Nemerov

Mr. Nemerov reminds us that Ault's lifelong quest was for order.

Austerity, Economy, Stillness Karen Wilkin 2011

Organized by Alexander Nemerov, the Vincent Scully Professor of the History of Art at Yale University, this divergent story is told by a gathering of less-than-familiar works by often less-than-familiar artists, as serious about their aesthetic aspirations as their better-known contemporaries, the Abstract Expressionists, but with altogether different conceptions of what painting could be.

Austerity, Economy, Stillness Karen Wilkin 2011

Mr. Nemerov suggests that these works could be seen either as "the melancholy vision of one man, misanthropic and morbid" or as evidence of "a quality of compassion."

Austerity, Economy, Stillness Karen Wilkin 2011

In 1937, he and his wife moved to rural Woodstock, N.Y., from New York City in order, Mr. Nemerov tells us, to escape the pressures of urban life and personal difficulties.

Austerity, Economy, Stillness Karen Wilkin 2011

Mr. Nemerov sees the tense mood of Ault's paintings of the 1940s as part of a larger response to the war years, supporting his thesis with works by Ault's like-minded colleagues and contemporaries, some of them well known—such as Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent, Charles Sheeler and Andrew Wyeth—some of them obscure; all of them, like Ault, are faithful to the specifics of their surroundings, indifferent to radical, modernist ideas, and deadly serious.

Austerity, Economy, Stillness Karen Wilkin 2011

And as context, Mr. Nemerov includes photographs of enlisted Woodstock residents, in their uniforms, and, among other things, a large publicity still from a classic film noir, along with the art director's vigorous black and white drawings.

Austerity, Economy, Stillness Karen Wilkin 2011

It was a poem, “The Human Condition” by Howard Nemerov.

THE FORBIDDEN GAME L.J. SMITH 2010

It was a poem, “The Human Condition” by Howard Nemerov.

THE FORBIDDEN GAME L.J. SMITH 2010

"This is certainly not why I came to Yale," Nemerov told the Daily News.

Class Pranks Annoy Yale Professors 2010

All the Nemerov children grew up surrounded by the trappings of wealth and success.

Diane Arbus. 2009