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. More generally, his stylistic consistency is cited as a model of integrity in American art.

Approaches to Art

"What does this painting feel like?"

Texture Quite textural and complex: flat/even areas which, however, include stripes, spirals, zigzags, dots (different sizes, plain coloured or with designs, in groups –like polka dots- or singles), concentric patterns, irregular forms, sharp contours, crosses, arrows. Colour More warm on the top, left and bottom sides (mostly in deep red). Warmth A mixture of warm (red, orange, yellow), cold (sky blue) and neutral (black and white) colors in the centre. In general, the warm colours slightly overwhelm the cold and neutral ones. On the right side, it is less warm (yellow area with a vertical stripe of sky blue with a black line within, and also there are black cut-outs, and, on the top part a small red patch with a white dot).

"What does this painting sound like?"

Poetry Jazz Poetry: 1920s-30s6: Frank Marshall Davis (Jazz Band, 1935), Carl Sandburg (Jazz Fantasia, 1919), Langston Hughes (Trumpet Player, ?, Negro Dancers, 1926, Jazzonia, 1926, Juke Box Love Song, 1950, Dream Boogie, 1951), Helene Johnson (Poem, 1927, Sonnet To A Negro In Harlem, 1927), Gwendolyn Bennett (Song, 1926), Sterling Allen Brown (Ma Rainey, 1932, Cabaret, 1932).

i.e., Juke Box Love Song, Langston Hughes (1950)

I could take the Harlem night and wrap around you,

5 http://www.aufman.com/articles/stuart_davis_merican_modernist.htm, "Stuart Davis, American Modernist" The World & I, April 1992, pp. 196-201, by Jason Edward Kaufman 6 http://members.cox.net/academia/print.html Take the neon lights and make a crown, Take the Lenox Avenue busses, Taxis, subways, And for your love song tone their rumble down. Take Harlem's heartbeat, Make a drumbeat, Put it on a record, let it whirl, And while we listen to it play, Dance with you till day-- Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl. Music Jazz Music Clubs: Ryles Jazz Club (Cambridge), Scullers Grill Club Jazz, (Boston)7 Venues: MFA, B-Side Lounge, Regent Theatre, etc. Festivals: Newport Jazz Festival, Boston Globe Jazz Festival, Boston Arts Festival, Boston Folk Festival, Museum of Fine Arts, Cambridge River Festival

"What people think of this painting?"

8 ‘…They look a little puzzled at the painting. The painting student, who's just a Description bit grumpy, says she already hates the color scheme. King Robothead, a tall by Scott and friendly guy, doesn't care much for the painting on first impression. And Ruescher. Abstracts my brother-in-law would like to withhold judgment for now. Next they rattle off the six distinct colors—orange, yellow, red, blue, black and white, bold and bordered colors, like construction-paper cut-outs more than paints, says one—and make an effort to identify the objects the odd shapes seem to suggest in a painting that is already resisting interpretation. That black coil on white might be the suggestion of an ear, says someone. Those blue and white round things in a wavy row might be beach balls, says another. That might be a bird's beak. There's a shovel over there—maybe. Here's a gate, sort of. And here, perhaps, is a shield. And is that curl a monkey's tail? One thing's so obvious about the painting that no one mentions it: The colorful and crazy patterns—stripes, dots, squiggles, zig-zags, bars, and spirals—are all painted onto the overlapping geometric shapes that structure the background. Only a couple of the images trespass onto other-colored planes— and when they do they change colors. That leaning white square that's behind it all, on top of which the layers of images lie, is a rhombus, says my brother- in-law. I see rectangles, spheres, and lopsided parallelograms all over the place, decorated by a cacophonous diffusion of suggestive shapes that, again, aren't quite "things." No one knows quite what to make of it all, or quite what it specifically refers to, if anything, and I don't tell them what I know about it from previous gazes. They see that it's bold and playful, decidedly not subtle; confident, festive, and ostentatious; that the painting and the painter come off as arrogant, even; that it's generally similar to other abstractions at this end of the gallery. King Robothead wants to title it Driven to Distraction; the painting student wants to tease it with a title like Untitled, followed, she says, by a number like #47 or #82; and my brother-in-law, appreciating the dynamic interplay between the inexplicably expressive and disturbingly elusive individual images, wants to call it Action Compartments. Knowing the title of the painting and the interests of the painter already, I

7 http://www.bostonnightclubnews.com/bostonjazzclubs/ 8http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:dg_g0YfoYGgJ:www.artseditor.com/html/april00/apr00_ game.shtml+Stuart+DAVIS,+Hot+still&hl=en&lr=lang_en|lang_el start to see in the images what an MFA gallery guard named Rose, herself a painter, would later describe as "rhythm symbols." Stuart Davis was an urban socialist and political activist like Ben Shahn, in the hopeful and high spirit of the times. The painting can be seen, or maybe heard, as a jubilant jazz rendering of street-life, a celebration of dissonance and diversity. The others start to see that too, and start to hear the "rhythm cymbals," if you will, clanging a bit more loudly—but not really until I've shown them on the caption that the painting's really titled, no kidding, Hot Still-Scape for Six Colors—7th Avenue Style.’

Props/Materials

A tactile diagram with heat-sensitive natural materials A jazz recording or poetry reading A canvas, and brushes

Art Connections

Painting/ Art of Europe/Early 20th c European Art : Sculpture Standing Figure, 1908, Picasso, 58.976 Head of a Woman, 1909, Picasso, 1976.821

Sculpture African Art Collection: Mask, Fang peoples, l19th-e20thc, 1991.1067 Mask, Dan peoples, 20thc, 1994.420

History & Related Stories

Cubism 1908-1914 Artists Pablo Picasso (Spain, 1881-1973), Georges Braque (France, 1882-1963), Juan Gris (Spain, 1887-1972), Piet Mondrian (Holland, 1872-1944) 9 Cubism is the most radical, innovative, and influential ism of twentieth- century art. It is complete denial of Classical conception of beauty. Cubism was the joint invention of two men, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.

Proportions, organic integrity and continuity of life samples and material objects are abandoned. Canvas resembles "a field of broken glass" as one vicious critic noted. This geometrically analytical approach to form and color, and shattering of object in focus into geometrical sharp-edged angular pieces baptized the movement into 'Cubism'.

10 E. M. Cubism was a completely new, non-imitative style of painting and sculpture

9 http://www.huntfor.com/arthistory/C20th/cubism.htm Plunkett, that was co-founded by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in 1908 and Art survived in its purest form until the mid-1920s. Cubism had an impact on art Historian. in general that extended far beyond the existence of the painting style itself; it paved the way for other art revolutions, such as Dada and surrealism, and was seminal to much of abstract art. It also fostered newer modes of art, such as Orphism and futurism, and even affected the formal structure of styles whose origins had predated cubism, such as expressionism.

Picasso and Braque found the precedents and initial concepts for cubism in two art sources. One was primitive art -- African tribal masks, Iberian sculpture, and Egyptian bas-reliefs. The other influence was the work of Paul Cézanne, especially his late still lifes and landscapes. Cézanne had introduced a new geometrization of forms as well as new spatial relationships that finally broke with the Renaissance traditions of perspective. In 1907, Picasso synthesized these two sources in his seminal painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1906-07; Museum of Modern Art, New York). Braque, one of the few artists to see and understand Picasso's painting at the time, immediately transformed his style from a Fauvist (see Fauvism) to an early cubist idiom. In March 1909 the French critic Louis Vauxcelles, reviewing the Salon des Indépendants, referred disparagingly to Braque's style as one that "reduces everything to little cubes" -- hence, cubism.

Cubism developed from the early phase of 1908-09 to the more complex and systematic style of 1910-12, known as analytic cubism, implying intense analysis of all elements in a painting. It consisted of facets, or cubes, arranged in superimposed, transparent planes with clearly defined edges that established mass, space, and the implication of movement. During this period, Picasso and Braque employed a palette of muted greens, grays, browns, and ochers. Despite this radical method of painting, the subject matter consisted of traditional landscapes, portraits, and still lifes. Fragments of the faces, guitars, or wineglasses that were the subject of these works can be detected through the shifting facets or contours.

When Picasso and Braque invented collages and papiers colles in 1912, they initiated the study of color and light within a cubist oil painting, a stage known as synthetic cubism (1912-14). The introduction of bright color resulted in the further flattening of space and the elaboration of the picture surface with such decorative devices as the stippling technique derived from pointillism. Broken brush strokes, tone and shadow, and distance between denser planes introduced light. Synthetic cubism is the result of the desire to create or describe visual reality without resorting to illusionistic painting. The artist does this by synthesizing the object, even to the point of including real components of it in a collage, thus creating a new, separate reality for it.

11 During the early days of Cubism, historians attributed the creation of cubism to one man: Pablo Picasso. Now we know that he has to share to honour with Georges Braque. Braque had studied Cézanne's method of representing three dimensions as seen from several viewpoints, in the same year (1907) that Picasso created his Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. In this painting Picasso depicts human figures by making use of several viewpoints, which became one of the characteristic features of cubism. … Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

10 http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/Art/cubism.shtml 11 http://pablo-picasso.paintings.name/ represents Picasso's époque negre which was inspired by African art and overlaps the first phase in cubism, which is called analytical cubism. Analytical cubism lasted until 1911 and is characterized by monochrome, relatively unemotional paintings that depict rather uneventful subjects, such as still lives. Many paintings of analytical cubism are faceted (see for instance Georges Braque's "Mandola"), a technique that allows the artist to disect and reconstruct his subject in a way that depicts it's essence rather than it's appearance. Although largely abstract, the faceted technique still produces a recognizable image of the subject.

It is important to fully realize the importance of cubism. It isn't just "Picasso's style" but marks the real beginning of abstract art. Picasso's predecessors, such as the impressionists, the fauvists and Cezanne were still principally tied to nature as a model to elaborate on. With Les Demoiselles d'Avignon Picasso reached a level of abstraction that was a radical enough break with the classical dominance of content over form, a hierarchy which is reversed in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and the style which followed from it: Cubism.

12 Cubism had strong roots in African tribal art. In cubism, geometrical forms and fragmentations are favored. Everything is reduced to cubes and other geometrical forms. Often several aspects of one subject are shown simultaneously. Cubism paved the way for abstract art.

13 …Picasso's works began to shift slightly in appearance and theme. His characters had oddly shaped faces, looking similar to masks. Their mask-like faces reflected his interest in Iberian and African sculpture. Picasso was interested in African art, as were many other artists of the time. His interest in these pieces began to appear in his work. The colors of Picasso's palette were "earth tones" and natural colors, typical of African sculture. Picasso also painted wild animals such as bulls and horned creatures, similar to those found in the African range. …

African Art 14 African art came to European notice c.1905, when artists began to recognize the aesthetic value of African sculpture. Such artists as Vlaminck, Derain, Picasso, and Modigliani were influenced by African art forms. Interest in the arts of Africa has flourished, and many modern Western artists have rediscovered the enduring qualities of African art. In the latter part of the 20th cent., African art has come to be appreciated for its intrinsic aesthetic value as well as continuing to be a source of inspiration for the work of Western artists. 15 African art, and in particular African masks, have had an enormous influence Masks on western art, culture and design. This influence can be found in fields as diverse as textile and fashion design, in architecture, painting and sculpture, as well as in graphic design.

The magnificent geometric forms of African masks have enabled African art to take its place among the world's most admired forms of artistic expression.

12 http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:kI-RL4WD2QJ:www.artelino.com/articles/modern _art_periods.asp+african+art,+cubism,+history&hl=en&lr=lang_en|lang_el 13 http://cghs.dade.k12.fl.us/african-american/twentieth_century/cubism.htm 14 http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/section/Africana_InfluenceonWesternArt.asp 15 http://www.design-africa.com/masks/masksmain.html However, the admiration and acclaim has not always been accompanied by an understanding of the African cultures that gave rise to the forms and designs of African art. In African cultures the formal characteristics of the art have usually been intimately associated with magic and religious beliefs and practices. In what follows we will attempt to tell the story of African masks and in the process we hope to throw some light on traditional African life and culture.

16 In Africa masks can be traced back to well past Palaeolithic times. These art objects were, and are still made of various materials, included are leather, metal, fabric and various types of wood.

Masking ceremonies in Africa have great cultural and traditional significance. Latest developments and understanding of Aesthetic principles, religious and ceremonial values, have brought about a greater insight into the ideas and moral values that African artists express in their art.

During celebrations, initiations, crop harvesting, war preparation, peace and trouble times, African masks are worn by a chosen or initiated dancer. It can be worn in three different ways: vertically covering the face: as helmets, encasing the entire head, and as crest, resting upon the head, which was commonly covered by material as part of the disguise. African masks often represent a spirit and it is strongly believed that the spirit of the ancestors possesses the wearer.

Ritual ceremonies generally depict deities, spirits of ancestors, mythological beings, good and or evil, the dead, animal spirits, and other beings believed to have power over humanity. Masks of human ancestors or totem ancestors (beings or animals to which a clan or family traces its ancestry) are often objects of family pride; when they are regarded as the dwelling of the spirit they represent, the masks may be honored with ceremonies and gifts.

During the mask ceremony the dancer goes into deep trance, and during this state of mind he "communicate" with his ancestors. A wise man or translator sometimes accompanies the wearer of the mask during the ritual. The dancer brings forth messages of wisdom from his ancestors. Often the messages are grunted utterances and the translator will accurately decipher the meaning of the message. Rituals and ceremonies are always accompanied with song, dance and music, played with traditional African musical instruments.

For thousands of years, rituals and ceremonies was and to a lesser extent is still an integral part of African life. The gradual, effects of parceled out territories to Colonial governments, and the ensuing damage to traditional economies followed by the displacement of huge quantities of people, by colonialism, resulted in economies and food production systems being wrecked. In general the vast number of people have lost some of its tribal identity and culture, hence masking ceremonies are no longer common place in Africa.

Jazz Jazz is the art of expression set to music! Jazz is said to be the fundamental 17 rhythms of human life and man’s contemporary reassessment of his

16 http://www.rebirth.co.za/African_mask_history_and_meaning.htm 17 http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/zaire/721/history/intro.htm traditional values. Volumes have been written on the origins of jazz based on black American life-styles. The early influences of tribal drums and the development of gospel, blues and field hollers seems to point out that jazz has to do with human survival and the expression of life.

The origin of the word "jazz" is most often traced back to a vulgar term used for sexual acts. Some of the early sounds of jazz where associated with whore houses and "ladies of ill repute." However, the meaning of jazz soon became a musical art form, whether under composition guidelines or improvisation, jazz reflected spontaneous melodic phrasing.

Those who play jazz have often expressed the feelings that jazz should remain undefined, jazz should be felt. "If you gotta ask, you’ll never know" ---Louis Armstrong.

The standard legend about jazz is that it was conceived in New Orleans and moved up the Mississippi River to Memphis, St. Louis and finally Chicago. Of course that seems to be the history of what we now refer to as jazz, however, the influences of what led to those early New Orleans sounds goes back to tribal African drum beats and European musical structures. "Jazz, like any artistic phenomenon, represents the sum of an addition. The factors of this addition are, to my mind, African music, French and American music and folklore." ---Robert Goffin, 1934.

In reviewing the background of jazz one can not overlook the evaluation over the decades and the fact that jazz spanned many musical forms such as spirituals, cakewalks, ragtime and the blues. Around 1891 a New Orleans barber named Buddy Bolden reputedly pitcked up his cornet and blew the first stammering notes of jazz, thereby unconsciously breaking with several centuries of musical tradition. A half-century later, jazz, America’s great contribution to music, crossed the threshold of the universities and became seriously, even religiously considered.

Jazz functions as popular art and has enjoyed periods of fairly widespread public response, in the "jazz age" of the 1920s, in the swing era of the late 1930s and in the peak popularity of modern jazz in the late 1950s. Beginning in the 20s and continuing well into the 30s, it was common to apply the word "jazz" rather indiscriminately, melodically or tonally. Thus George Gershwin was called a jazz composer. For Gershwin’s concert work he was acclaimed to have made a respectable art form out of jazz. Somewhat similarly, Paul Whiteman, playing jazz-influenced dance music, was billed as the King of Jazz. Perhaps the broader definition of jazz, such as the one that would include the blues influence as well as those who shared our understanding of the art form, even if they did not perform it, would be the most useful historical approach.

"It has always intrigued me, that people like Ma Rainey, Al Jolson and Guy Lombardo are considered a part of jazz history, but they are!" ---Les Paul, 1994.

The influence and development of the blues cannot be over looked when discussing the early years of jazz.

"The blues as such are synonymous with low spirits. Blues music is not. With all its so called blue notes and overtones of sadness, blues music of its very nature and function is nothing if not a form of diversion." ---Albert Murray.

Those feelings as expression of blues music fits very comfortably with the strains and phrases of jazz. Today, Bessie Smith is considered primarily a blues singers, however in the 1920s, she was most often referred to as a jazz singer. An ability to play the blues has been a requisite of all jazz musicians, who on first meeting one another or when taking part in a jam session, will often use the blues framework for improving. Blues, stemming from rural areas of the deep South, has a history largely independent of jazz. Exponents of blues usually accompanied themselves on guitar, piano or harmonica or were supported by small groups who often played unconventional or homemade instruments.

A number of the early jazz performers relied on the blues for more than the chord exchanged. Many of these jazz musicians used the blues for the driving force of their musical emotions, such as the work of Don Redman, Stuff Smith, Ma Rainey and the early works of Louis Armstrong and Benny Carter.

18 1920's : New Orleans Jazz is the thing. The Jazz Age is born.

19 New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park

Resources

20 Herbert R. Hartel, Jr., ‘Stuart Davis' Taste for Modern American Culture’ Donna M. Cassidy, Painting the Musical City: Jazz and Cultural Identity in American Art, 1910-1940, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 1997. Lowery Stokes Sims et. al,. ‘Stuart Davis: American Painter’, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Harry N. Abrams, Inc Plagens, Peter. ‘Cubism, American Style”. Newsweek. Vol.119 (January 1992): 54.

Online Resources

www.mfa.org/handbook/portrait.asp?id=370.5&s=9 www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/davis/ www.artcyclopedia.com www.hirshhorn.si.edu www.metmuseum.org

http://borghi.org/american/davis.html

18 http://www.allaboutjazz.com/timeline.htm 19 http://www.nps.gov/jazz/ 20http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:42TE6Umw6vgJ:dsc.gc.cuny.edu/part/part9/modernism/ articles/harte.html+Stuart+DAVIS,+Hot+still&hl=en&lr=lang_en|lang_el

Name Visitor’s Feedback

Additional Info Artist

Biogr.21 Davis entered the profession almost by default and, to judge from his earliest Kaufman, work, despite negligible talent. His father was art director for the daily J.E. Philadelphia Press, and young Davis was drawn into the orbit of the newspaper's illustrators. Among them were four members of "The Eight"-- William Glackens, George Luks, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan. As soon as Davis left high school he went to New York to study with their mentor, Robert Henri. The student's works emulate the impressionistic brushwork and urban lowlife subjects that earned Henri's group the nickname "The Ashcan School."

With some help from Sloan, Davis was soon publishing cartoons in Harper's Weekly and The Masses. Then, at the age of 21, he was one of the youngest exhibitors in the legendary New York Armory Show, an event he later called "the greatest single influence I have experienced in my work."(2) Immediately, Davis's art paid homage to van Gogh and Matisse, whose canvasses impressed him with their non-referential color and abstract drawing. "Henceforth," he later declared, "the American artist realized his right to free expression and exercised that right."

For Davis, the "right to free expression" meant liberty to diverge from realism. "No work of art can be true to nature in the objective sense," he asserted. "The nearer it approximates the natural appearance of objects the more it is likely to be far away from art." The inevitable outlet for such vehement anti-realism is, of course, abstraction. Thus, Davis theorized that "the act of painting is not a duplication of experience [i.e., realism], but the extension of experience on the plane of formal invention."

He had ample opportunity to practice "formal invention" during WWI, serving as mapmaker for Army Intelligence. Considering the two- dimensional, diagrammatic character of his mature style, this stint as a map maker proved as important in his artistic evolution as did the Armory Show. By 1921 he was painting simulated collages of cigarette papers and advertising labels. A proto-Pop work like Lucky Strike (1921), for example, has almost no sense of spatial depth.

Davis tested his hand at the multiple viewpoints and overlapping planes of Picasso's and Braque's Synthetic Cubism. Then in 1922 he wrote in his notebook, "Starting now I will begin a series of paintings that shall be rigorously logical American[,] not French. America has had her scientists, her inventors, now she will have her artist." What followed were 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. He continued with a string of straightforward, iconic depictions of homely domestic items, the finest of which, Edison Mazda (1924), consists of a blue lightbulb and gray wineglass in front of an upright blue-and-gray portfolio. The American modernist enterprise climaxed with the "Eggbeater" series

21 http://www.jasonkaufman.com/articles/stuart_davis_american_modernist.htm, "Stuart Davis, American Modernist" The World & I, April 1992, pp. 196-201, by Jason Edward Kaufman (1927-28), a group of four compositions that abstract a rubber glove, an electric fan, and the titular eggbeater in a kind of skewed Purism. Often called "seminal," this series is vastly overrated. The spatial mutation, formal distortion, and chromatic diversity seem arbitrary, ungoverned by a rational or even a purely aesthetic order. Though apologists point to the "Eggbeaters" as a daring essay in American abstraction, these works confirm that even at his best Davis was a naive Cubist.

In 1928, Davis had a chance to explore the roots of his affected idiom when Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, an early patron, financed his 15-month sojourn to Paris. He briefly met Leger and Gertrude Stein, but remained on the fringe of the artistic community and made no great strides in his art. In fact, he reverted to illustration, painting insipid, candy-colored streetscapes. As one art historian put it, "seduced" by his exotic surroundings, Davis "confected idealized stage sets for a nostalgic musical of an American artist in Paris."

During the Depression, Davis worked in the mural painting division of the Works Progress Administration, and his art took a decidedly political turn. Despite the Stalinist crackdown on the Soviet avant-garde, "Davis chose to perpetuate the idealistic dreams of the Russian revolution." He held that the future of art was modernism, the style that reflected the new industrial truth, and that "in its internal form and in its external relation to reality, modern art could stimulate radical change in the political and economic structure of America." Just what sort of change, and how it would be brought about, remains unclear. But given the intellectual climate of the period, it certainly would have involved a cultural resurrection of the working class.

As to how the revolution would be effected, Davis seemed to call for a hybrid of anecdote and abstraction. As the stylistic battle raged in the '30s, he sided with neither the abstract nor the realist camp. On the one hand, he fervently advocated abstraction, saying, "To regard abstract art as a mysterious irrational bypath on the road of true art is like regarding electricity as a passing fad." Yet, on the other hand, he cautioned against completely non- objective art, stating, "for an event [painting] to have meaning for us, we must have had experience with the objective elements that compose it."

According to Lowery Sims, Associate Curator of American Painting at The Metropolitan, Davis believed the emotive impact of visual forms is more important than their specific subject matter. Yet, one observes that he was reluctant to abandon the kind of representational cues that are evocative, if not tantamount to, specific subjects. Take his 1932 Mural (Men without Women), commissioned for the gentlemen's lounge of Radio City Music Hall. Cartoonish renderings of smoking paraphernalia, playing cards, barber poles, automobiles, sailboats, and other "gentlemanly" appointments are scattered without apparent order.

Another example is Abstract Vision of New York, executed for The Museum of Modern Art's 1932 American murals show. The Empire State Building, derby, bananas, and assorted motifs refer to a contemporary New York political figure, Al Smith, nicknamed "The Top Banana." This pictographic tabloid sheet conjures not by abstract means, but by literary symbols, puns, and allusions. In both murals, in fact, abstraction contributes little to the overall meaning. Though Davis peppered his 1930s compositions with popularist anecdotes and references, he fell far short of his revolutionary aims for more than one reason. For one thing, American abstract art did not command the attention that the Regionalism of Benton, Wood, and Curry did. But, even if Davis' work had reached a wider audience, its impact would have been minimal for its message was diffuse. Davis never really figured out how to put abstraction to use--in short, how to communicate with it. While he maintained that "abstract art is realistic and has meaning because it expresses common experience," he failed to realize that a "common" form meaningfully abstracted by the artist, will often be differently interpreted by another viewer. The entire context shifts, and the artist's intention is lost. To be fair, it should be pointed out that the question of how to visually structure meaning via abstraction has remained virtually unanswered throughout the 20th century. Davis cannot be faulted for being of his time.

If Davis's work is not especially efficacious, neither is it particularly uplifting. One tends to concur with critic Edward Alden Jewell who observed of a now- lost work, "If Davis here painted a symphony, it must be esteemed in no way analogous to any symphony--at least any good one--that I have listened to in the concert hall." That's about right. Aside from his expressionistic self- portraits and landscapes of 1919, and the iconic still-lifes from the mid-1920s, Davis's work from the 1940s is by far his best, with a lively collage effect that is optically vibrant, even volatile at times. Davis peaked in small works like Arboretum by Flashlight (1942), Ultra-Marine (1943), and The Mellow Pad (1945-51).

But by the early 1950s, his canvasses became increasingly reductive as he reworked earlier compositions. Even classics like Rapt at Rappaport's (1952) and Sem⎡ (1953) are sections of a 1922 landscape, colored differently and overlayed with "X"s, "O"s, and other glyphs. In fact, he repeated himself so often over the course of his career that it seems like he has at most 10 or 15 different compositions that deal with half as many subjects. Sem⎡ contains the intriguing word "Eydeas," a fusion of "Eye" with "ideas." One can toy with the meaning of the picture, but characteristically, its "Eydeas" are murky, at best. By this time, however, Davis's renown was firmly established. He had taught for many years and received numerous awards and prizes. For better or worse, Davis had become an American master.