Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013 http://archive.org/details/charlesdemuthbar2402hask Charles Demuth Barbara Haskell Charles Dei Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York : Exhibition Itinerary: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York October 15, 1987-January 17, 1988 Los Angeles County Museum of Art February 25-April 24, [988 Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio May 8-July 10, 1988 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art August 7-Octobcr 2, 1988 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Haskell, Barbara. Charles Demuth, Exhibition catalog. Bibliography: p. 1. Demuth, Charles, 1 883-1935 — Exhibitions. 2. Painting, American —Exhibitions. 3. Painting, Modern — 20th century— United States- Exhibitions. 4. Painters — Pennsylvania — biography. I. Demuth, Charles, 1883-1935. II. Whitney Museum of American Art. III. Title. ND237.D36A4 1987 75913 87-18872 isbn 0-87427-056-1 (paper) ISBN O-8IO9-II35-3 (cloth) Cover From the Kitchen Garden, 1925 (Pi. 88) Frontispiece: Man Ray 3 Charles Demuth Hands, and Torso, c. 1921 ; Silver print, 9% x 6 A in. (23 I x 27.1 cm); Private collection This publication was organized at the Whitney Museum of American Art by Doris Palca, Head, Publications and Sales; Sheila Schwartz, Editor; Deborah Lyons, Associate Editor; and Vicki Drake, Secretary/ Assistant. Charles Demuth was designed by Katy Homans, Homans/Salsgiver; typeset in Monotype Bembo by Michael and Winifred Bixler; and printed in Japan by Nissha Printing Co., Ltd. Copyright © 1987 Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue, New York 10021 1 Contents Director's Foreword 7 Acknowledgments 8 I. Early Years 1 II. The Artist as Writer 3 5 Selected Writings 41 III. Demuth in New York 1914-1920 49 4- IV. Literary Illustrations 191 1 919 97 V. Origins of Precisionism 1916-1922 121 VI. Poster Portraits 1923-1929 173 VII. Late Works 1927-193 5 193 Exhibition History 218 Selected Bibliography 237 Works in the Exhibition 239 Whitney Museum Flora Miller Piddle, Chairman Leonard A. Lauder, Vice Chairman of American Art William S. Woodside, President Trustees and Officers Joel S. Ehrcnkranz, Vice President Victor W. Ganz, Vice President Stephen E. O'Neil, Vice President Charles Simon, Treasurer Thomas N. Armstrong III, Director Joanne L. Cassullo Joan Hardy Clark Wilfred P. Cohen Beth Rudin DeWoody Brendan Gill Faith G. Golding Sondra Gilman Gonzalez-Falla Robert F. Grecnhill Frederick B. Henry Benjamin D. Hollovvay George S. Kaufman Henry Kaufman Berthe Kolm Emily Fisher Landau Raymond J. Learsy Howard Lipman Gilbert C. Maurer Elizabeth J. McCormack Adrian Mnuchin Elizabeth M. Petrie Jules D. Prown C. Lawson Reed Mrs. Laurance S. Rockefeller David M. Solinger, Honorary Preside A. Alfred Taubman George Weissman Leslie H. Wexner Robert W. Wilson Honorary Trustees B. H. Friedman Susan Morse Hilles Michael H. Irving Director's Foreword Charles Demuth has long been recognized as a central figure among the group of avant-garde artists who emerged as the leading exponents of mod- ernism in America during the first decades of the twentieth century. He is best known as a pioneer of Precisionism and as a consummate watercolorist. Yet the breadth of his wide-ranging interests and achievements had never been fully studied. We are extremely grateful to the Henry Luce Foundation for a major grant from the Luce Fund for Scholarship in American Art, which made possible the extensive research required for this project. The Foundation's generosity enables us to continue the Whitney Museum tradition of support- ing primary research in American art history. It is a pleasure also to thank all of the others who assisted in this effort and the owners of works of art who have graciously shared them with the public. The Whitney Museum's association with Charles Demuth began with the inclusion of his work in an exhibition at the Whitney Studio in 1923. After 1932 his work was featured regularly in the Museum's annual and biennial surveys of contemporary art. In 1937, two years after his death, the Museum presented the first large-scale survey of his work. Barbara Haskell's presentation of Charles Demuth represents another example of her skills in revealing the nature of an artist's achievements against the backdrop of contemporary events and the complicated forces in the life of a creative person. Charles Demuth is the first major publication and exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art since the deaths of Lloyd Goodrich and John I.H. Baur, two great American scholars long associated with the Whitney Museum. Their achievements stand as an example to all of us, and we dedicate this book and the exhibition to them as a tribute to the legacy of their work and the standards they established, which we will always seek to emulate. Tom Armstrong, Director 7 Acknowledgments Marcel Duchamp once remarked that Dcmuth was one of the few artists whom all other artists liked as a real friend. Demuth's generosity of spirit and capacity for friendship have graced those who became involved in his art after his death and who have contributed to the success of this project: Kermit Champa, Alvord Eiseman, Betsy Fahlman, and Emily Farnham. I am grateful to them as well as to Faye Badura, Avis Berman, Isabel Brenner, S. Lane Faison, Jean Henry, Ann Hill, Cheryl Licbold, Jack Locher, Dorothy Nor- man, Harold Rifkin, Daniel Robbins, Bruce Russell, Gail Stavitsky, Jeanette Toohey, and Jonathan Weinberg for providing important information on var- ious aspects of Demuth's life and art. Several residents of Lancaster, Pennsyl- vania, generously assisted with research problems : Robert LcMin, Gerald and Margaret Lestz, Carol Morgan, and Dorothea Dcmuth. In addition, Phyllis Reed and Debra Smith performed a yeoman's service in compiling an impor- tant stream of genealogical information on the Dcmuth and Buckius families. I am fortunate to have had an especially high level of assistance from my staff. The contribution of Marilyn Kushner in particular has been inval- uable : she was responsible for assembling and coordinating the photographs and primary documents and for preparing the bibliography and exhibition history. I am extremely grateful to her as well as to the many individuals who compiled research data: Michelle Artiako, Laura Foster, Elizabeth Geissler, Jack Heineman, Ann MacNary, Stewart Nachmias, Jeanne Quinn, Naomi Shapiro, and Virginia Thors. Their thoroughness, diligence, and good humor were absolutely critical to the successful realization of the project. I also extend well-deserved thanks to Lorraine McVey for her herculean efforts in typing and retyping the manuscript. Equally valued are Leon Botstein's observations about Demuth and editorial suggestions about the manuscript. I deeply appreciate the cooperation and encouragement of my col- leagues at the Whitney Museum. The enthusiastic support and commitment of Tom Armstrong and Jennifer Russell have meant a great deal to me. Sheila Schwartz, Deborah Lyons, and Vicki Drake have my heartfelt thanks for their valuable contributions to the editing and production of the book. Steve 8 Sloman persevered in developing a photographic technique that successfully captured Demuth's elusive color— a task made possible by Anita Duquette's tireless assistance. Special appreciation is due as well to Katy Homans for her sensitive design of the book. Finally, my greatest debt is to the Henry Luce Foundation, whose research grant made this book possible, and to the private and institutional lenders who believed in the significance of the project and extended themselves in order that important and fragile works be included in the retrospective. Barbara Haskell, Curator This book is based upon over three years of research made possible by a generous grant from the Luce Fund for Scholarship in American Art, a program of the Henry Luce Foundation. Additional income for publications has been provided by endowments for publication established by the Primerica Foundation, Henry and Elaine Kaufman Foundation, and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. 9 Perhaps this is not a story at all and yet I think it is. Is life ever definite in its answer; is the story ever really finished? We can, all of us, imagine things to come after the end of a story, be the story our own or that ofsome other. Charles Demuth 1 I. Early Years Charles Henry Buckius Demuth was born on November 8, 1883, into a 1 patrician family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Even though it never achieved conspicuous wealth, the family was extremely successful by small-town stan- dards — enough so that Demuth never had to work for a living. As compelling for Demuth's later self-identity as his family's financial position, was its secure sense of social place. Demuth's ancestors had emigrated from Moravia to 2 America in 173 5. By 1770 they had settled in Lancaster, where they estab- lished what was, by Demuth's time, the oldest continuing tobacco shop and snuff factory in America. The family's pre-Revolutionary stature ensured its prominence in a community which boasted of once being the capital of the Constitutional Congress and the State of Pennsylvania. The imprimatur of history and tradition even attached to the house into which Demuth and his parents moved six years after he was born: it had been one of the original residences in the city plan laid out in 1750 by Colonial Governor William Hamilton. 3 Demuth's father, Ferdinand, imbued with this sense of family history, had little use for the typical aspirations of nineteenth-century immigrant populations. The eldest son, he worked in the family business and maintained a peripheral involvement in civic affairs as a volunteer fireman and member of the Lancaster County Historical Society. 4 Within the circumscribed world of Lancaster, he had already achieved social standing, money, and respect.