“TEST ABLE” JUST OUTSIDE OF KEI ITO’S EXHIBITION IN THE GALLERIES, YOU’LL FIND RALSTON CRAWFORD’S “TEST ABLE,” A WORK FROM OUR COLLECTION THAT SPEAKS TO THE TOPIC OF ITO’S SHOW: NUCLEAR TESTING.
Crawford’s painting takes its title from the first nuclear weapons test after the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945. Operation Crossroads dropped two nuclear bombs (named Gilda, after Rita Hayworth’s character in the film of the same name, and Helen of Bikini) in Test Able and Test Baker at Bikini Atoll. This coral reef of 23 islands is northeast of Australia as part of the Marshall Islands. The U.S. government chose it as a nuclear testing site after World War II, forcibly relocating its inhabitants and conducting 23 nuclear tests there through 1958. Although the U.S. attempted to return Bikini islanders and their descen- dants to the islands in 1970, those efforts were short-lived. Well water remained contaminated as a result of nuclear testing, and residents of the island were once again forced to evacuate. Crawford, as chief of the Visual Presentation Unit of the Army Air Force’s Weather Division during the war, used his art skills to develop ways to represent weather through easily recognizable symbols, akin to the ones you might see today in a weather re- port. After the war, Fortune Magazine hired Crawford to docu- ment the nuclear weapons tests of Operation Crossroads. He was the only artist among more than 100 reporters and photographers who were present when the bombs for Test Able And Test Baker were dropped. From the press ship U.S.S. Appalachian, he looked on as Gilda was detonated 520 feet above a fleet of target ships. Crawford made eight paintings in reaction to the test and wrote: “These pictures constitute a comment on destruction. They most certainly do not explain the atomic bomb, nor do they give quan- titative information about the ships. They refer to these facts. They refer in paint symbols to the blinding light of the blast, to its color, and mostly to its devastating character as I saw it in Bikini Lagoon. . . . My purpose has been to convey ideas and feelings in a formal sequence, and not reproduce nature.” Fortune reproduced two of the paintings in its December 1946 issue, including this one, and a copy of the magazine is in a case next to the painting. The painting features jagged, overlapping forms and twisted lines that collide to represent ships destroyed by the explosion. Yellow and orange curves capture the intense light, heat and toxic fallout of the bombing.
You can see “Test Able” in its current location through July 14, when the Kei Ito exhibition closes.
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