Cover image for Ralston crawford :  structures of time.
Ralston crawford : structures of time.
Title:
Ralston crawford : structures of time.
Author:
Ritter, William S.
ISBN:
9780355928921
Personal Author:
Publication Information:
Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2018
Physical Description:
1 online resource (104 p.)
General Note:
Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 79-11.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisor: Dunbar, Burton.
Abstract:
Ralston Crawford is an American artist best known for his Precisionist aesthetic style that celebrates the edifices of modern America such as bridges, silos, and grain elevators. Crawford utilized a highly controlled technique in which subject matter was defined by sharp-edged, simplified forms, minimal details, and nominal emotional content. It is less well known that Crawford was a prodigious photographer and produced over ten thousand finished prints, few of which were exhibited in contrast to his paintings. Similar to his paintings, many of Crawford’s photographs are sharp-edged geometric abstractions sparse in contextual or expressive details. Because of this, his photographs form ideal matrices that allow the free exploration of the nature of time. I use Crawford’s examples of photographs contained in the Hallmark Photography Collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, to characterize time in Crawford’s photographs in four categories: momentary, transitory , impervious, or entropic. That is, time that is either transitory and measured, momentary and instantaneous, impervious and lasting forever, or entropic and chaotic without reason or measure. I apply concepts of time among modern thinkers and photographers active during the onset of Crawford’s career. I use art historical evidence and formal analysis to explore Crawford’s photographs and reason how each of his photographs expresses a specific “motif” of time. Time that is either transitory and measured, momentary and instantaneous, impervious and lasting forever or entropic and chaotic without reason or measure. Finally, I have included an appendix that briefly explains the neuroaesthetic underpinnings of how the brain sees art and in what way it relates to the interpretation of Crawford’s photography.
Local Note:
School code: 0134.
Subject Term:
Electronic Access:
Click for full text
Thesis Note:
Thesis (A.M.)--University of Missouri - Kansas City, 2018.
Field 805:
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