George C. Ault
George Copeland Ault was born in Cleveland, where he grew up in a prosperous but conservative family. He trained in British art schools when his father’s job took the family to London. Ault eventually moved to New York City, where he began painting in a flat, planar style (of which his father disapproved). While his early modernist abstractions earned early acclaim, he became increasingly isolated from the art world, eventually withdrawing to the artistic community of Woodstock, New York.
What is in motion?
The title of this painting and the subject depicted suggest that it was based on observations Ault made of his family’s business, which processed ink for printing presses. Although the scene is based in reality, Ault simplified and abstracted the worker, the equipment, and the architecture, making the man’s labor feel eerily still. The composition resembles a series of interlocking geometric shapes, including a figure eight, a symbol for infinity, which suggests the repetitive nature of the task.
Museum purchase, gift of Max L. Rosenberg
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