Give You Nightmares
These Daily Drawings Of A Young Artist And Her Little Brother Are A Bright Spot During Some Dark Days
Stories Hidden In Images: A Designer Has Created Book Covers Made Of Random Stock Photos
Hungarian Artist Creates Hilarious Scenes By Placing Characters In Movies Or TV Shows They Don’t Belong In
This Artist Reimagines Disney Princesses as Twisted Characters and They're So Creepy