Copyright by Susanna Gorski 2010

The Thesis Committee for Susanna Brooks Gorski Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis:

The Artist, the Atom, and the : Paints

APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE:

Supervisor: Linda D. Henderson

John R. Clarke

The Artist, the Atom, and the Bikini Atoll: Ralston Crawford Paints Operation Crossroads

by

Susanna Brooks Gorski, B.A.

Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

The University of Texas at Austin August 2010 Abstract

The Artist, the Atom, and the Bikini Atoll: Ralston Crawford Paints Operation Crossroads

Susanna Brooks Gorski, M.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2010

Supervisor: Linda D. Henderson

This thesis explores Ralston Crawford‘s canvases painted after witnessing the events of Operation Crossroads at the Bikini Atoll in 1946. Commissioned by Fortune, the artist provides the viewer with a unique and captivating view of the destruction wrought by atomic weaponry. Through a careful look at Crawford‘s relationship with

Fortune, ‘s Downtown Gallery, and Crawford‘s artistic contemporaries, this thesis positions the paintings within the art historical and cultural context of the mid- twentieth century and asserts their importance to the history of the Atomic Age. The thesis traces Crawford‘s artistic development and his use of an Americanized Cubist language. In addition, the thesis looks closely at the rich cultural fabric of the postwar era and evaluates Crawford‘s position in the American Art scene.

iv Table of Contents

List of Figures ...... vi

The Artist, the Atom, and the Bikini Atoll: Ralston Crawford Paints Operation Crossroads ...... 1

Figures...... 60

Bibliography ...... 81

Vita… ...... 91

v List of Figures

Figure 1. Ralston Crawford, Test Able, 1946. Oil on canvas, 23 5/8 x 17 5/8 in. Georgia Museum of Art, The , Athens; Eva Underhill Holbrook Collection of American Art; Gift of Alfred H. Holbrook. From Barbara Haskell, Ralston Crawford (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1985), 68.

Figure 2. Archival Photograph, ―Descent of the Column, Baker Test,‖ July 25, 1946. From Joint Task Force One, Office of the Historian, Operation Crossroads, the Official Pictorial Record (New York: W.H. Wise and Company, 1946), 196.

Figure 3. Archival Photograph, ―Test Able Panorama,‖ July 1, 1946. From United States Joint Task Force One, Office of the Historian, Operation Crossroads, the Official Pictorial Record (New York: W.H. Wise and Company, 1946), 138-139.

Figure 4. Archival Photograph, ―High Altitude View, Baker Test,‖ July 25, 1946. From United States Joint Task Force One, Office of the Historian, Operation Crossroads, the Official Pictorial Record (New York: W.H. Wise and Company, 1946), 183.

Figure 5. Herbert Matter, Arts and Architecture cover, December 1946. From Brooke Kamin Rapaport and Kevin L. Stayton, Vital Forms: American Art and Design in the Atomic Age, 1940-1960 (New York: Museum of Art in association with Harry N. Abrams, 2001), 12.

Figure 6. , Church Street El, 1920. Oil on canvas, 16 x 19 in. The Museum of Art. From The Collection at ARTstor.

Figure 7. Ralston Crawford, Vertical Building, 1934. Oil on canvas, 40 1/8 x 34 1/8 in. Museum of ; Arthur W. Bequest Fund Purchase. From Barbara Haskell, Ralston Crawford (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1985), 29.

Figure 8. Ralston Crawford, Sanford Tanks, 1938. Oil on canvas, 36 x 28 in. From Barbara Haskell, Ralston Crawford (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1985), 46.

Figure 9. Ralston Crawford, Gas Tanks, 1938. Silver gelatin print, 6 x 4 3/8 in. From Barbara Haskell, Ralston Crawford (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1985), 46.

Figure 10. Ralston Crawford, Overseas Highway, 1939. From Barbara Haskell, Ralston vi Crawford (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1985), 53.

Figure 11. Ralston Crawford, A Plane Accident in Relation to Storm Structure, 1943. From Barbara Haskell, Ralston Crawford (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1985), 59.

Figure 12. Ralston Crawford, At the Dock, 1942. From Fortune, November 1944.

Figure 13. Ralston Crawford, Fortune cover, April 1945. From Fortune, April 1945.

Figure 14. Time Magazine cover, July 1, 1946.

Figure 15. Admiral Blandy and Mrs. Blandy, Admiral Frank J. Lowry celebrating the end of Joint Task Force One, November 7, 1946. From Jonathan M. Weisgall, Operation Crossroads: The Atomic Tests at Bikini Atoll (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1994).

Figure 16. Ralston Crawford, U.S.S. Nevada, 1946. Oil on canvas, dimensions unknown. From Ralston Crawford, ―Bikini,‖ Fortune, December 1946, 154.

Figure 17. Archival Photograph, ―Used Car, Aboard Nevada,‖ 1946. From United States Joint Task Force One, Office of the Historian, Operation Crossroads, the Official Pictorial Record (New York: W.H. Wise and Company, 1946), 164.

Figure 18. Archival Photograph, ―Shredded Airplane, Nevada,‖ 1946. From United States Joint Task Force One, Office of the Historian, Operation Crossroads, the Official Pictorial Record (New York: W.H. Wise and Company, 1946), 165.

Figure 19. Ralston Crawford, Bomber, 1944. Oil on canvas, 28 x 40 in. From William Agee, Ralston Crawford (New York: Twelvetrees Press, 1983), plate 23.

Figure 20. Archival Photograph, ―General Damage on Stern Deck, Nevada,‖ 1946. From United States Joint Task Force One, Office of the Historian, Operation Crossroads, the Official Pictorial Record (New York: W.H. Wise and Company, 1946), 167.

Figure 21. Archival Photograph, ―Test Able Aftermath: Nevada,‖ 1946. From United States Joint Task Force One, Office of the Historian, Operation Crossroads, the Official Pictorial Record (New York: W.H. Wise and Company, 1946), 169.

Figure 22. Page 156, ―Test Able: Cloud Column,‖ from Ralston Crawford, ―Bikini,‖ Fortune, December 1946.

vii Figure 23. Page 155, ―If Bikini Atoll Had Been New York Harbor,‖ Ralston Crawford, ―Bikini,‖ Fortune, December 1946.

Figure 24. Stuart Davis, Report from Rockport, 1940. Oil on canvas, 24 x 30 in, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Edith and Lowenthal Collection, Bequest of Edith Abrahamson Lowenthal, 1991.

Figure 25. Ralston Crawford, Tour of Inspection, Bikini, 1946. Oil on canvas, 24 x 34 in. From Barbara Haskell, Ralston Crawford (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1985), 69.

Figure 26. Ralston Crawford, Report from Bikini, 1946. From Richard B. Freeman, ―Artist at Bikini,‖ Magazine of Art, April 1947, 157.

Figure 27. Ralston Crawford, Sea Plane Takeoff, 1946. Oil on canvas, 16 x 12 1/4 in. From William Agee, Ralston Crawford (New York: Twelvetrees Press, 1983), plate 27.

Figure 28. Philip Evergood, Renunciation, 1946. Oil on canvas, 50 x 26 in. From John I. H. Baur, Philip Evergood (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1975), figure 81.

Figure 29. Salvador Dali, The Three Sphinxes of Bikini, 1947. Oil on canvas, 11 4/5 x 19 7/10 in. From Gavin Parkinson, Surrealism, Art and Modern Science: Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Epistemology (New Have: Yale University Press, 2008), 207.

Figure 30. Vernon Fisher, Bikini, 1987. Acrylic on canvas, 138 x 222 in. From Vernon Fisher (Champaign: Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1994).

Figure 31. Adolph Gottlieb, Cadmium Red Above Black, 1959. Oil on canvas, 108 x 90 in. University of Texas at Austin, Blanton Museum of Art, Gift of Mari and James A. Michener.

Figure 32. Ben Shahn, From That Day On, 1960. Oil and tempera on canvas and board, 71 ½ x 35 3/8 in. University of Texas at Austin, Blanton Museum of Art, Gift of Mari and James A. Michener.

viii The Artist, the Atom, and the Bikini Atoll: Ralston Crawford Paints Operation Crossroads

Introduction

Early in the morning on July 1, 1946, the United States detonated an atomic bomb over the idyllic and calm Bikini Atoll Lagoon. Operation Crossroads, a joint Army-Navy test, drew massive attention from the international community. Witnesses to the event ranged from newsmen to diplomats, from sitting government officials to enlisted service men. In total, over 42,000 people viewed the first explosion of the atomic bomb since

Nagasaki. Of all the observers, only one artist attended the historic event—Ralston

Crawford. Dispatched to the site by Fortune to report what he saw, Crawford created a unique response to the most fearsome weapon in the American arsenal. The article, published in the December 1946 issue of Fortune, demonstrated Crawford‘s talent as a mapmaker and his invention of a new visual language to address the destruction brought by the advances of atomic science during World War II.

The centerpiece of Crawford‘s colorful spread in Fortune was the painting Test

Able, named after the first test bomb dropped over the lagoon (fig.1). Crawford described the blast in a letter to his wife commenting, ―I can only say it had a definitely supernatural character. Yes, it was a miracle, the blinding flash of light, the sun form, then the mushroom cloud.‖1 Crawford‘s dramatic canvas exposes the brilliant colors of the bomb and the lagoon. The deep azure of the ocean commingles with the light blue of

1 Ralston Crawford, quoted in Meredith Ward, Ralston Crawford: Images of War (New York: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1993), 6. 1 the clear pacific sky. In the middle and the foreground, the viewer notes the vibrant orange and yellow of the bomb‘s blast. The yellow rises from a cylindrical base into a rich mushroom cloud. A gray haze rests on top of the yellow, signaling the smoky residue of the blast. The metal hulls of the target ships are torn apart by the violence of the bomb.

One notes the five rivets of the ship‘s hull on a large piece of debris that anchors the lower portion of the composition. Mangled metal and shrapnel move through the composition to demonstrate the utter chaos at the moment of atomic impact.

He later explained in the exhibition catalogue for the December 1946 show at the

Downtown Gallery, ―Destruction is one of the dominant characteristics of our time,‖ and that his works created in response to Operation Crossroads ―constitute a comment on destruction.‖ 2 The atomic detonations of Operation Crossroads were the first publicly displayed tests of the atomic bomb and christened the nascent Atomic Age. Despite the fact that Test Able seemed a failure due to pilot error, the damage from the explosion was readily apparent to onlookers of the event.

Crawford was taken aback by what he saw at Bikini and felt he had to coin ―so many new ‗words‘ i.e. shapes‖ for his paintings.3 The second test, the underwater detonation of Test Baker, has become the iconic example of an atomic explosion. Images from the test capture the large column of water released from the blast shooting high above the placid Bikini Lagoon. They have even appeared in the closing montage of Dr.

2 Ralston Crawford: Bikini, Downtown Gallery Catalogue, Downtown Gallery Papers, Smithsonian Archives of American Art. 3 Ibid. 2 Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (fig. 2).4 Operation

Crossroads served as a major assertion of American military power on land, air, and sea.

A brief sketch of the events leading up to and during Operation Crossroads clarifies the importance of the event to Crawford‘s artistic career.

Operation Crossroads

As World War II came to an end, the inter-service rivalry between the Army and

Navy reached new heights. Without wartime appropriations, military commanders questioned the efficacy of the Navy in the age of the atomic bomb. In order to prove the

Navy‘s resilience, or lack there of, to an atomic attack, the United States ordered a series of full scale tests to occur in 1946. The Joint Chiefs of Staff appointed Vice Admiral

William H.P. Blandy as Commander of Joint Task Force One. His first assignment was to find an adequate testing ground for the operation. Admiral William Pratt explained the selection of the Bikini Atoll in a Newsweek article. He wrote that ―many factors entered into the selection of the appropriate site for the experiment‖ and that ―wind and weather, freedom from tropical storms and reasonable accessibility to main bases of supply and other facilities had to be taken into account.‖ The selected site also needed a low population, and an area of enclosed water that was both large enough and deep enough to accommodate the vessels for the experiment. It was also paramount that the neighboring atolls had small populations so that the ―effects of the explosion and its aftermath would

4 At the conclusion of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, a medley of bomb explosions plays to the tune of ―We‘ll Meet Again‖ by Vera Lynn. During the display, the tests of Operation Crossroads feature prominently, especially Test Baker, the underwater detonation. The montage shows the mushroom column erupting from beneath the quiet fleet in the Bikini Lagoon. 3 be least detrimental.‖5 The Bikini Atoll provided the perfect testing ground in the military‘s view.6

On February 10, 1946, the Bikini peoples left church and met Commodore Ben

Wyatt, the American military governor of the Marshall Islands. As he told the islanders of the destructive potential of the bomb in front of a camera crew, he asked if they would be willing to sacrifice their home for ―the welfare of all men.‖ Believing this to only be a temporary move, the Bikinians acquiesced to the United States demands, and they began their evacuation from the Atoll.7 The displacement of the Bikini islanders became a wide- scale media event. National Geographic published a first-hand account of their relocation to nearby Rongerik titled ―Farewell to Bikini‖ in the July 1946 issue.8 Time magazine wondered if the ―primitives really underst[ood] the force of progress‖ because the

Bikinians asked how soon they could return to their Atoll after the tests.9

The move to Rongerik was ill conceived by the United States government and military. The Atoll was smaller than Bikini, and many of the fish in the lagoon were poisonous. The Bikinians starved. In 1948, the United States relocated the Bikinians to

5 Admiral William Pratt, ―How Bikini Became the Bomb-Testing Ground,‖ Newsweek, February 18, 1946. 6 During World War II, the United States seized Marshall Islands from the Japanese forces. The islands remained under the control of the United States military until July 1947, when they became a territory of the United Nations administered by the United States. See Jonathan Weisgall, ―The Nuclear Nomads of Bikini,‖ Foreign Policy 39 (Summer 1980): 76. 7 Documentary footage from Wyatt‘s visit to the Bikini Atoll in February 1946 shows the Commodore repeating his prepared speech take after take for the media. As Clayton Koppes points out ―Even as navy officers speak to the Bikinians they are constructing nuclear meaning for a world audience.‖ See Clayton Koppes, ―Radio Bikini: Making and Unmaking Nuclear Mythology,‖ in Revisioning History: Film and the Construction of a New Past, edited by Robert A. Rosenstone (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 130. 8 The author, a member of the Navy photographic team, described the islanders as ―a friendly brown people, small in stature but beautifully formed.‖ Carl Markwith, ―Farewell to Bikini,‖ National Geographic, July 1946, 99. 9 ―Atomic Age: The Goodness of Man,‖ Time, April 1, 1946. 4 the island of Kili, but life on the island was no better. Without a sheltered lagoon for fishing, the islanders relied on shipments from the United States government. However, the geographic location of Kili places it directly in the fierce Pacific trade winds. For most of the year, the island does not have a leeward side, and often times, the islanders went months without supplemental food.10 To this day, the Bikini peoples remain scattered throughout the Marshall Islands as their native Atoll remains irradiated from the test shots. The plight of the Bikini islanders demonstrates the negligence of the United

States government and the human toll of the tests of Joint Task Force One.

With the location selected and secured, the operation needed a name. Admiral

Blandy deliberately selected the name ―Crossroads‖ because ―of its possible significance—that seapower, airpower, and perhaps humanity itself—were at a crossroads.‖ The Admiral and his team proposed three tests: an airdrop to explode above the target ships, a burst from the surface of the water, and a deep-water test (which was later cancelled). As he announced his plans for Operation Crossroads, Blandy insisted that the operation was not a contest between the armed services, but a ―joint effort in every sense of the word,‖ quelling rumors of an inter-service rivalry.11

The two tests of Operation Crossroads were different in nature. On July 1, 1946,

Test Able was dropped from B-29 bomber, Dave’s Dream, above the Bikini lagoon at just after nine o‘clock in the morning (fig. 3).12 The bomb, fashioned with a photograph

10 Weisgall, ―The Nuclear Nomads of Bikini,‖ 80-82. 11 Sidney Shalett, ―Test Atomic Bombs to Blast 100 Ships at Marshalls Atoll,‖ New York Times, January 25, 1946. 12 The pilot for Dave’s Dream was Major Woodrow Swancutt. In the documentary film, Radio: Bikini, a taped interview of Swancutt‘s mother is played during footage of the test. It includes Swancutt‘s mother responding to the question ―Do you feel a little bit anxious along with him?‖ She replied, ―I certainly do, 5 of Rita Hayworth, never reached sea level and detonated 518 feet above the water‘s surface.13 Anchored in the lagoon was a ghost fleet of ninety-five target ships, from destroyers to battleships to aircraft carriers. In fact, three ships came from foreign powers for the experiment (Japan‘s Nagato and Sakawa and Germany‘s Prinz Eugen).14 All of the vessels had a proud military career, but at the time of the test were either obsolete or superfluous. The bomb missed the target ship, U.S.S. Nevada, by 2,000 feet.15 It detonated instead over the aircraft carrier Independence, which suffered astonishing damage including a destroyed flight deck. All the planes on the deck flew overboard.

Additionally, the bomb sank the attack-transport Gilliam, the Carlisle was thrown 150 yards due to the blast, and the Nagato caught fire, just to name some of the damage brought by the test.16

Test Baker was a more spectacular explosion occurring underneath the water‘s surface on July 25, 1946, at 8:34 a.m. (fig. 4). The Navy suspended the bomb ―in a watertight steel caisson‖ below U.S.S. LSM-60, a medium-sized assault ship. The Navy installed a special antenna mast on the vessel to permit transmission of the coded radio signal that fired the bomb.17 The first underwater detonation of the atomic bomb was the

―Biggest Blast Yet‖ according to a New York Times headline. In William Laurence‘s article that followed he explained, ―It was the beginning of a new chapter in the story of

but I have much faith and confidence in Woody and know that he will do the very best he can.‖ Unfortunately, Swancutt missed the target. 13 Jonathan M. Weisgall, Operation Crossroads: The Atomic Tests at Bikini Atoll (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1994), 185. 14 Ibid., 163-166. 15 W.A. Shurcliff, Bombs at Bikini: The Official Report of Operation Crossroads (New York: Wm. H. Wise & Co., Inc., 1947), 114. 16 Weisgall, Operation Crossroads: The Atomic Tests at Bikini Atoll, 188-190. 17 Shurcliff, 146. 6 the atomic age and another landmark in the story of civilization.‖ From the effects of the blast, the battleship Arkansas and the aircraft carrier Saratoga sank, the Nagato suffered damage and began to list to starboard, and LSM-60 completely disappeared with no remnants remaining. Submarines fell to the bottom of the lagoon, and ―the damage [was] much greater than it was at the same time on ‗Able Day.‘‖ Laurence remarked, ―This

[explosion] was by far the most powerful of all,‖ and that ―The phenomenon in itself was one of the most spectacular and awe-inspiring sights ever seen by man on this .‖18

The Advent of the Atomic Age and Cultural Response to the Bomb

The events at Bikini and Crawford‘s canvases partake in a much larger trend in

American culture that lasted from the conclusion of World War II until the mid-nineteen- fifties. Laurence, a science journalist for the New York Times, witnessed the first test of the atomic bomb in the summer of 1945. In an article for the paper, he wrote the following:

The Atomic Age began at exactly 5:30 Mountain War Time on the morning of July 16, 1945, on a stretch of semi-desert land about fifty airline miles from Alamogordo, N.M., just a few minutes before the dawn of a new day on this earth. At that great moment in history, ranking with the moment in the long ago when man first put fire to work for him and started on his to civilization, the vast energy locked within the hearts of the atoms of matter was released for the first time a burst of flame such as had never before been seen on this planet, illuminating earth and sky for a brief span that seemed eternal with the light of many super-suns.19

Atomic energy prevailed, and the United States possessed a new weapon, which it unleashed in August 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As the war came to a close in the

18 William Laurence, ―Blast Biggest Yet,‖ New York Times, July 25, 1946, 1. 19 William Laurence, ―Drama of the Atomic Bomb Found Climax in July 16 Test,‖ New York Times, September 26, 1945. 7 Pacific Theater, a new era dawned—the Atomic Age. The devastating destruction of

Japanese cities demonstrated not only American military might but also the harnessing of the power of the atom by physicists working on American soil. The complex reaction to the bomb coupled excitement with intense fear and permeated the cultural fabric of postwar American society.

In his text Nuclear Fear, Spencer Weart traces the response to the discovery and cultivation of the atom in science. He explains that the idea of the atom was inextricably linked to the end of the world during the early days of atomic experimentation. Prominent scientist Frederick Soddy opposed the advent of atomic weaponry early in 1915 and questioned whether the governments of the world could handle the advances of science.20

Weart points out that critics of atomic energy worried that it might get out of hand and turn on its master—much like Frankenstein‘s monster turned on its maker. For the first time, through atomic energy, scientists held the key to life and death. Robert

Oppenheimer, scientist and leader of the Manhattan Project, quoted a line from the

Bhagavad-Gita stating, ―I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.‖ The passage references the arrival of the divine Krishna who appears from the flames to claim entire armies, much like the atomic bomb.21

With the bomb‘s release over Japanese cities, images of destruction quickly spread throughout the world. Scientists such as Albert Einstein, Harold Urey, and Leó

Szilárd openly opposed further development and use of atomic weaponry. Weart asserts

20 Spencer Weart, Nuclear Fear (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1988), 17-29. 21 William Laurence, Men and Atoms: The Discovery, the Uses, and the Future of Atomic Energy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959), 118. 8 that scientists spread fear about nuclear weapons because ―fear would move the listener‖ to action against atomic weapons. And, perhaps the greatest inducement of fear came at the hands of the United States government. For the first time, widely available scientific thought became restricted and secret government property.22

As Jane Pavitt asserts, Herbert Matter‘s Atomic Head photomontage published on the cover of Arts and Architecture in December 1946 demonstrates the overwhelming nuclear anxiety in the United States, an anxiety she dubs ―bomb in the brain‖ (fig. 5).23

Inside the black silhouette of the human head, the mushroom cloud rises from neck to brain. The large head points toward a small globe. The discrepancy in size between the bomb and the earth suggests the potential destruction of the world by an invention of man. Books such as Richard Gerstell‘s, The Family Fallout Shelter (1950) claimed, ―If there‘s ATOMIC WARFARE this book may save your life!‖ and served as the ―complete easy-to-read guide for every home, office and factory.‖24 Books in this vein gave hope to

American citizens and stressed that in the face of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, one could survive an attack after a few do-it-yourself projects.

The fear and atomic dread even made its way into popular cinema. A sweeping series of sci-fi films portrayed the battle between man and monsters born from radioactivity and atomic weaponry. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) awakes when a nuclear explosion in the Artic melts an iceberg, which releases a dinosaur. While the beast runs rampant across Manhattan Island, the military pursues and ultimately kills the

22 Weart, 114-119. 23 Jane Pavitt, ―The Bomb in the Brain,‖ in Cold War Modern: Design 1945-1970, edited by Crowley and Jane Pavitt (London: V&A Publishing, 2008), 101. 24 See Richard Gerstell, How to Survive an Atomic Bomb (Bantam Books: New York, 1950). 9 creature by shooting it with a nuclear missile. As Chon Noriega posits, ―The message is clear: nuclear weapons can solve the problems and anxieties they create.‖25 The film

Them! (1954) by Gordon Douglas chronicles a man‘s encounter with gigantic ants whose nest sits near the nuclear test site at Alamogordo. In a climactic end, the resolve of a collection of American heroes destroys the queen and her nuclear nest.26

However, many responses to the atom also embraced its peaceful potential.

Positive images of the atom appeared in Walt Disney‘s children‘s cartoon Our Friend the

Atom (1957) and its accompanying text. Disney states in his forward to the book that ―the atom is our future‖ and that ―the story of the atom is a fascinating tale of human quest for knowledge, a story of scientific adventure and success.‖ The purpose of the book is to encourage the audience to ―look upon the atom as our friend.‖ As the text opens, the prologue begins with the story of the ―military atom,‖ which is a ―frightful terror,‖ ―a sinister threat,‖ and a ―perfect tale of horror.‖ But the main idea of the book remains strong, and relates that if atomic energy is used wisely, ―we can make a hero out of a villain.‖27 The book continues with brightly colored illustrations and traces the history of the atom and includes brief profiles of scientists who worked in atomic science, including

Marie and Pierre Curie, Albert Einstein, and Enrico Fermi. To conclude, the book relies on the ―atomic Genie‖ who offers mankind three distinct wishes: power (seen as energy, not as world domination), food and health, and finally, peace.

25 Chon Noriega, ―Godzilla and the Japanese Nightmare: When Them! Is U.S.,‖ Cinema Journal 27 (1987): 66. 26 Them!, DVD, directed by Gordon Douglas (1954; Burbank: Warner Home Video, 2002). 27 Heinz Haber, The Walt Disney Story of Our Friend the Atom, foreword by Walt Disney (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956), 10-13. 10 Popular magazines joined in the chorus of excitement. In a crafty pun, Life called rising Hollywood starlet Linda Christian the ―Anatomic Bomb‖ as she brought the ―new atomic age to Hollywood‖ with her beauty and sex appeal. In the photo, she rests on the curve of the swimming pool in a small bathing suit and ―soaks up solar energy.‖ The article features two additional photographs of the young starlet coyly dipping into the water. The magazine announces her size, height, and weight, as well as her ability to speak eight languages. Although she had not yet graced the film screen, her first assignment under contract with MGM was the ―publicity role of the Anatomic Bomb.‖28

Hollywood was not the only entertainment arena to capitalize on the ―sexiness‖ of the atomic bomb. When President Truman authorized nuclear testing on continental soil, a test facility opened in the deserts of Nevada. With atomic blasts and sultry Las Vegas showgirls close by, the atomic pin-up debuted. The first Miss Atomic Bomb ―radiat[ed] loveliness instead of atomic particles.‖ The 1955 tests of Operation Cue measured the impact of nuclear warfare on civilian communities. After delays due to weather, the operation earned the nickname ―Mis-Cue.‖ To honor the attempted shots, the men crowned a Copa girl Mis-Cue and adorned her head with a mushroom cloud tiara.

Sporting a swimsuit clad with a cotton mushroom cloud, Lee Merlin, a Copa showgirl from the Sands Hotel and the last Miss Atomic Bomb, remains today the face of the atomic tests in Nevada.29

28 ―Anatomic Bomb,‖ Life Magazine, September 3, 1945, 53-54. 29 National Nuclear Security Administration, Nevada Site Office, U.S. Department of Energy, Miss Atom Bomb, December 2004. 11 Atomic excitement reached around the globe and even entered into the fashion arena. One particularly interesting addition to the cultural vernacular appeared on the sandy beaches of the French Riviera in the summer of 1946. With wild excitement

Cannes-based-swimwear-designer Jacques Heim introduced his petite, two-piece creation, the atome. He proclaimed that it was the smallest bathing suit in the world. Soon after, however, an automotive engineer named Louis Réard announced that he ―split the atome and made it nanoscale‖ and birthed le bikini. A bathing suit that was ―smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world,‖ le bikini appeared on the fashion main stage only four days after the United States detonated its first test bomb on the Bikini Atoll.30 Even though le bikini did not enter American fashion until the 1960s, the two test shots of

Operation Crossroads at the Bikini Atoll consumed the United States in the summer of

1946.31

Review of Research

Operation Crossroads and the Atomic Age serve as a crucial backdrop for Ralston

Crawford‘s complex abstractions of 1946 and his inventive response to the atom.

Understanding the larger cultural context of the United States after World War II is vital to interpreting the often-overlooked paintings by Crawford. A fair amount of scholarship exists on the artist, including a major monograph published as part of a Whitney

Retrospective in 1985 by Barbara Haskell, along with a monograph written by William

30 Patricia Marx, ―Itsy-Bitsy Teeny-Weeny,‖ New Yorker, August 3, 2009. 31 French mid-century starlet Brigitte Bardot was not the first woman to don a Bikini, but she was the first to wear the small swimsuit in a major motion picture, Manina, la fille sans voile (The Girl in the Bikini) (1952). The narrative technique of the film‘s director and the showing of Bardot‘s belly button fully established the actress as a ―sex kitten.‖ For more on Bardot, see Ginette Vincendeau, ―Hot Couture: Brigitte Bardot‘s Fashion Revolution,‖ in Fashioning Film Stars: Dress, Culture, Identity, edited by Rachel Moseley, (London: British Film Institute, 2008) 136-137. 12 Agee. While the texts provide great insight into Crawford the artist, the works only provide a cursory look at his work inspired by the events at Bikini. Many of Crawford‘s paintings dealing with the destructive effects of war were exhibited in a 1993 show,

―Ralston Crawford: Images of War,‖ at Hirschl & Adler Galleries. Despite the thrust of the exhibition, the works only received a few paragraphs of discussion in the short catalogue.

Evaluating Crawford‘s work from Bikini extends a fruitful and open field of art historical research. Some art historians and critics have touched upon art and the atom, including Peter Blanc who established the connection between modern science and modern art in his Magazine of Art piece ―The Artist and the Atom.‖ He suggested that the theory of atomic matter revealed ―truths about the universe,‖ which artists took into consideration when creating their works.32 Felix Ibanez, in a three-part essay in Arts and

Architecture, asserted, ―No other science has influenced human thought as profoundly as physics‖ as he explored the impact of atomic science on twentieth-century art.33 And, Leo

Steinberg addressed artistic engagement with nature in ―The Eye Is a Part of the Mind‖ and pointed out that artists may draw upon ―imagery from the visual data of the scientist.‖34

In terms of scholarship directly related to the atomic bomb, Jeffrey Weiss‘s article

―Science and Primitivism: Fearful Symmetry in the Early New York School‖ pioneered this field of investigation in art history and remains the primary source on the impact of

32 Peter Blanc, ―The Artist and the Atom,‖ Magazine of Art 44 (1951): 152. 33 Felix- Ibanez, ―An Experiment in Correlation: the Psychological Impact of Atomic Science on Modern Art,‖ Arts and Architecture 70 (1953): 16. 34 Leo Steinberg, ―The Eye Is a Part of the Mind,‖ in Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth- Century Art (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 304. 13 the bomb on American art. He posited that the atomic bomb ―projected contemporary science onto the primordial past‖ and that the advances in science had ―blown open an access to nature‘s heart of darkness.‖ As a result, he claimed, artists looked to primitive myth and primordial nature to create a new version of primitivism focused on both fear and awe.35 But the response to the atomic bomb is much richer than Weiss makes it out to be, and, in general, very little art historical scholarship looks at the sweeping impact of the atomic bomb, a central event of the mid-twentieth century. Stephen Petersen‘s essay

―Explosive Propositions: Artists React to the Atomic Age,‖ published in Science in

Context, expands on Weiss‘s article and provides a methodological model for my research. While most of Petersen‘s interests lie within the post-war European art of Lucio

Fontana and Yves Klein, he briefly touches upon artistic response in the United States, such as a brief mention of Crawford and Social Realist Philip Evergood. Petersen weaves together primary source material and recent scholarship in a succinct and compelling manner.

Paul Boyer‘s book By the Bomb’s Early Light relies on first-hand accounts of atomic tests, Gallup polls of American citizens, editorial writings, books, movies, music, and a host of other sources to illustrate the atomic bomb‘s impact on the United States.

However, he omits visual art from his conversation. Vital Forms: American Art and

Design in the Atomic Age, 1940-1960, a traveling exhibition and catalogue, supplements

Boyer‘s book by providing a look at fine art. The exhibition and the catalogue essays

35 Jeffrey Weiss, ―Science and Primitivism: A Fearful Symmetry in the Early New York School,‖ Arts Magazine 57 (1983): 86. 14 illuminate the Atomic Age by focusing on the organic in art, design, and architecture.36

But, for the most part, Crawford‘s work has been overlooked by scholars. His one-of-a- kind response to the tests at Bikini is an important part of the history of mid-twentieth century American Art as well as of the Atomic Age.

Crawford’s Early Life and Career

Born September 1906, Crawford spent the early years of his life on the shores of the Great Lakes surrounded by images of maritime industry. He often sailed with his father, a captain of a cargo vessel. Upon graduation from high school in Buffalo,

Crawford moved to , where he hoped to attend art school. Having missed the deadline for classes, he instead took a job with the United Fruit Company and set sail up and down the Eastern seaboard and throughout Central and South America. He sailed through the Panama Canal and arrived at Los Angeles just in time to enroll in classes at the Otis Art Institute in winter 1927. By the fall, Crawford moved to to attend the Academy of The Fine Arts.37

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts alumni roster featured the likes of

Ashcan School members Robert Henri and George Luks as well as Precisionists Charles

Sheeler and Charles Demuth.38 Crawford‘s formal training at the Academy lasted for three years. As a student, he quickly aligned himself with the Modernist instructors Hugh

36 Brooke Kamin Rapaport and Kevin L. Stayton, Vital Forms: American Art and Design in the Atomic Age, 1940-1960 (New York: of Art in association with Harry N. Abrams, 2001). 37 Barbara Haskell, Ralston Crawford (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1985), 9-11. 38 Founded by Charles Wilson Peale and William Rush in 1805, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts produced some of the finest artists in the American School. Once avant-garde in the study of art, especially under the leadership of Thomas Eakins, the Pennsylvania Academy became a more conservative institution by the time Crawford enrolled in 1927. For more on Eakins‘s use of live models, dissection, and photography as modes to study the human form, see Amy Werbel, Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). 15 Breckenridge and Henry McCarter. Breckenridge acted as Crawford‘s artistic father, and even though Crawford did not adopt his mentor‘s style, Crawford familiarized himself with Breckenridge‘s bold use of color and abstract paintings of the 1920s. Haskell notes that Crawford often relied too heavily on the opinions of his mentor and frequently to the detriment of his career.39 By the time Crawford enrolled, the Academy had become more conservative in their pedagogy and art exhibitions. The last attempt at a showcase of

European was in 1923, when Albert Barnes displayed his work at the school to great discord. Barnes kept his collection private in nearby Merion and opened the

Barnes Foundation in 1924 to students.

Crawford seized upon the opportunity to study the works of the Barnes Collection and attend lectures offered by the foundation. Barnes was an innovator in the study of art.

He outlined his views in an extensive work titled The Art in Painting. Published by the

Barnes Foundation in 1925, Barnes‘s book ―represent[ed] an effort to set forth briefly the salient features of a systemic study of both old and modern painting.‖ With over 115 illustrations, Barnes carefully dissected the study of painting into aspects of form, color, line, and composition and drew on the traditions of painting from the earliest examples of painting to the work of Pablo .40 Barnes developed a rubric for good painting, and he noted the influences of the past on the work of the present. In his opening discussion of contemporary painting, he notes that and Cézanne ―adopted methods that came from Velasquez, , , and Courbet….‖41 Haskell finds that Barnes‘s thoughts on

39 Haskell, 13-14. 40 Albert C. Barnes, The Art in Painting (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1928), 10. 41 Ibid., 371. 16 artistic influence carried over into Crawford‘s own artistic outlook. The greatest source for Crawford, however, was Barnes‘s collection itself. Crawford admired the work of

Cézanne, and he applied Cézanne‘s formal sensibilities in his own work, such as the use of color to create structure and the reduction of architectural forms to planes and volumes. Crawford‘s early still-life paintings and portraits demonstrate a close study of

Cézanne‘s technique.42 Barnes‘s modern ideas—stressing the underlying formal aspects of painting—and his modern collection provided the perfect escape from the conservative leanings of the Academy for a young, aspiring artist like Crawford.

In addition to the paintings at the Barnes Collection, Crawford had access to

Cubist works by Picasso and Georges Braque in advertising man Earl Horter‘s impressive twentieth-century art collection. Furthermore, Horter also owned a selection of paintings by American artists including Sheeler‘s 1920 work, Church Street El (fig. 6). The forms of Church Street El appear abstract at first glance, but upon closer inspection recognizable features of the urban landscape appear. With a series of parallel lines in gray, Sheeler creates a set of train tracks. Coming out of the shadow, two train cars emerge and anchor the right of the composition. Just to the left of the train, the sloping cream and sienna colors imply the height of the elevated train tracks and the long, strip of black paint signifies a road. The viewer‘s eye is drawn to the center of the composition, where light colors imply open space, perhaps an open square amidst the tall buildings of the city. The façade of a church, marked by Sheeler‘s use of color gradation where the light fades to dark toward the church‘s steeple to imply height and volume, rises just off

42 Haskell, 16. 17 the square. Other planes of color evoke the roof of a building in a cool beige palette, and, in the left foreground of the painting, the artist‘s use of gray and black squares and rectangles implies a looming skyscraper over the urban scene. Haskell notes that

Sheeler‘s ―architectural subject matter, flat planes of color, and smooth paint handling‖ in

Church Street El were likely sources for Crawford‘s developing style.43

Crawford‘s paintings of the and 1940s not only looked at architectural subject matter, but they also looked to American industry, something Sheeler carefully studied on canvas. In Crawford‘s Vertical Building (1934), he follows many of Sheeler‘s aesthetic conventions (fig. 7). Through careful use of color, Crawford marks the height, the length, and the width of the building. The brightly illuminated face of the building stands tall, with an exhaust pipe implying verticality alongside the strategic use of gray stripes of color to add to the vertical momentum of the composition. Also, Crawford‘s upward angle sends the eye toward the water tower that rests on the roof of the building and the bright blue sky—the top third of the composition. In addition, the eye-catching yellow form, perhaps a stairway exit or some type of storage unit, keeps the viewer‘s attention at the top of the composition. Just as Sheeler used light colors to ground the viewer in Church Street El, Crawford‘s bright colors and vertical lines force the viewer to the upper portions of the composition. Also, Crawford uses planes of darker colors to demonstrate the recession of space on the left hand side of the composition. The same gray lines that forced the eye upward on the façade of the building, also add to the

43 Ibid., 14. 18 architectural detailing of the building by showing where space juts forward and where space recedes to allow for the exhaust pipe.

A focus on industrial America and formal techniques were not the only links that

Crawford shared with Sheeler. Much like Sheeler, Crawford avidly photographed workers on the docks, parts of boats, or buildings, and turned them into paintings (fig. 8 and fig. 9). Frequently, scholars place Crawford‘s name amidst the controlled brush of the Precisionist aesthetic, but placing him with such artists seems out of sync. Crawford was not of the same generation and his work departed from the ultimate goals of the style. Even though visual and methodological links exist between Crawford and

Precisionist artists, Crawford‘s work represents an amalgamation of American and

European techniques. Unlike Demuth and Sheeler‘s mature work, Crawford‘s simplified forms added an air of mystery to his work. And, Crawford viewed industrial forms as the

American version of the Gothic cathedral—a symbol of stability—as opposed to the

Precisionist attempt to unite recognizable landscapes with flattened space and abstract forms of the Cubist movement.44 Nonetheless, in the few years he spent in Philadelphia,

Crawford viewed works of art that were crucial to his career and learned new ways to approach art making. From the passage of Cézanne, to the reduced forms of Picasso, to the planes of color of Sheeler, the formal techniques Crawford studied in Philadelphia set his pathway to abstraction.

Crawford at War

44 For more on the classification of Crawford‘s style, see Haskell and William Agee, Ralston Crawford (New York: Twelvetrees Press, 1983). 19 In February 1942, Crawford received his draft notice. He had gained critical acclaim throughout the late 1930s and had a one-man show at Boyer Gallery in 1939. The same year, Life magazine published a full color version of his painting Overseas Highway

(fig. 10), which many viewed as a metaphor for the United States emerging from the

Great Depression. The painting depicts a stretch of U.S. Route 1 through the Florida

Keys that opened in spring 1938. A bridge sits over the azure ocean and zooms off into the distance. White, fluffy clouds float in the pale blue sky. The guardrails of the bridge begin to converge at the vanishing point in the far off distance. There is no evidence that the road ever comes to an end as it pushes forward into the far-off distance or the future.

Crawford had become a sensation, and the timing of his draft notice could not have been worse for his career. Within the four years he was away at war, a new batch of artists emerged and would forever change the course of American art.45 Crawford‘s time in the military was not as productive, but he did manage to produce a compelling series of paintings and maps. He originally applied to work as a photographer in the Navy, but he did not pass the physical. Instead, he joined the army. Through a friend, Crawford managed to land a job in the Visual Presentation Unit in December 1942. His assignment was to aid the military in strategic planning of operations by creating a visual language in maps for weather, air flow, and storm structure for the use of fliers.46

Crawford‘s military post kept him in Washington, DC, but he maintained many of his artistic ties in New York City, including his friendship with artist Stuart Davis (1894-

1965). In August 1942, Davis drafted a letter to Downtown Gallery owner Edith Halpert

45 Haskell, 52-62. 46 ―The Artist and the Meteorologist,‖ Art Digest, January 15, 1944, 9. 20 in which he asked for Crawford to be added to the gallery‘s roster. Davis lauded his friend and said,

I am sure you know his work and accomplishments. He is known, has sold quite well, and has gained recognition as a teacher…. He gets around quite a bit and is respected as an artist, in important quarters. I think his very American style and subject-matter might fit very well into your general policy.47

Halpert ran the gallery from 1926 until her death in 1970. A center for , Halpert‘s gallery included some of the most popular American artists of the first half of the twentieth century including: Davis, Jacob Lawrence, George Morris,

Georgia O‘Keeffe, Ben Shahn, and Sheeler. Halpert mounted shows that tested the boundaries of modernism and never featured the works of Europeans or deceased artists.

She looked for exciting and interesting ways to display art, and she frequently hung shows based on a unifying theme as opposed to just a single artist.48 Her tenacity and eye were unmatched. Halpert had impeccable taste and had blazed a trail for American art.

She promoted her artists, and she worked hard to ensure that they received top dollar for their work.49 Crawford was in good hands.

His first show with Halpert, ―In War and In Peace,‖ opened at the Downtown

Gallery in January 1944. The show demonstrated not only Crawford‘s unique artistic talents, but also Halpert‘s unique gallery exhibitions. A combination of painted canvases

47 Stuart Davis to Edith Halpert, August 31, 1942, Downtown Gallery Papers, Smithsonian Archives of American Art. 48 Lindsay Pollock, The Girl with the Gallery: Edith Gregor Halpert and the Making of the Modern Art Market (New York: Public Affairs, 2006), 85. 49 For an interesting case study of Halpert‘s tenacity in negotiating artist‘s commissions for work, see Pollock, ―The Palace of Virtue,‖ in The Girl with the Gallery: Edith Gregor Halpert and the Making of the Modern Art Market, 154-169. The author traces Donald Deskey‘s Radio City Music Hall construction, Halpert‘s artists, and anecdotal stories about the installations of the work. The author emphasizes Halpert‘s determination when fighting for the highest rate for her artist‘s work in the Depression Era, Rockefeller funded project. 21 and drawings by Crawford and maps from the Visual Presentation Unit, the exhibition showcased Crawford‘s work made during the war and made during times of peace.

Obtaining the maps from the Army-Air Force was no easy task. Both Halpert and

Crawford created a game plan to approach the command to gain access to the works.

Their strategy paid off.50 By December 1943, Halpert received permission to show maps by Crawford and learned the importance of the new form of map-making from Colonel

D. N. Yates, the Chief of the Weather Division. The Colonel wrote,

It is frequently necessary to educate large numbers of officers and soldiers in highly technical phases of this subject in a very brief period. It has, therefore, been found desirable to substitute pictures for words in many types of weather presentations…. For the purpose of conveying these complex ideas quickly and clearly, it has been necessary to develop new methods of presentation. These resulting illustrations are not charts in the conventional sense nor are they naturalistic pictures of weather elements. They are graphic presentations which must first stimulate the visual sense of the observer. They must further convey an idea in clear-cut logical symbols through which the irrelevant is eliminated and emphasis is placed on that which is important. The modern painter‘s knowledge of colour, tone, distortion and emphasis is used to this end.51

The show included twelve maps, four of which illustrated plane crashes in relation to storm clouds (fig. 11). Crawford met with meteorologists to develop new, visual shorthand for weather phenomena. In the plane crash series, fluffy white clouds represent the storm area, black stripes reference precipitation, and delicate stars symbolize snow. A small, black, mangled plane rests on the site of the plane accident. Crawford‘s arrows mark the movement of the air currents, and a long, curving white line indicates the front boundary. The maps were ―vivid and dramatic‖ in comparison to standard weather charts,

50 Ralston Crawford to Edith Halper, November 4, 1943, Downtown Gallery Papers, Smithsonian Archives of American Art. 51 Colonel D. N. Yates to Edith Halpert, December 18, 1943, Downtown Gallery Papers, Smithsonian Archives of American Art. 22 and they held ―the attention of the pilot, meteorological, and staff-school students.‖

Newsweek found these maps the ―most handsome‖ of the selected maps in the exhibition.

In addition to the maps, the show included fourteen easel paintings. One striking example of Crawford‘s industrial, maritime landscape was At the Dock #3 (fig. 12). A

―powerful, masculine‖ painting, according to the Newsweek critic, At the Dock #3 exemplified Crawford‘s ―super-simplified‖ geometric lines.52 The long, ladder-like dock, painted in gray and black, runs from the foreground to the background of the painting and creates depth of field in the composition. A large rope cleat rests on the dock on the left- hand side of the frame. The cleat casts a shadow on the dock, implying that the light source comes from behind the composition. The large ship overtakes the image and the height of the prow runs from the base to the top of the right-hand side of the painting.

The stripe of red at the base of the hull grounds the eye, and the large section of black paint amplifies the stature of the vessel. Three white rectangles form the cockpit area of the boat and pop forward from the pale blue sky. Crawford outlines the lower portion with a stripe of gray. To remind the viewer of the painting‘s perspective, Crawford continues the gray hue to mark the side of the cockpit. With a quick movement of the brush with black paint, Crawford outlines an exhaust pipe on the top of the ship and a rope. Another quick stroke in a golden hue marks a line off the bow of the ship that is likely tied to the dock outside of the composition. Similar to the work that allied the artist with the Precisionists, the painting exemplifies Crawford‘s use of areas of solid color and geometric forms to create a composition. Although the image is legible, the planes of

52 ―Art: Abstractions and Weather,‖ Newsweek, January 17, 1944, 91. 23 color and the reduction of form allude to Crawford‘s move toward abstraction after

World War II.

The show at the Downtown Gallery received positive reviews and amplified

Crawford‘s status in the art world. The installation demonstrated his prowess as a painter and the clever ―use‖ of an artist in a wartime effort.53 Because of the show‘s success,

Crawford received a commission from Fortune magazine. His skills as a mapmaker and his artistic eye were certainly invaluable to Deborah Calkins, the magazine‘s art editor.

Calkins was the ―active link‖ between the magazine and contemporary artists. She had a reputation for finding little known artists, such as Lawrence who provided work for a

1941 article on migratory African-American workers.54 Calkins had a close rapport with

Halpert‘s gallery, and the magazine often featured the work of painters on the Downtown

Gallery‘s roster.

At the Dock #3 appeared on Fortune‘s cover in November 1944. And in the same issue, Crawford provided map illustrations for an article titled ―Thunder Over the North

Atlantic.‖ The article included full page, full color maps to supplement the story about the invasion of Normandy on D-Day and the role of the Air Force in the North Atlantic

Theater. Crawford continued his relationship with Fortune and provided another cover in the spring of 1945 (fig. 13). For the April edition, Crawford used muted colors—cream, blue, brown, gray—to illustrate the tail wing of a plane for the magazine‘s theme of ―Air

Transport.‖ The flattening of space gives viewers the impression that they are looking at

53 Bryan Holme, ―New York Commentary,‖ Studio 127 (1944): 28. 54 Quentin Keynes, ―Fortune: Who‘s Who in Fortune,‖ Magazine of the Future, May 1948, 57. 24 the plane from above, as it flies over land and sea. Crawford‘s largest commission, however, came in 1946, when he attended the test detonations at Bikini.

A Brief History of Fortune

To some, the idea of sending an artist to cover the major news story of 1946 appears bizarre and unnecessary, but for Fortune, an artist‘s eye provided a rare glimpse at a momentous event. Founded in 1929 by the publisher of Time Magazine Henry Luce,

Fortune debuted at the beginning of the greatest economic downturn of the twentieth century. With a hefty one-dollar cover price and available only by subscription, Fortune reported and sold a lifestyle to a business gentleman. Despite the ill-fated release date,

Fortune endured. The issues were large format (eleven by fourteen inches) and included full color, appearing more like a coffee table book than a newsstand magazine. The magazine sought to ―reflect Industrial Life in ink and paper and word and picture as the finest skyscraper reflects it in stone and steel and architecture.‖ With ―unbridled curiosity,‖ Fortune promised to travel from the tip of the wing of an airplane to the bottom of the oceans, work alongside the chemist as he discovers a new world, and study the fashions of flappers. The magazine promised to make ―its discoveries clear, coherent, vivid‖ providing each subscriber with the keenest of pleasures.55

Fortune produced its own version of American modernism and solicited a specific style of art, which Michael Augspurger carefully charts in his work An Economy of

Abundant Beauty: Fortune Magazine and Depression America. The magazine ―stressed

55 Crawford‘s cover from April 1945 aligns nicely with the magazine‘s purpose. ―Purpose,‖ Fortune Magazine, February 1930, 38. 25 accessibility, worldliness, and harmony between commercial and aesthetic concerns.‖56

In the beginning, Fortune avoided the European l’art pour l’art and looked to artists who focused on the power of modern industrial society. By emphasizing a new style of art,

Fortune not only made art accessible and available to corporate professionals, but it also espoused a new vision of American culture.57 As the magazine matured, the role of culture changed for Fortune. What the editorial staff came to realize was that the philanthropic businessman supported culture, and at the same time, the business gentleman recognized that collecting art could be beneficial to his pocket book.

Augspurger asserts that Fortune eschewed the belief that every work of art was a

―priceless treasure,‖ and instead ―equated it with other items on the market.‖58 The result was a blurring of the lines between art and business. Art had become a commodity.

Fortune published articles on connoisseurship, valuation of art objects, and emphasized that art collection was a business decision, not just a gentlemanly hobby. Knowing an authentic work from a fake did not only just make one learned, but also could make one wealthy.59

In addition to stressing the economic spoils of art, Fortune filled its large pages with vibrant cover art, photographic illustration, and paintings by contemporary artists.

Luce‘s magazine was to be ―the most beautiful magazine yet attempted in America—so strikingly illustrated that nearly every page shall be a work of art.‖ 60 The magazine

56 Michael Augspurger, An Economy of Abundant Beauty: Fortune Magazine and Depression America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), 12. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid., 53. 59 Ibid. 60 Keynes, 51-2. 26 considered how to tell a story in terms of text and in terms of illustrative images. The art director and editorial staff commissioned paintings for more ambitious articles and frequently sent first class artists on assignment. For Fortune, ―the best easel painters can make a major contribution to the record of contemporary America.‖61 Thus, American modernism abounded in the pages of the magazine. Walker Evans served as the editor of photography and Diego , Miguel Covarrubias, Fernand Léger, Herbert Bayer and

Charles Sheeler, just to name a few, provided cover art. With such interest in contemporary artists, it seems fitting that the magazine dispatched Crawford to Bikini.

Media Response to Bikini

Alongside film crews, foreign emissaries, scientists, lawmakers, and journalists,

Crawford watched the atomic display for Fortune. The event was such a large news story that regularly scheduled programming—including a Yankees game—was interrupted to broadcast the tests over the radio. The veil of secrecy surrounding the atomic bomb no longer remained, and the American media responded eagerly. Even though Crawford‘s article did not appear until December, five months after the tests, the article partook of a larger trend of media coverage for the event. Understanding the trajectory of media coverage of Operation Crossroads not only positions Crawford amidst a chorus of journalists, but also displays his departure from the mainstream.

The July 1, 1946 issue of Time magazine featured Albert Einstein on the cover

(fig. 14). The genius of twentieth-century science, with his famous untamed white locks and his bushy mustache, gazes off into the distance and does not make eye contact with

61 Ibid. 27 the reader. Instead, he looks into the beyond, perhaps toward future discoveries. Over his left shoulder, a mushroom cloud rises to the top of the frame with his famous equation

―E=mc2‖ in the upper third of the cloud. The artist captures the changing colors of an atomic blast. The brilliant orange that mimics a sunrise, followed by a deep purple and a soft gray complete the rendering. Although no text expressly mentions it on the cover, the reader deduces that the explosion references Operation Crossroads. In the middle ground of the color illustration, battleships float in crystal blue water. The cover artist directly links the nuclear testing program of the United States to the theories of Einstein. The caption for the cover reads ―Cosmoclast Einstein: All matter is speed and flame.‖

Published on the same day as the Test Able detonation at the Bikini Atoll, Time adds validity to the test by capitalizing on the fame of Einstein. Instead of publishing an article devoted to the tests, the magazine publishes ―Science: Crossroads‖ which only briefly mentions the impending detonations at the Bikini Atoll while quickly moving into a larger conversation about Einstein‘s career. Although Einstein had little to do with the development of the atomic bomb and openly opposed future detonations of nuclear weaponry, Time links the development of the atomic bomb to Einstein‘s Theory of

Relativity. Both the cover and article played into the perception that Einstein fathered the atomic bomb, an erroneous reading of history that continues to permeate the mythology of the World War II era even today. Time capitalized on the fame of Einstein instead of focusing on the tests and their results.

Some responses to the testing at the Bikini Atoll focused on the negative aspects of the atom. After the detonation of Test Baker, thirty-five theater workers in New York

28 protested the production of nuclear weapons. Carrying a stuffed goat with the sign

―Today me, Tomorrow you,‖ the protesters marched through the theater district of New

York City demanding that the United States cease production of atomic weapons and ensure that other nations of the world did not produce the lethal weapon.62 The goat referenced the animals placed on the test ships of Operation Crossroads. Some animals died in the tests, others were badly burned, and some survived, but only shortly due to high doses of radiation.

As quoted in the New York Times, Reverend Leonard Peale denounced the testing and reminded his congregation that ―The ‗Operation Crossroads‘ of June 30, 1946, holds only death, destruction and annihilation for all mankind. The ‗Operation Crossroads‘ of the birth of Jesus Christ held and still continues to hold the promise of man‘s salvation and life abundant.‖63 Through the acts of the protesters and the words of Reverend Peale, one would assume that the response to the atomic detonations was that of fear and negativity. But, oddly, the American public fell into a sense of complacency.

After Test Able and its seemingly underwhelming results, many in the American public were no longer fearful of the power of the bomb. Media coverage after the testing indicates frustration on the part of journalists with what they perceived as unwarranted complacency among the American public toward atomic weaponry. An editorial from

July 11 in the Washington Post illustrated the sad disappointment of the public because the naval fleet, the tests subjects, and the Atoll itself ―did not disappear in one vast disintegration.‖ The author revealed that the public viewed the explosion as ―just another

62 ―35 March in Protest to Atom Bomb Tests,‖ New York Times, July 25, 1946. 63 ―‘Operation Crossroads,‘‖ New York Times, August 5, 1946. 29 bomb.‖ The author continues to indict the American public‘s lack of response and fear and wonders if scientists must develop ―that inevitable one bomb.‖64

Staff writers of the New York Times attempted to combat this increasing American complacency. Hanson Baldwin, present at Bikini, dispatched an article with the headline

―Atom Bomb Proved Most Terrible Weapon.‖ He carefully evaluated the let-down of the bomb and reminded his readership that the tests at Bikini and the United States Strategic

Bomb Report on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ―emphasize[d] that the atom bomb [was] a terribly potent weapon of ‗destruction.‘‖ 65 He stressed to the public that the atom bomb was a weapon primarily used against human targets, and the Bikini tests cannot gauge the threat to civilians because only a deserted atoll and American fleet were fired upon.66 He filed his report on August 1, 1946 when he explained that ―the atom bomb became in that tropic lagoon a finite weapon, its power measurable and limited, though still by far the most terrible weapon known to man.‖ 67 Baldwin explicated that the advent of the atomic bomb changed the art of war, and the Bikini tests laid the foundation for a military structure of tomorrow.68

William Laurence, the chosen reporter of the Manhattan Project and the foremost media expert on atomic weaponry, emphasized the power of the atomic bomb. He chastised the American public and its loss of awe toward nuclear weaponry. He argued that the sense of astonishment about the destructive power of the bomb was ―supplanted

64 Eli Rubenstein, ―Atom Bomb Meaning,‖ The Washington Post, July 11, 1946. 65 Hanson Baldwin, ―Atom Bomb is Proved Most Terrible Weapon,‖ New York Times, July 7, 1946. 66 Ibid. 67 Hanson Baldwin, ―Lessons Learned in Bikini Tests,‖ New York Times, August 1, 1946. 68 Ibid. 30 by a sense of relief unrelated to the grim reality of the situation.‖ 69 According to

Laurence, Americans concluded that the atomic bomb was just another weapon. Laurence felt that the world needed a reawakening about the bomb, reminding the public that it was the ―greatest cataclysmic force‖ released on earth. Even the military did not escape

Laurence‘s critique. He felt that through Operation Crossroads, the United States revealed important national secrets to the enemy. Laurence closed his article by encouraging the government to ―heed the scientists‘ warning that no defense against the atomic bomb is possible other than the elimination of war and the effective international control of atomic weapons.‖70 Both Baldwin and Laurence reminded the American public of the devastating potential of the atomic bomb and attempted to displace the smugness and lack of fear of the American population after Operation Crossroads.

By early August, much of the coverage on Operation Crossroads had ended. In

November 1946, Admiral Blandy and his wife hosted a party to commemorate the end of

Joint Army-Navy Task Force One. A group of bakers sent an angel food cake in the shape of an atomic explosion. The photograph of Admiral and Mrs. Blandy (with a hat to match) cutting the mushroom-cloud cake circulated through the Associated Press newswires and remains today an important image of the Atomic Age (fig. 15). Time published a brief recap and critique of the event. Reverend A. Powell Davies, a

―Unitarian pastor of a fashionable Washington church,‖ thundered from his pulpit, ―How would it seem in Hiroshima or Nagasaki to know that Americans make cakes of angel-

69 William Laurence, ―Bikini ‗Dud‘ Decried for Lifting Fears,‖ New York Times, August 4, 1946. 70 Ibid. 31 food puffs in the image of that terrible diabolical thing?‖ 71 Time expanded, pointing out that a lot of non-Americans regarded the ―U.S. public‘s attitude toward The Bomb as callous to the point of idiocy.‖72 If the event occurred today, Admiral Blandy would find himself in a public relations nightmare. Certainly the actions of the head of the Joint Task

Force reflect the American attitude against which Baldwin and Laurence fought.

By the end of the year, Operation Crossroads only found passing references in newspapers. Waldemar Kaempffert, in his year-end New York Times appraisal of scientific activity, mentioned Crossroads at the start of his article. He noted that the tests were ―generally regarded as the most important scientific tests of 1946. But not to scientists.‖73 Operation Crossroads seemed to disappear from American consciousness.

Thus, Crawford‘s article in the December 1946 issue of Fortune seems a bit out of sync with the news cycle. Even though Crawford‘s article reintroduced the events at Bikini into the public conversation, one is left to wonder why the article was published when it was. Certainly, creating original artwork based on the event in July would take time and that offers a reason for the lag in the printing. In addition, the publication might have served as an advertisement for Crawford‘s showcase of Bikini paintings at the Downtown

Gallery that same month. Even though the motives of the untimely December publication are unclear, what exists within Crawford‘s article is an important and fresh perspective on the bombs at Bikini.

Crawford Reports from Bikini

71 ―Atomic Age: Angel Food,‖ Time, November 18, 1946. 72 Ibid. 73 Waldemar Kaempffert, ―Science in Review: Notable Achievements of 1946 in the Fields of Nuclear Research, Astronomy, Chemistry,‖ New York Times, December 29, 1946. 32 Operation Crossroads was the major news story of 1946, so it is no surprise that the editors of Fortune wanted to capitalize on the excitement (or potential fear) the tests created. Crawford was uniquely qualified to report on the event. He understood military protocol from his service during World War II, he could chart destruction in vibrantly colored graphics for the magazine, and he could create legible and approachable maps as a new way to interpret the events at the atoll. He had maintained a professional and collegial working relationship with the magazine during the 1940s, and the art editors recognized the value of his work—placing him on the cover of the magazine twice.

Although unusual for a painter to chronicle an event due to the inevitable time lag,

Fortune selecting Crawford fits with the mission of the magazine to provide the latest in contemporary art and informative articles for the business elite.

Crawford‘s article ―depicts the new scale of destruction‖ with documentary photographs, paintings and charts from the events of July 1946.74 The opening text highlights the impact of the two test shots at Bikini stating that the bombs ―sank twelve ships, wreaked major damage on twenty-four other craft, and spread varying degrees of disaster throughout the target fleet. These were the immediate effects of the blast.‖ The introduction continues and emphasizes the devastating effects of radiation ―stirred up by the titanic releases of energy‖ that made the ships and blast area uninhabitable for days.

Even two months after the blast, some ships were still too radioactive to receive repairs for a possible return to the fleet.

74 Ralston Crawford, ―Bikini,‖ Fortune, December 1946, 154. 33 Fortune and Crawford highlight the ―intangibles‖ of the blast that can spread

―lingering death over a vast area,‖ a fresh take on the bomb blasts from earlier reports in the media as discussed previously. The article carefully explains that meteorologists were on hand to study the effects of the mushroom cloud over an 800-mile radius of Bikini.

Special instruments were placed on four islands and on three ships close to the atoll to measure the amount of radioactive fallout. The article asserts that ―meteorological bureaus will undoubtedly be the most important part of any future bombing teams‖ and that depending on weather conditions the impact of the bomb varies. Radiation, according to the article, can remain in droplets of water in the earth‘s atmosphere for days.75

For the folio intended to articulate fully the ―macabre warfare‖ created by the atomic bomb, Crawford submitted two abstract paintings and detailed maps to clarify the double-pronged effects of the weapon. The first painting in full color, Test Able, discussed in the introduction, mixed the cool blues of the sea and sky with the vibrant orange and yellows of the blast. Crawford overlaid jagged lines and edges of undefined forms to evoke a sense of uncertainty and instability. The artist explained to Fortune ―My forms and colors are not direct transcription; they refer in paint symbols to the blinding light of the blast, to its colors, and to its devastating character as I experienced them in

Bikini Lagoon.‖76

75 Ibid. Additionally, Barbara Haskell notes in her text that Crawford pressured Deborah Calkins, the art editor of Fortune, to focus on radiation by citing a letter from the artist to Calkins dated May 14, 1946. See Haskell, 67, 141. 76 Crawford, 154. 34 The second painting, U.S.S. Nevada, shows the target ship for Test Able, the

―heart of chaos‖ (fig. 16).77 The battleship was commissioned between 1912 and 1916 and had traveled with Woodrow Wilson to sign the treaty of Versailles after World War I.

In the past, the Nevada had shown great resistance in battle. During the air assault of

Pearl Harbor, the Nevada valiantly fought off Japanese attackers and attempted to avoid the carnage and remain intact. If the ship had sunk during its flight, the entrance to the harbor would have been blocked. Instead of attempting the dangerous escape, the boat ran aground in the mud just shy of the harbor‘s exit. The boat sustained major damage at its front. But, the battleship received a makeover and served in the Aleutian Islands, at

Normandy, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.78

With a color palette of white, black, and vermillion, Crawford attempts to convey the effects of the blast on the bulls-eye. Because the Army-Air Force missed the target ship by at least 1,500 feet, the battleship escaped with ―moderate damage.‖79 The Nevada received damage to its masts, weather deck, and bulkheads, but the hull and interiors were practically untouched. However, as part of the experiment on the ships, the decks were loaded with gear including full-size planes, cars, and guns. Even live sheep were placed on deck to test the effects of the blast on mammals. A Navy seaplane placed on the stern deck of the Nevada was ―battered almost beyond recognition‖ (fig. 17 and fig.

77 Ibid., 159. 78 Weisgall, Operation Crossroads: The Atomic Tests at Bikini Atoll, 168. 79 The United States military sent a historian, W.A. Shurcliff, to record what happened at the Bikini Atoll. He published the official report of Operation Crossroads in 1947. The text, Bombs at Bikini, outlines the plan for the operation, explains the technological and scientific offensive by the military, describes the careful planning of the tests, and vividly captures each explosion. The book includes official photographs, military organizational charts, and a list of the foreign emissaries and United States lawmen present at the Atoll. While Shurcliff does not share all the information, due to security reasons, he does paint a clear, concise picture of Operation Crossroads. See Shurcliff, plate 23. 35 18). The explosion of Test Able also caused numerous fires, left materials melted or scorched (including the orange paint on the ship), and showed the vulnerability of the quartermaster stores filled with military uniforms.80

Crawford carefully illustrates the post-blast chaos on the Nevada deck. At first glance, the viewer struggles to identify the forms in Crawford‘s flattened image, suggesting complete and total destruction caused by the explosion. By overlapping planes of color, Crawford denotes the multiple layers of shrapnel on the ship‘s deck. He uses jagged edges to illustrate mutilated, mangled metal fixtures, a technique found in earlier

Crawford paintings, such as Bomber from World War II (fig. 19). However, if one looks carefully, recognizable forms begin to appear. In addition, studying an archival image from the test site helps to illuminate Crawford‘s perspective (fig. 20 and fig. 21).

Anchoring the left, middle ground of the U.S.S. Nevada is an arrow. With a heavy black line, Crawford defines the outline of the prow of an amphibian truck, known as a ―duck.‖

Using artistic slight of hand, Crawford creates a recession of space to demonstrate the shape of the prow. The angled black lines outline the edge of the vessel, the orange creates a sense of shadow, and the quick stroke of white causes a burst of visual energy that forces the eye into the center of the composition. Curiously enough, the arrow also provides a visual cue to the viewer—this end is up—helping to make sense of the destruction. The four white circles represent the lower level of cannons on the ship‘s stern. Despite compelling visual connections to the archival photographs, aspects of the composition nevertheless remain unidentifiable. Perhaps Crawford combined pieces of

80 Ibid. 36 shrapnel from other parts of the ship to create a moment of chaos for the American viewer. Might the five parallel lines just above the arrow allude to markings on the side of the ship as seen in figure thirteen? Is the bedraggled rectangular mass a reference to a destroyed plane wing? The questions remain unanswered, yet the caption for the work provides a small explanation. The artist made ―no attempt to reproduce nature,‖ and that

―through a synthesis of the awful shapes and colors born of man‘s destructiveness,

[Crawford] expresses his sense of that ‗compulsion to disintegration‘ which for him is the central metaphysical fact of war.‖81 The visual cacophony of the image reminds the magazine reader of the destructive force of the most potent weapon in the American arsenal. The disintegration of forms and line echoes the disastrous effects of atomic weaponry. Crawford creates a vernacular for destruction—overlapping shapes, jagged lines, and broken forms—in an attempt to explain the uncanny experience of the atomic bomb. Through the language of his collage-like style, he conveys the terror of an atomic explosion in which some objects remain recognizable and others are only unidentifiable parts of a former whole.

Facing the striking U.S.S. Nevada painting in the Fortune spread are three full color photographs of the Test Baker underwater detonation. The magazine carefully describes each image and uses charged language to emphasize the power and impact of the atomic bomb and atomic radiation. The article explains that the cloud ―rose like a great poisonous fungus from the surface of the sea.‖ The thirty-six square miles of the lagoon were contaminated by the blast, and many of the target ships were too ―hot‖ for

81 Crawford, 159. 37 inspection. The article asserts that had men been aboard the ships, those that did not die from the initial blast would have suffered the devastating effects of radiation sickness.82

Another photograph of the Test Able cloud column helped to explain the intricate map created by Crawford on the opposite page (fig. 22 and fig. 23). Fortune capitalized on Crawford‘s map-making abilities to demonstrate the hypothetical effects of radiation from an atomic blast on the eastern seaboard in a map titled ―If Bikini Atoll Had Been

New York Harbor.‖83 Thin, white lines suggest latitude and longitude over a pale blue

Atlantic Ocean. Crawford selects brown to show the United States and Canada, and a black ovular shape focuses the eye on the New York Metropolitan Area—or in the map‘s case—the blast site. A yellow section in the shape of a ―scimitar‖ rises from the black blast site to signify the three-day path of the bomb‘s radioactive cloud. The accompanying text explains that a ―direct hit over the city would have subjected its crowded streets to the full brunt of the blast, flash fires, and radioactive saturation,‖ but a strike anywhere in the blackened area ―would have sent a lethal cloud of radioactivity over the city.‖84 The article makes it clear that a bomb striking New York City would have devastating effects, because the ―atomic bomb is, par excellence, a weapon against densely populated regions.‖85 The map is clear and visually concise, which allows for little misunderstanding. Using a visual vocabulary the reading public can understand, the map illustrates the far-reaching impact of the most fearsome weapon yet known.

82 Ibid., 159. 83 Ibid., 156. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid., 158. 38 Crawford‘s spread in Fortune joined the united voice of newsmen who implored the American public to remember the dreadful ramifications of the atomic bomb. By combining stirring photographs, vividly colored paintings, and informative maps,

Crawford and the editors at Fortune masterfully warned the public of the power of atomic blasts and the harmful effects of radiation, a horrible side effect of the bomb relatively ignored by the media. The article highlighted just how devastating an atomic blast could be to the eastern seaboard with a well-designed and well-executed map. Crawford‘s article reminds the reader that the effects of Test Able were not unimpressive, and employed the power of art to rouse the American public from their collective sleep about the bomb, much like Baldwin and Laurence‘s previous coverage in the New York Times.

Bikini at the Downtown Gallery

On December 3, 1946, ―Ralston Crawford: Paintings of Operation Crossroads at

Bikini‖ opened at the Downtown Gallery. The exhibition featured eight oil paintings and four gouaches drawn from Crawford‘s sojourn.86 The course of his journey provided the basis for the three different types of paintings found in the show: the flight to Kwajelein

(a long flight from San Francisco to Honolulu to Kwajelein Atoll on a C-54 plane), the explosions at Bikini, and the aftereffects of the detonations. According to the press release issued by the gallery, the images ―constitute[d] a series of impressions, a record of

86 I excluded one painting from my discussion, Weather Reconnaissance Plane. The painting shares formal traits with the April 1945 cover of Fortune executed by Crawford. The artist used bright blues and yellows and a quick brush. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any record of the four gouaches shown at the exhibition. Of the eight paintings, some have not been reproduced or published. I have not seen examples of Marine from Air and U.S.S. Pensacola. The only reproduction I found of Twisted Objects on Deck is a poor, black and white example in the Halpert archives and in a monograph by Richard B. Freeman. Pursuing this project further would necessitate an exhaustive search and hopefully result in the location of these paintings. However, after having studied the reproduced images closely, I feel confident that the missing works fit comfortably within Crawford‘s unified Bikini aesthetic. 39 the reactions of a perceptive and intelligent human being [Crawford] to a profound and terrifying experiment.‖87 Crawford stayed aboard and viewed the explosions from the

U.S.S. Appalachian. He marveled at the beauty of the South Pacific and also had the opportunity to tour Bikini and Eniwetok by air before the blasts. He said in a letter to

Halpert that ―the beauty of the atolls, from the air, is verbally indescribable, but know that I can say something about them in paint.‖ For Crawford, the project was an exciting challenge, but he must surely have felt as well the sharp juxtaposition of such beauty with the destruction being wrought.88

Despite the artist‘s enthusiasm, the canvases were met with mixed reviews.

Richard Freeman wrote a glowing review of the paintings, praising the images that

―communicate[d] the overwhelming implications of the opening of the Atomic Age‖ and recorded the ―elemental force that shatters, crushes, and destroys everything.‖

Freeman asserts that abstraction is the only language for the overpowering impact of the atomic bomb.89 Ben Wolf of Art Digest felt that it made sense that ―an artist so much a part of his time and period, creatively, should have been called upon to record his reactions to the catastrophic maelstrom produced by contemporary thinkers in the realm of physics.‖ Wolf commented that Crawford understood and ―digested‖ the events at

Bikini and conveyed ―to the sensitive beholder the feeling of devastation‖ created by the bomb. The paintings were ―valid, sober reactions to a tremendous experience as strained

87 Downtown Gallery Press Release, November 26, 1946, Downtown Gallery Papers, Smithsonian Archives of American Art. 88 Ralston Crawford to Edith Halpert, June 23, 1946, Downtown Gallery Papers, Smithsonian Archives of American Art. 89 Richard B. Freeman, ―Artist at Bikini,‖ Magazine of Art, April 1947, 157. 40 through Crawford‘s personality.‖90 But, Edward Alden Jewell‘s response was more tepid.

He stated that nature was not reproduced, but ―instead we have destruction charted.‖

Jewell found the non-objective paintings incongruous to the aftermath of what he termed an ―objective experience.‖91

Ad Reinhardt slyly mocked Crawford‘s work at Bikini. The critic wondered whether musicians also witnessed the tests to record and create a score based on the explosions, and he questioned Crawford‘s participation in the momentous event. For

Reinhardt, Crawford failed to present the dawning of the atomic age. Using one swift rhetorical question, Reinhardt asked ―Do crooked shapes and twisted lines represent painting‘s adjustment to the atomic age? (NO).‖92 The New Yorker mentioned that the canvases were the ―first (and, please God, the last) artistic expressions of how the damnable thing looks in action.‖ The reviewer does grant some leeway to the artist, however, reminding the reader that no painter could compete with the massive numbers of reporters and photographers at the event. Nonetheless, he considers the mixture of the scientific, the reportorial, and the creative in Crawford‘s canvases ―odd.‖93 Even though all the reviews of the works were not glowing, Crawford‘s images displayed various aspects of his journey and serve as important records of the event. For the artist, some parts were quite beautiful and positive, while others were horrifying.94

Crawford’s Style in Relation to Stuart Davis and European Modernism

90 Ben Wolf, ―Crawford Interprets the Bikini Blast,‖ Art Digest, December 1, 1946, 10. 91 Edward Alden Jewell, ―Melange of Shows: Japanese Prints at the Metropolitan—Impressionism, Jazz, Abstraction,‖ New York Times, December 8, 1946. 92 Ad Reinhardt, ―How to Look at Three Current Shows,‖ PM, December 16, 1946, 12. 93 Robert M. Coates, ―The Art Galleries: The Artist and the World,‖ New Yorker, December 14, 1946, 105. 94 Ralston Crawford to Edith Halpert, October 29, 1946, Downtown Gallery Papers, Smithsonian Archives of American Art. 41 Crawford met Davis in the mid-thirties at meetings of the Artists‘ Union and the

Artists‘ Congress, and they discovered that they shared an interest in painting contemporary America in a modern style. As Davis described his work in 1943, ―I have enjoyed the dynamic American scene for many years past, and all of my pictures

(including the ones I painted in ) are referential to it. They all have their originating impulse in the impact of the contemporary American environment.‖95 Davis produced brightly colored abstracted landscapes that capture the energy of the city as well as the country or seacoast in a language reflecting the syncopated rhythms of the American jazz he loved.96 He embraced European modernism, but always stayed focused on his native identity, resulting in a new direction in American painting.

Davis had studied with ―Ash Can‖ school painter Robert Henri, under whose tutelage he developed an appreciation for his environment and looked for inspiration from daily life.97 In 1913, Davis attended the , which offered the American public its first exposure to recent European art, including Fauvism, , and Post-

Impressionism. Davis responded with canvases that explored ‘s use of color, Van

Gogh‘s impasto, and the multiple viewpoints of Cubism. By 1916 Davis‘s canvases veered toward a deeper interest in Cubism, and his mature style began to develop.

95 Stuart Davis, ―The Cube Root,‖ Art News, February 1-14, 1943, 33-34. 96 During his early years at the Henri school, Davis frequented Newark dives where he was ―particularly hep to the jive‖ and ―spent much time listening to the Negro piano players.‖ Stuart Davis, Autobiography (1945), in Stuart Davis, ed. Diane Kelder (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971), 21. He recalled that he was excited by the ―numerical precisions‖ of the piano players. Ibid., 23. In ―The Cube Root,‖ Davis explains that one of the many inspirations in his painting comes from ―Earl Hines hot piano and Negro jazz music in general….In one way or another the quality of these things plays a role in determining the character of my paintings.‖ Davis, ―The Cube Root,‖ 34. 97 Diane Kelder, ―Stuart Davis and Modernism: An Overview,‖ in Stuart Davis: American Painter, ed. Lowery Stokes Sims (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1991), 17-18. 42 A striking example of Davis‘s American Cubist style is Report from Rockport

(1940) (fig. 24). Karen Wilkin eloquently asserted that after 1916, ―Davis spoke the language of Cubism for the rest of his life, with a vernacular, street-smart American accent, inflected by hipster slang, that was all his own.‖98 Using planes of color rooted in

Synthetic Cubist collage, Davis embraced a vibrant color theme to indicate spatial relationships as well as to enliven the composition. A plane of black abruptly juts from the left of the canvas, augmented by a pattern of white lines. The interaction of black and white creates an internal energy, which is enhanced by the other vivid colors in the composition. Bright yellow marks the city street, and pink serves as the sky. A patch of blue and a purple-toned garage draw the eye into the composition, helping space to recede and creating depth of field, even though the composition remains quite shallow.

As William Agee has written, ―Each color area stands as a virtually independent, free- standing element that we can behold by, in, and of itself, while at the same time we understand it as but one part of a complex, integrated whole.‖99

Crawford‘s Bikini canvases apply a visual language similar to Davis‘s American

Cubist style. Test Able and U.S.S. Nevada demonstrate Crawford‘s own interpretation and

Americanization of Synthetic Cubism. In Test Able, pieces of shrapnel are shown as contorted and twisted lines of color. Whereas in Davis‘s paintings these twisted lines inform the viewer of a dynamic, playful scene, here, they are potent signs of destruction.

The torn edges of forms and the overlapping, strong colors also create a visual link to

98 Karen Wilkin, ―Multiple Views,‖ in Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonné, ed. Ani Boyajian and Mark Rutkoski (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 109. 99 In reference to Davis‘s Swing Landscape, but it aptly fits here. Agee, ―The Mural: 1921-1957,‖ in Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonné, 84. 43 Davis. Tour of Inspection, Bikini does not show timidity in color choice. Crawford applies a dramatic palette of deep blue, red, white, teal, and golden yellow to capture the ruin produced by the bomb tests (fig. 25). Although the bold colors might appear to be ironic—the aftermath of the blast was certainly not colorful—the color palette evokes the strength of bomb and the power of the explosion. These patches of color overlap, contain torn edges, and visually allude to the pasted-on pieces of paper in Synthetic Cubist collage.

A preliminary sketch of the picture provides recognizable points of entry to the near abstraction (fig. 26). The blue black cutout nestled between red and yellow, for example, is the gun from a tank. The remainder of the tank‘s body is combined in the large block of red that runs down the left side of the canvas. The study also shows other metal fragments, but their sources are unclear. Perhaps they are plane wings placed on top of the deck, or perhaps they are part of a boat as seen in the U.S.S. Nevada canvas.

There is a possibility that the image is a combination of moments just after the blast, where Crawford has synthesized destruction into one canvas, providing multiple, varied points of view. Despite the relative uncertainty of the moment, what remains clear is that

Crawford records ―the elemental force that shatters, crushes, burns, and destroys everything,‖ as Freeman has described the image.100 Although Tour of Inspection, Bikini parallels Davis‘s style, Crawford develops his own unique visual vocabulary to signify destruction—his rough, notched, ragged ―shapes.‖ Even though his palette his colorful, his message is very different from Davis's.

100 Freeman, 156. 44 Neither Crawford nor Davis adopted the completely abstract style advocated by the American Abstract Artists, including artist and critic George L.K. Morris.101

However, one final painting in Crawford‘s series, Sea Plane Takeoff (1946), stands as his furthest move towards total abstraction (fig. 27). The two blue-gray shapes initially suggest a kind of organic abstraction akin to that of Hans Arp or Joan Miró, overlaid by aggressive, angular black lines. Yet, with the help of the title, the viewer recognizes a view from the window of a seaplane that looks out over the wing. The black lines support the two gray wings on each side of the plane as it soars out over the deep blue water of the Pacific Ocean.

Even though Crawford's forms are rooted in airplane wings, their extreme reduction does suggest the impact of Surrealist abstraction.102 Crawford would have been aware of the biomorphic forms of Arp or Miró from showings in various venues in New

York during the 1930s or early 1940s. The most prominent exhibition of their works would have been the 's exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada,

Surrealism in 1936 and 1937. In addition, in spring 1934, Arp displayed fifteen gouache

101 A group of young, abstract artists rebelled against the social realism of Ben Shahn and the regionalism of Grant Wood that dominated the American art scene in the 1930s and argued for a modern style of complete abstraction. In order to promote their work and showcase their talent, the abstract artists, including Ibram Lassaw, Rosalind Bengelsdorf, and Ilya Bolotowsky, found a unified voice and drafted their purpose in early 1937 with twenty-nine signatures to establish the American Abstract Artists (AAA). For more, see Thomas Tritschler, American Abstract Artists, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 1977), 3-4. The AAA never wrote a manifesto and allowed for liberal interpretation of the word ―abstract.‖ By 1939, the group‘s membership expanded to fifty-three artists, including the Park Avenue Cubists Suzy Frelinghuysen (1911-1988), A. E. Gallatin (1881-1952), George L. K. Morris (1905- 1975), and Charles G. Shaw (1892-1974). See Debra Bricker Balken and Robert S. Lubar, The Park Avenue Cubists: Gallatin, Morris, Frelinghuysen, and Shaw (New York: Grey Art gallery, New York University, 2002), a catalog from a recent exhibition at the Grey Gallery of Art. 102 I have focused the conversation regarding possible shows viewed by Crawford to the times the artist lived in New York City. By the 1940s, Crawford served with the military and was based in Washington, D.C. He also traveled the world throughout the 1930s. However, the Miró exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in 1940 garnered enthusiastic media attention, and Crawford might have been aware of the artist‘s work through the show. 45 paintings at the John Becker Gallery. One reviewer explained that Arp‘s works

―resembl[ed] subdivisions of the ameba or germ-plasm under the microscope.‖103

Likewise, A. E. Gallatin‘s Gallery of Living Art at New York University, which focused on European modernism, purchased a work by Arp in December 1933.104 Miró also exhibited in New York, and Crawford might have seen works in such shows at the

Valentine Gallery in 1931 or the Pierre Matisse Gallery in fall 1932. 105 Crawford acknowledged the overwhelming presence of Surrealism during the 1930s and 1940s in a

1978 interview: ―There are many pictures I‘ve made which indicate my interest in

Surrealism at that time. It was not my primary concern, but it was also not an inconsequential concern.‖106

Crawford borrowed from the past, but he painted the twentieth century, the century to which he belonged. He said that when painting he ―look[ed] to the left and to the right, ahead and behind.‖107 But, he was not interested in total abstraction. He had no

―inclination to reduce painting to a series of repeated angles or curves,‖ but instead he included in his paintings a direct physical reference. Crawford was unconcerned with whether or not the viewer noted the initial reference point for his images, but without the

103 Howard Devree, ―Current Activity in a Group of Local Galleries,‖ New York Times, February 11, 1934. 104 Edward Alden Jewell, ―Exhibitions of Wide Variety Will Mark the Pre-Holiday Season at Local Galleries,‖ New York Times, December 11, 1933. 105 Elizabeth Luther Cary, ―Modern Art Milestones,‖ New York Times, December 27, 1931and Edward Alden Jewell, ―Works of Two Surrealists Offer Opportunity to Understand Them with a Struggle,‖ New York Times, November 5, 1932. 106 Statement from an interview with Jack Gwart in ―The Collections; Recent Acquisition: Coal Elevators, by Ralston Crawford,‖ St. Louis Art Museum Bulletin, January to March 1978, pp. 10-15, as quoted in Agee, Ralston Crawford, 58. 107 Statement by the Artist to Donald Bear, ―Ralston Crawford: Comment on Modern Art by the Artist,‖ Paradise of the Pacific, August 1947, 19. 46 ―fertilizing residue‖ of the work, Crawford felt the painting became ―sterile.‖108 And, like

Davis, Crawford had to defend his painting against conservative criticism of its sources in

European Cubism. He wrote in 1939,

The criterion seems to be that if the picture shows no European influence it is then, ipso facto—splendid. Obviously this is fallacious. No painter of to-day, American or other wise can ignore the vast contributions of the European artists of the last fifty years—or 350 years. This knowledge is to be assimilated by the American painter….109

Even though Crawford looked to the past and to his contemporaries, he was never an imitator but was instead an innovator. While his general style can be classed as

Synthetic Cubist, like Davis's, Crawford‘s background in the Army and work for Fortune magazine gave him a unique understanding of visual language. The maps Crawford created for the Visual Presentation Unit had to be able to illustrate the complex weather patterns over the European theater and at home to guide the pilots of the Army Air Force through battle. In order to communicate that information clearly, Crawford utilized a diagrammatic language of signs that responded to the vocabulary of meteorology, but also functioned as effective graphic design—as in his covers and illustrations for

Fortune. By the time Crawford received the Bikini commission, he was well prepared to create his Synthetic Cubist-oriented visual commentary, dramatically underscoring the intense destruction caused by the violent explosion of the atomic bomb.

Other Artists Respond to Operation Crossroads

108 Ralston Crawford as quoted in Agee, Ralston Crawford, 80. 109 Ralston Crawford from a letter draft to Miss Varga dated June 15, 1939, as quoted in Agee, Ralston Crawford, 54. 47 Crawford was not the only artist to respond directly to the tests of Operation

Crossroads. His contemporaries, Social Realist Philip Evergood (1901-1973) and

Surrealist Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), painted canvases related to the explosions of July

1946.110 Bruce Conner (1933-2008) created a film installation based on archival footage of Test Baker, and Vernon Fisher (b. 1943), a Texan artist still working today, also responded to the tests of 1946 in a more recent work. Each artist presented his own reaction to Operation Crossroads in his own artistic style, although Crawford was the only artist to witness the event first hand. He was also the only artist commissioned to paint the event, unlike the others whose move to action was inspired by the shockwaves of the blast.

Evergood viewed painting as a condition of human life that united emotions of people and bound humanity together. In his mind, a successful painting illustrated a sincere expression of the artist‘s emotion. He focused on the realities of life in his works, and he often included sharp critiques on human existence.111 Writing about his process,

Evergood commented,

Artists since time immemorial have been thrust into the maws of their time. When a good artist is affected by the violence around him – the unhappiness of the downtrodden and oppressed for instance, he is at moments of inspiration driven

110 Stephen Petersen briefly considered Evergood and Dalí in his essay ―Explosive Propositions: Artists React to the Atomic Age,‖ but his ultimate focus concerned the abstraction of Jackson Pollock, the Spatial Art of Lucio Fontana and Gianni Dova, and the Italian movement Pittura Nucleare favored by Enrico Baj. The author concludes his essay discussing Yves Klein. The essay argues that a feeling of explosiveness in art is also an expression of the realities of the nuclear era. See Stephen Petersen, ―Explosive Propositions: Artists React to the Atomic Age,‖ Science in Context 17 (2004): 579-609. Petersen published a text in 2009, Space-age aesthetics: Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, and the Postwar European Avant-Garde (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009). 111 Kendall Taylor, Philip Evergood: Never Separate from the Heart (Cranbury: Associated University Presses, Inc., 1987), 154. 48 by his inner passions to ‗take up the sword‘ as it were and wish to leave a lasting record of these very observations about the actions of his time.112

Renunciation (1946) embodied this sentiment and revealed the violence and future threat of the Atomic Age (fig. 28).

The artist‘s meditation includes apes, a red chimney, and the rising cloud of the atomic era. Battleships and destroyers float in the air, twisting and turning through space as a result of the explosion, a nod to Operation Crossroads. At the base of the picture, some monkeys and gorillas respond in complete and utter disgust. At the right, a white haired monkey‘s mouth hangs open, while his hand guides the eye toward the dark cloud that rises from the dilapidated chimney. Other monkeys shrug their shoulders, as if unable to explain the unfolding event. Two monkeys rest at the base of the painting reading, elements that, according to Stephen Petersen, mock human knowledge and civilization.113 Looking closely at the chimney, one observes pieces of brick falling from the sides and notices the cracks at its base. The chimney, a symbol of hearth, home, and humanity, not only explodes with the atom bomb but is also falling apart. The message is clear: continuing to detonate weapons of this magnitude will destroy the civilization that created them. I agree with Petersen‘s assessment that, for Evergood, the bomb exemplified ―the absurdity of using scientific knowledge to destroy life.‖114 Crawford‘s battered and contorted shapes and forms portray the immediate impact of the bomb,

112 Philip Evergood in Philip Evergood: Paintings and Drawings (New York: Kennedy Galleries, Inc., 1972), 5. 113 Petersen, 584. 114 Ibid. 49 whereas Evergood marks a more distant extinction of humanity and civilization due to the misappropriation of science.115

In 1951, Dalí announced that he was the first painter of the Atomic Age who took an interest in the artistic possibilities of nuclear science. The explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki shook him ―seismically.‖116 He developed an insatiable appetite for the atom, and many of his paintings from the post-war period reflect the fear he felt upon learning of the explosion.117 The atom bomb inspired Dalí to found an eccentric personal religion called ―Nuclear Mysticism,‖ which combined the tenets of Catholicism and nuclear physics. Dalí drafted the ―Mystical Manifesto‖ in 1952 and embarked on a new style of painting that applied an ―atomic‖ vocabulary combined with high Renaissance religious imagery.118

Before his conversion to Nuclear Mysticism, Dalí painted a work in the vocabulary of the Surrealists. The Three Sphinxes of Bikini (1947) reveals a vast landscape that could only appear in nightmares (fig. 29). In the foreground, a human neck rises up from the barren scene. As the eye follows the slope of the neck upward, it encounters tendrils of soft black hair. But, upon further inspection, the viewer realizes that the head has been replaced by the ominous grays of the atomic cloud. Off in the mountainous distance, another anthropomorphized mushroom cloud appears. At once, the

115 Evergood expressed his thoughts on the use of science in a letter to President Truman upon the dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur in 1951. See ―Chapter Nine: Philip Evergood and the Humanist Intention‖ in Taylor, 154-169. 116 As quoted in Michael Taylor, ―On the Road with Salvador Dalí: The 1952 Nuclear Mysticism Tour,‖ in The Dalí Renaissance: New Perspectives on His Life and Art after 1940, ed. Michael Taylor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 53. 117 Ibid. 118 Petersen, 581. 50 viewer realizes that an object of human creation has brought the end to civilization: the atomic bomb has decapitated humanity. To further the dreamscape, Dalí includes a fragmented, yet verdant, tree in the middle ground, the only remaining sign of nature not destroyed by scientific progress. Although scholars have called the painting

―conceptually questionable‖ and ―clumsily realized,‖ the work unearths the fears of the subconscious and presents a landscape that warns of the future annihilation of civilization at the hands of atomic weaponry.119

Fisher‘s diptych painting, Bikini (1987), similarly engaged the Atomic Age fear locked away in human memory (fig. 30). The work is monumental in size, measuring eleven by eighteen feet, and prominently features a photograph taken by the automatic cameras on the Bikini beach during the Test Baker detonation as its background. A large column of water erupts into a mushroom cloud in the center of the composition. Some vessels in the target fleet remain afloat around the circumference of the cylinder of water.

The deserted, desolate, white sandy beach with ramshackle buildings, a small dock, and palm trees serves as an anchor for the painting. Layered on top of the image and painted in red is an octopus hazard at a miniature golf course.

Writing about Fisher‘s work, Frances Colpitt has explained that the artist

―explores the machinations of memory‖ and ―frustrates our desire to have the whole make logical, narrative sense….‖120 One wonders why the artist would combine the images of Bikini with a friendly octopus from a golf course. Buzz Spector points out that

119 Gavin Parkinson, Surrealism, Art and Modern Science: Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Epistemology (New Have: Yale University Press, 2008), 206. 120 Frances Colpitt, ―Floating…,‖ in Vernon Fisher: Swimming Lesions (San Antonio: Blue Star Art Space, 1995), 5. 51 the image from Bikini rests in the ―collective youth of the Baby Boom generation.‖ As a child of the Atomic Age, Fisher draws upon the ―anxious circumstances‖ of his Cold War upbringing. The tattered and torn edges of the octopus vignette allude to fractured memories of youth; yet at the same time, the floating octopus seems like debris thrust into the air by the violent force of the explosion. 121 I posit the possibility that the octopus moving onto the Bikini beach is similar to the vile creatures of 1950s cinema that appeared due to nuclear weaponry. The larger-than-life octopus was born of man‘s carelessness and attacks the small isle much like the super-sized ants released in Them!

(1954).122 Fisher‘s painting plays with the haunted memories of the Baby Boomers, recalling more than just Bikini. He unearths anxieties resulting from duck and cover drills, the Cuban Missile Crisis, homemade fall-out shelters, and the fear of nuclear war with Russia. Fisher borrows from the visual archives of the Bikini blasts to paint an image that resonates with a generation of Americans. But, those without the immediate cultural recall of the Atomic Age remain ―frustrated‖ trying to understand the narrative the artist presents. Whereas Crawford‘s images display the immediate destruction brought by the bomb, Fisher, operating at considerable historical distance, delves into the deeper, psychological effects of American bomb tests on an entire generation.

121 Unfortunately, the author mistakenly attributes the background of the painting. He suggests that it came from the first H-bomb test at Bikini in 1950. In actuality, the photograph comes from Operation Crossroads in 1946, and a copy of the photograph is presented as figure xx. Additionally, the opening pages of text to Weisgall‘s Operation Crossroads feature the same photograph as a backdrop to his title and publication information. Finally, the first H-bomb test did not occur until 1952 and was detonated at Eniwetok Atoll, a neighbor of Bikini. Bikini did not have an H-bomb test until the 1954 Bravo shot which left a mile wide crater in the base of the lagoon and vaporized barrier islands of the Atoll. Buzz Spector, ―Vernon Fisher: It‘s a Long Story After All.,‖ in Vernon Fisher (Champaign: Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1994), 5. 122 Them!, DVD, directed by Gordon Douglas (1954; Burbank: Warner Home Video, 2002). 52 Conner‘s Crossroads (1976) is a film assemblage taken from unaltered, declassified Department of Defense records of the Test Baker shot. The thirty-six minute film combines twenty-seven different takes of the event from some of the five hundred cameras present at the test. He begins with a distant shot of the test site. The viewer hears the quiet chirping of birds, then the muffled countdown to the event, and finally the loud explosion from the bomb that shakes the camera. Conner quickly cuts to an aerial point of view, and the experiment repeats. The viewer watches as two million tons of water are thrust up one and half miles in the air over the Bikini lagoon.123 Conner adds in a soundtrack produced by Patrick Gleeson and Terry Riley as the film continues. The film concludes as the wave of smoke, water, and fallout slowly approaches the camera. Ships gradually fade into the fog, lost from sight, and the cloud of gray inches closer on the edge of the screen, forcing viewers to contemplate their own oblivion or disappearance into the cloud. As time passes, in what seems a painfully slow pace, ships reemerge from obscurity, still floating on the water. But, the smoke does not clear completely. The film fades to black, leaving the viewer to ponder the extent of damage on the fleet while eerie music continues to play.

The viewer confronts the ―bombastic grandeur‖ of the atomic bomb.124 Likewise, a contemporary review mentioned that the film demonstrates a sort of beauty inherent to the bomb cloud as it ascends from the water with an ―awesome grace.‖125 Conner‘s novel approach to Test Baker stands in opposition to the work of Crawford. Both artists

123 William Moritz and Beverly O‘Neill, ―Fallout: Some Notes on the Films of Bruce Conner,‖ Film Quarterly 31 (1978): 37. 124 Ibid., 41. 125 Ernest Callenbach, ―Crossroads,‖ Film Quarterly 29 (1974): 57. 53 approach the tests with a documentary perspective: Crawford captures the immediate destruction of the bomb, whereas Conner forces the viewer to reconcile notions of the sublime beauty of the tests. Additionally, Conner produced his work thirty years after the tests. By 1976, opposition to nuclear testing was fierce. As William Moritz and Beverly

O‘Neill begin their engaging analysis of the work, they mention the organized protests of

Japanese bomb survivors, the vigilant acts of everyday people against nuclear reactors, the threat of radioactive waste, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons worldwide.126

Conner‘s film appeared at a time of extreme cultural opposition towards the bomb.

Despite the ―aesthetic‖ qualities of the blast, it was a very serious threat in the minds of

Americans in the late 1970s. The curiosity of the early Atomic Age has disappeared, and nuclear fear had come to dominate, making the concluding moments of the film even more poignant and striking. Unlike Crawford, Conner used the imagery of Operation

Crossroads to make a political statement about the unrestrained power of the atom bomb.

Conclusion

Crawford‘s Bikini paintings remain today as powerful commentaries on the atomic bomb and serve as important reminders of the weapon‘s destructive capabilities.

His relationships with Fortune, the Downtown Gallery, and his artistic contemporaries highlight his unique contribution to Atomic Age art. In addition, looking closely at the rich cultural fabric of the postwar era establishes Crawford as a painter of both the

American Scene and the Atomic Age. Through his blending of the language of Synthetic

Cubism and the graphic design and communication skills he learned in the Visual

126 Moritz and O‘Neill, 36. 54 Presentation Unit of the Army, Crawford developed a unique style that deserves a more prominent place in the history of American art.

Trends in mid-twentieth century painting contributed to Crawford‘s omission from the artistic canon. The emergence of Abstract Expressionism in the late 1940s soon eclipsed those artists still working in a Cubist oriented style. Critic Clement Greenberg, in particular, championed the Abstract Expressionists and their move beyond the language of Cubism to something he believed represented a true ―'American-Type‘

Painting.‖127 He was an ardent advocate of the flat and all-over drip paintings of Pollock, which came to define the style. According to Greenberg, ―Such a galaxy of powerfully talented and original painters as the abstract expressionists form has not been seen since the days of Cubism.‖128

Pollock exemplified many of the traits championed by Greenberg, but Adolph

Gottlieb also fit into the rubric of Abstract Expressionism. During the 1940s, Gottlieb searched for a visual language that could respond effectively to the events of World War

II and rejected both non-objective painting and Social Realism. To Gottlieb, the styles were unable to relay the traumatic events of the mid-twentieth century.129 He turned to notions of the primordial past, ancient and prehistoric art, and Jungian dualities to evoke

127 Clement Greenberg, ―‘American-Type‘ Painting,‖ in Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism: Volume Three Affirmations and Refusals 1950-1956, ed. John O‘Brian (: The University of Chicago Press, 1986), 217-236. 128 Ibid., 234. 129 Leo Costello, ―Adolph Gottlieb,‖ in Blanton Museum of Art: American Art Since 1900, eds. Annette DiMeo Carlozzi and Kelly Baum (Austin: Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Distributed by University of Texas Press, 2006), 110. 55 and display the notions of fear and awe present in the mid-twentieth century.130

Gradually, during the early 1950s he distilled that language further, so that by the later

1950s he was painting two simple, contrasting shapes.

Cadmium Red Above Black (1959), from Gottlieb‘s ―Blast‖ series and located in the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas, Austin, displays his new visual language (fig. 31). Here, a red ovular form hovers above a chaotic and violent black mass below. The quick brushstrokes and the drips of paint in the black section seem to reference a chaotic moment just after an atomic blast. The hazy quality of the cadmium red recalls the initial blinding rise and eruptive motion of the mushroom cloud. Gottlieb never directly connected his ―Blast‖ paintings to the atomic bomb, but the works seem to reference the dynamic tension and the terrifying power of the nuclear explosion—as well as their evocations of other cosmic dualities.131 As Gottlieb explained in 1949, ―Different times require different images,‖ and the reduced forms presented by the artist serve as a simplified version of the atomic blast.132 Although Gottlieb eschewed direct references to nuclear explosions, in many ways, these works have become the definitive response to the chaos and the fear of the atomic blast in the twentieth century. Yet, due to the reduction of form and color, the works do not evoke the unnerving power or convey the terror of a true atomic explosion.

Although Crawford never captured the human toll of the tests at Bikini, Social

Realist Ben Shahn painted a haunting series of works in 1960 that chronicled the last

130 Jeffrey Weiss, ―Science and Primitivism: A Fearful Symmetry in the Early New York School,‖ Arts Magazine 57 (March 1983): 86. 131 Ibid. 132 Adolph Gottlieb, ―Ideas of Art,‖ The Tiger’s Eye 1 (June 1949): 52. 56 days of the first human victim of the hydrogen bomb—the Japanese fisherman,

Kuboyama. In his tempera and gouache painting From That Day On (1960), also in the

Blanton Museum (fig. 32), Shahn confronts directly the human suffering caused by the fallout from the explosion of the hydrogen bomb Bravo in 1954 at Bikini.133 Shahn‘s portrait of Kuboyama includes a bright red dragon whose head is surrounded by a fire wreath, a common symbol in Shahn‘s oeuvre that points to the unjust and destructive power of nuclear weaponry.134 The dragon foreshadows the unmerited demise of

Kuboyama caused by Strontium-90, a radioactive isotope in the hydrogen bomb.

Kuboyama‘s large hands display the ravaging effects of radiation exposure. They are pained and disfigured, yet they still support and hold the baby tightly. The fisherman‘s face is expressionless. The child‘s stiff pose relates visually to portraits of the Madonna and Child. While the father passes on, the child remains carrying the burdens of loss at the hands of nuclear weaponry.

Shahn‘s images are charged with political commentary and assert his anti-nuclear stance. The paintings call attention to the sad events surrounding the death of Kuboyama and send a direct message to end nuclear testing. But, despite the powerful and emotionally charged imagery employed by Shahn, the works were not well received by critics. One reviewer for Art News commented that the works did not succeed and

133 Laura Katzman, ―Art in the Atomic Age: Ben Shahn‘s Stop H-Bomb Tests,‖ The Yale Journal of Criticism 11 (1998): 151. 134 As Pohl traces, the fire wreath also illustrates the persecution of Holocaust victims or of the poor. Pohl looks carefully at Shahn‘s Allegory paintings and mentions the Kuboyama series. The stylized dragon with bared teeth appears frequently in the series, and Pohl asserts that the fire wreath also implies the evil of nuclear weaponry. Frances K. Pohl, ―Allegory in the Work of Ben Shahn,‖ in Common Man, Mythic Vision: The Paintings of Ben Shahn, ed. Susan Chevlowe (New York; Jewish Museum under the auspices of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998) 121. 57 explained that ―something has gone, not out of Shahn, but out of us and our time.‖135 In a sense, the works appeared passé. Despite the critical response, Shahn's series is successful in evoking the ravaging pain and danger of nuclear weaponry.

The movement away from figural and representational painting in the 1950s removed both Crawford and Shahn from the artistic discourse of the mid-twentieth century. At the same time, the rising popularity and power of Abstract Expressionism omitted the Bikini tests from the visual record almost completely. The tests and the victims were all but forgotten due to the aggressive promotion of America's new stylistic contribution to the history of modern painting. However, Crawford‘s paintings must not be forgotten and serve as important benchmarks in the history of the Cold War and the

Atomic Age.

As this thesis has shown, placing the paintings within the context of their time allows for a much fuller understanding of the works. The excitement and interest surrounding the atom after World War II created a period in American history that celebrated scientific innovation. However, an underlying fear of the annihilation of humanity at the hands of scientists remained strong. Test Able and Test Baker were the news event of 1946. The explosions dominated the airwaves and the front pages of newspapers.

Crawford‘s works painted in his own artistic style played into both the overwhelming interest in atomic destruction as well as the fear of ultimate ruin. Looking at Crawford‘s paintings next to documentary photographs reminds the modern day

135 ―Reviews and previews: Ben Shahn,‖ Art News, November 1961, 20. 58 viewer of the damaging power of the atomic bomb, something most people have never seen. Through his torn and contorted forms, Crawford recorded the moments just after the detonations in a visual language that still resonates today. In addition, the inclusion of

Crawford‘s skillfully executed map of nuclear fallout over the eastern seaboard in the pages of Fortune highlighted the sweeping effect of atomic destruction—both visible and invisible. Crawford‘s documentation of the events at Bikini allows future generations, who do not possess an understanding of the gravitas of nuclear weaponry, to comprehend what was then the world‘s most frightening, potent, and powerful scientific discovery used in war—the atomic bomb.136

136 The hydrogen bomb soon outclasses the atomic bomb as the most potent weapon in the American arsenal. However, the hydrogen bomb has never been used in battle. 59 Figures

Figure 1. Ralston Crawford, Test Able, 1946.

60 Figure 2. Archival Photograph, Test Baker Detonation, July 25, 1946.

Figure 3. Archival Photograph, Test Able Detonation, July 1, 1946.

61 Figure 4. Archival Photograph, ―High Altitude View, Baker Test,‖ July 25, 1946.

62 Figure 5. Herbert Matter, Arts and Architecture cover, December 1946.

Figure 6. Charles Sheeler, Church Street El, 1920. 63 Figure 7. Ralston Crawford, Vertical Building, 1934.

64 Figure 8. Ralston Crawford, Sanford Tanks, 1938.

Figure 9. Ralston Crawford, Gas Tanks, 1938. 65 Figure 10. Ralston Crawford, Overseas Highway, 1939.

Figure 11. Ralston Crawford, A Plane Accident in Relation to Storm Structure, 1943. 66 Figure 12. Ralston Crawford, At the Dock, 1942.

Figure 13. Ralston Crawford, Fortune cover, April 1945. 67 Figure 14. Time Magazine cover, July 1, 1946.

Figure 15. Admiral Blandy and Mrs. Blandy, Admiral Frank J. Lowry celebrating the end of Joint Task Force One, November 7, 1946. 68 Figure 16. Ralston Crawford, U.S.S. Nevada, 1946.

69 Figure 17. Archival Photograph, ―Used Car, Aboard Nevada,‖ 1946.

Figure 18. Archival Photograph, ―Shredded Airplane, Nevada,‖ 1946. 70 Figure 19. Ralston Crawford, Bomber, 1944.

71 Figure 20. Archival Photograph, ―General Damage on Stern Deck, Nevada,‖ 1946.

Figure 21. Archival Photograph, ―Test Able Aftermath: Nevada,‖ 1946.

72 Figure 22. Page 156, ―Test Able: Cloud Column,‖ from Ralston Crawford, ―Bikini,‖ Fortune, December 1946.

73 Figure 23. Page 155, ―If Bikini Atoll Had Been New York Harbor,‖ Ralston Crawford, ―Bikini,‖ Fortune, December 1946.

74 Figure 24. Stuart Davis, Report from Rockport, 1940.

75 Figure 25. Ralston Crawford, Tour of Inspection, Bikini, 1946.

76 Figure 26. Ralston Crawford, Report from Bikini, 1946.

Figure 27. Ralston Crawford, Sea Plane Takeoff, 1946.

77 Figure 28. Philip Evergood, Renunciation, 1946.

Figure 29. Salvador Dali, The Three Sphinxes of Bikini, 1947.

78 Figure 30. Vernon Fisher, Bikini, 1987.

Figure 31. Adolph Gottlieb, Cadmium Red Above Black, 1959. 79 Figure 32. Ben Shahn, From That Day On, 1960.

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90 Vita

Susanna Brooks Gorski was born in Fort Worth, Texas. After completing her work at

Fort Worth Country Day School, she entered Middlebury College in Middlebury,

Vermont. She spent the spring 2004 in Paris, France studying at the Sorbonne IV. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree with a double major in French and History of Art and

Architecture in 2005. During the following years, she worked as the McDermott Intern for School Partnerships at the Museum of Art, and as the Assistant Director of

Advancement at Fort Worth Country Day. In Fall 2008, she began her studies at the

University of Texas at Austin.

Email address: [email protected]

This thesis was typed by the author.

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