Skip to main contentProvenanceThe artist
Margo Pollins Schab, Inc., New York, New York
Terra Foundation for the Arts Collection, Chicago, Illinois, 1996
Exhibition HistoryPublished References
Ralston Crawford
(American (born Canada), 1906–1978)
Third Avenue Elevated #4
1952
Color lithograph on white wove paper (BFK rives)
Image: 17 1/8 x 10 1/4 in. (43.5 x 26.0 cm)
Sheet: 19 3/4 x 12 3/16 in. (50.2 x 31.0 cm)
Mat: 26 x 20 in. (66.0 x 50.8 cm)
Sheet: 19 3/4 x 12 3/16 in. (50.2 x 31.0 cm)
Mat: 26 x 20 in. (66.0 x 50.8 cm)
Credit LineTerra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection
Object number1996.86.a
SignedIn graphite, lower center: 22/45 Ralston Crawford
InterpretationRalston Crawford's Third Avenue Elevated #4 celebrates stripes, angles, and the interplay of foreground and background geometric outlines, flat shapes, and planes. The only curved shape is a truncated arch at the upper right that evokes a cropped doorway in the distance. Otherwise, the composition is resolutely two-dimensional, notwithstanding the suggestion of shadows in the black outlining of two central triangles, like windows into the void of the pristine paper surface. The uniformly flat, matte effect of the lithographic medium further emphasizes the purely decorative aspect of Crawford's reductive composition.
Like many of Crawford's seemingly abstract works, Third Avenue Elevated #4 is a distillation of an objective subject: a detail of a structural support, painted in alternating black-and-white bands, of New York's Third Avenue elevated train. Whereas most passersby would barely notice this commonplace bit of urban structural engineering, Crawford's print emphasizes the geometric shapes visible in the painted steel girder and the spaces its openings frame. Third Avenue Elevated #4 celebrates the urban scene and its aesthetic "accidents," as well as the beauty of pure geometry. The print exemplifies the interrelatedness of the artist's photography and printmaking, for it is a visual distillation of a photograph of the same subject he had made three years earlier, in 1949 (TF 1996.86.b). It is one of a series of lithographs, drawn from photographs of the train's substructure and tracks, that Crawford printed in Paris at the workshop of Edmond Desjoberts.
Like many of Crawford's seemingly abstract works, Third Avenue Elevated #4 is a distillation of an objective subject: a detail of a structural support, painted in alternating black-and-white bands, of New York's Third Avenue elevated train. Whereas most passersby would barely notice this commonplace bit of urban structural engineering, Crawford's print emphasizes the geometric shapes visible in the painted steel girder and the spaces its openings frame. Third Avenue Elevated #4 celebrates the urban scene and its aesthetic "accidents," as well as the beauty of pure geometry. The print exemplifies the interrelatedness of the artist's photography and printmaking, for it is a visual distillation of a photograph of the same subject he had made three years earlier, in 1949 (TF 1996.86.b). It is one of a series of lithographs, drawn from photographs of the train's substructure and tracks, that Crawford printed in Paris at the workshop of Edmond Desjoberts.
Margo Pollins Schab, Inc., New York, New York
Terra Foundation for the Arts Collection, Chicago, Illinois, 1996
Exhibition History
L'Amérique et les Modernes, 1900–1950 (American Moderns, 1900–1950), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, July 25–October 31, 2000. [exh. cat.]Terra Collection-in-Residence, Ashmolean Museum of Art & Archaeology, Oxford, United Kingdom, September 15, 2022–September 30, 2026.
Freeman, Richard B. The Lithographs of Ralston Crawford. Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 1962. No. L 52.13.
Haskell, Barbara. Ralston Crawford. (exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art). New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1985. Text p. 110; ill. p. 113.
Acton, David. A Spectrum of Innovation: Color in American Printmaking 1890–1960. (exh. cat., Worcester Art Museum). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1990. No. 71, pp. 188–89.
Cartwright, Derrick R. and Paul J. Karlstrom. American Moderns, 1900–1950. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Pl. 8, p. 35 (color). [specific reference to Terra print]
Cartwright, Derrick R. and Paul J. Karlstrom. L'Amérique et les modernes, 1900–1950. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Pl. 8, p. 35 (color). [specific reference to Terra print]
Haskell, Barbara. Ralston Crawford. (exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art). New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1985. Text p. 110; ill. p. 113.
Acton, David. A Spectrum of Innovation: Color in American Printmaking 1890–1960. (exh. cat., Worcester Art Museum). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1990. No. 71, pp. 188–89.
Cartwright, Derrick R. and Paul J. Karlstrom. American Moderns, 1900–1950. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Pl. 8, p. 35 (color). [specific reference to Terra print]
Cartwright, Derrick R. and Paul J. Karlstrom. L'Amérique et les modernes, 1900–1950. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Pl. 8, p. 35 (color). [specific reference to Terra print]