St. Gilles #3 1962

Curator: Welcome. We’re standing before Ralston Crawford’s "St. Gilles #3," a print created in 1962. Crawford, as many know, often focused on industrial and architectural subjects. Editor: My first impression? Organized chaos. It's like someone exploded a blueprint, but a very chic, mid-century modern blueprint. I'm immediately drawn to the stark contrast and that hypnotic crosshatching. Curator: Exactly! The starkness and strong geometric forms are hallmarks of Crawford’s Precisionist style. It reduces architecture to its most essential components, and its date places the work during an intriguing period for abstraction and architectural representation in American art. Editor: It’s a bit unsettling, too, isn't it? All those lines, the shapes that suggest buildings but don't quite resolve into anything recognizable… It creates this tension between order and a feeling of instability. Curator: And that tension reflects the postwar era and anxieties of urban development. There was so much building and rebuilding occurring, disrupting established landscapes. Editor: Absolutely. You can feel the machine age breathing down your neck, but also, a kind of detached coolness. He's not sentimental about the changing landscape; it's observed, almost clinically, wouldn't you say? The human is totally absent. It gives me anxiety somehow. Curator: Yes, but observe Crawford's engagement with modernist styles of painting. It invites viewers to interpret the emotional undertones of social and economic upheaval. Editor: And it succeeds, I think, because it doesn't spell anything out. The abstraction lets your own feelings about progress and change seep in. Even though I'm personally on the fence. Curator: His skill was making visible some underlying tensions in progress, I guess. He leaves us grappling with some of its effects, or rather, side effects. Editor: A strangely beautiful ghost in the machine!