GEORGE COPELAND AULT

GEORGE COPELAND AULT

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Sunday Feature on ART of Architecture -by Gautam Shah

GEORGE COPELAND AULT (1891-1948) was an American painter of non-frivolous architectural and urban scapes. He painted whatever he saw around him meticulously, but with abstract realism. Ault painted with oil, watercolour and pencil, but simplifying into geometrically structured shapes and planes. In his wife's words, painting for him was a means of ‘creating order out of chaos’.

Ault has treated the darkness, not as absence of light, but for giving a new measure to already familiar forms. He used street or moon light to play up the darkness. He minimises the illusion of space, and the ‘forms of the buildings seem to hug the surface of the picture plane’.

He, with his contemporaries, like Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth, have developed a style of eerie quietude that reflects the uncertainties, despair, loneliness of periods of 1930's recession and WW-II.

Ault was extremely perfectionist. He desired studio and house to be perfectly clean, shining and arranged before he could sit down at his easel. In the last decade or two, he became alcoholic, due to several incidences of personal-family misfortunes. He lived in a small rented cottage at Woodstock that had no electricity or indoor plumbing. Ault created some of his finest paintings during this time, but had difficulty selling them due to bad economic conditions. 

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EDVARD WEIE

 

EDVARD WEIE

EDVARD WEIE

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Sunday Feature on ART of Architecture -Gautam Shah

Edvard Weie (1879-1943) was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. He is now regarded as one of the most important colorists of the Danish modernism. He was also inspired by the works of great historical painters. He began with a naturalistic manner, but soon embraced the modernist approach, with emphasis on colours of warm palette and play between light and shadow. He initially worked with ‘subject matter from mythological and literary sources while also working with figure compositions springing entirely from his own imagination’.

Weie was strongly influenced by the visit to Italy and Paris, where he came into contact with French impressionists such as, Cézanne. After returning to Denmark in 1912, he spent a period on the small island of Christiansø near Bornholm. He was one of the earliest participants in the Bornholm school of painters. These artists, each developed an individualistic style, full of experimentation.

 

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