A Feeling for Form Object Sheet (Draft)
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A Feeling for Form Object Sheet (draft) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA Museum of Learning and Public Programs Department Marina Emmanouil, Summer 2005 Standard Information Title/Date Hot Still Scape for Six Colors - Seventh Avenue Style, 1940 Artist Stuart Davis (American, 1892–1964) Media Oil on canvas, 36 x 44 7/8 in. (91.4 x 114 cm) Culture/Genre American Modernism MFA Mid-20th c. American, 1st floor (Gift of the William H. Lane Foundation and the M. Coll./Gall. and M. Karolik Collection, by exchange, 1983, 1983.12) Next to Start off question: How would you expect Cubism, Jazz, Advertising, and American urban environment be wrapped up or co-exist in a 1940 painting? Artist Davis, Stuart (1894-1964). American painter. 1 He grew up in an artistic environment, for his father was art director of a Philadelphia newspaper and his mother a sculptor. He studied with Robert Henri (1910-13), made covers and drawings for the social realist periodical ‘The Masses’, which was associated with the ‘Ash-can’ School, and exhibited watercolors in the Armory Show, which made an overwhelming impact on him. After a visit to Paris in 1928-29, he introduced a new note into US Cubism (1908-1914), basing himself on its Synthetic rather than its Analytical phase. Using natural forms, particularly forms suggesting the characteristic environment of American life, he rearranged them into flat poster-like patterns with precise outlines and sharply contrasting colors. (in contrast to French Cubism, where natura/-earthy colors were used). He later went over to pure abstract patterns, into which he often introduced lettering, suggestions of advertisements, posters, etc. The zest and dynamism of such works reflect his interest in jazz. Davis is generally considered to be the outstanding American artist to work in a Cubist idiom. He made witty and original use of it and created a distinctive American style, for however abstract his works became he always claimed that every image he used had its source in observed reality: `I paint what I see in America, in other words I paint the American Scene.' Verbal Description Artist’s ‘[It] is called Hot [a jazz term referring to improvisational force] because of its descript. dynamic mood, as opposed to a serene or pastoral mood. [The six colors] are 1 http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/davis/ used as the instruments in a musical composition might be, where the tone- color variety results from the simultaneous juxtaposition of different instrument groups.’ 2 From the time Davis moved to the city in his late teens, New York was the principal subject of his art. With a title evoking jazz, his “Still-Scape” combines still life and landscape, alluding both to the objects in his studio and to the world outside, on Seventh Avenue. Davis wrote: “The subject matter of this picture is well within the everyday experience of any modern city dweller. Fruit and flowers and kitchen utensils; fall skies; horizons; taxi cabs; radio; art exhibitions and reproductions; fast travel; Americana; movies; electric signs; dynamics of city sights and sounds.” The artist’s impressions of the city are captured with energy and flair by his jaunty line, vibrant palette (the “six colors” of the title), and the gritty texture of his paint. My The canvas is a high complex image of abstract forms, but there are also some interpret. distinctive symbols, such as an arrow, crosses, and polka dots. Also, stripes, concentric patterns, irregular forms with sharp contours, fence-like patterns, are all included in the composition. The artist’s signature is on top right side. Although, every single area of the canvas is covered with abstract patterns/forms, a lot of action is taking place in the middle/central part of the painting with distinct squared areas of patterns that overlap each other. In my attempt to deconstruct the basic shapes in the painting, I have found a rectangular, a rhombus. Two of its points touch the two corners of the canvas (top left and bottom right). The color that seems to cover this shape (seems to be in the background or at the back of the other coloured areas that are on the top, however, there is no feeling of depth or 3-d effects) is white and therefore, this makes me think as if these could be two spotlights that light the centre of the painting or in the stage of a jazz event. On this kind-of-defined shape, the complexity of the overlapping rectangular shapes, like paper cut-outs, grows even greater towards the centre. In my attempt to find connections between the abstract forms and the information on/history/story of the painter’s background (i.e., jazz influence), I can make out a human figure playing the saxophone. Actually, I can point out part of the torso of the figure (with a shirt with a fence-like detail as the front part) and the face in profile (mouth with a red curved shape for the mouth, and a black dot for the eye). The suggestion of this figure playing a saxophone/or a wind instrument is made clear by a line, which comes out horizontally of the figure’s supposed mouth and continues on a vertical axis. This image is located in the middle/centre and a bit off the left side of the canvas. Taking further this wild guess, another shape is suggestive of the human figure’s presence in the painting. This is a 2-d cone in white color that is placed near the player’s face, with the pointed side towards the figure’s nose. This could be a signifier for the musician’s breath (the black irregular black line that is included in the cone could perhaps denote the movement of exhaling out in the cold air or in a smoky space). 2 http://www.mfa.org/handbook/portrait.asp?id=370.5&s=9 Key • abstract shapes, vivid/sharply contrasting/bold colors (orange, yellow, Words & red, blue, black and white), flat patterns with precise outlines Phrases • dynamic energy, urban environment, jazz, modern technology Object in Context Basic Stuart Davis’ paintings are dialogues between the artist and the contemporary American Scene. He admired, among many other things in the United States, the urban environment, jazz, and modern technology. He conveyed the dynamic energy of contemporary life through abstract shapes and vivid colors. Davis believed that three-dimensional space could be shown on a two- dimensional surface by the way in which color forms were placed in relationship to each other; colors recede and advance depending on their position. Much of Davis’ work does not have a single focal point, giving the surface an all-over design. Opinions 3 Robert Hughes states that the artist who portrayed the nerve of the 1930s using the rhythms of jazz swing music with its racy, optimistic beat was Stuart Davis. Davis caught the visual punch of America. Stuart Davis produced a style characterized as American Cubism. (Cubist still-lifes substituting American objects for French ones: apples for oranges, beer for wine, the sports page for Le Figaro, and voil〈--American Cubism.) Davis used images from commerce before the pop artists were born. … The opinions of Stuart Davis showed the split that was occurring in American art. 4 Swing Era: Painting the Jazz Product … Stuart Davis viewed technological developments such as radio as forces which changed the fundamental experience of American life. He believed visual art needed to change in style in order to reflect the fragmentation brought by modern twentieth century media. Davis likened the painter's role in creating such representations to that of the jazz artist. … However, it is significant that in these abstract works of the 1930s and 1940s, the true act of interpretation lies in the work of the visual artist who translates the pervasiveness of the commercialized swing sensibility into socially relevant artwork. This is a marked shift from the work of the New York Realists, including Davis himself, earlier in the century. These earlier depictions of the earliest urban African-American jazz artists had translated reality faithfully, in order to capture the jazz artist as astute interpreter of American life. 5 Art historians deem Stuart Davis (1892-1964) one of the great artists of 20th- 3 http://videoindex.pbs.org/program/chapter.jsp?item_id=6113&chap_id=7 4 http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ASI/musi212/emily/davis.html Kaufman, century America. In the '20s and '30s, when most of his contemporaries were J.E. using 19th-century techniques to depict America, Davis--like Sheeler, Demuth, Marin, and Weber--delved into Modernism, and with it helped portray the country as it sped off the farm and into the city. … Davis experimented freely en route to his signature style. He brought the latest European styles, most notably Cubism, to such American subjects as Gloucester harbor, New York City, advertising, automobiles, and jazz music. He modified Cubism so that it differed from the French by throwing in English words and American product logos, and using hard-edged shapes and high-keyed, solid colors, giving the whole a jumpy, rhythmic design on a kingsize scale. His bending European Cubism into a native idiom was an early step on modern art's voyage from Paris to New York. Davis's Cubist-inspired advances provide an important link to later developments in American art. His espousal of Modernism helped set the stage for the hegemony of abstraction in Post-War America. Because he borrowed motifs from popular culture, he is rightly regarded as the progenitor of Pop Art. And the simple hard-edged geometry of his late work looks forward to Minimalism in the formalist era.