Stuart Davis
In the early decades of the twentieth century, American modernism flourished as numerous artists responded to the European trends of Cubism, Fauvism, and abstraction. Stuart Davis (1892–1964) was one of the first American artists to abandon academic painting for modernism. His articulate explanations of his art and process became important milestones for Americans confronted with non-representational art for the first time. His modernist paintings were expressions of his daily experiences in early twentieth-century New York; he found inspiration anywhere and everywhere, from kitchen appliances to jazz music. Davis maintained that his paintings, because of their grounding in real experience, were realistic, and he rejected the term abstract when discussing his art. “My attitude towards life is realistic, but realism doesn’t include merely what one immediately sees with the eye at a given moment—one also relates it to past experiences…one relates it to feelings, ideas. And what is real about that experience is the totality of the awareness of it. So, I call it ‘realism.’ But, by ‘realism’ I don’t mean that it’s a realism in any photographic sense—certainly not.” [1]
Davis was immersed in art from an early age. His parents met while attending the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and his father, Edward Wyatt Davis, went on to become the art editor for the Philadelphia Press. Edward worked with such members of “The Eight” as William Glackens, John Sloan, and George Luks, who became the core group of the Ashcan School, known for its unidealized depictions of urban life. In 1902, the Davis family relocated to New Jersey. After one year of high school, the young Davis dropped out to pursue formal training in art. He studied at Robert Henri’s school in New York between 1909 and 1912. His earlier work was heavily influenced by Henri and the Ashcan School. Arthur B. Davies selected five of Davis’s Ashcan-style watercolors for inclusion in the famous Armory Show of 1913. As was the case for so many artists who were exposed to modern paintings by European artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso, Davis was inspired by them and began to experiment with abstract forms in his paintings. [2]
Although he abandoned the representational tenets of the Ashcan School, Davis followed Henri’s insistence that artists draw their subject matter from everyday experience. It was not merely his exposure to European modernism, but Davis’s passion for jazz that became the source of his particular brand of abstraction. [3] In 1927, he embarked on a self-devised yearlong program to paint a single group of objects as a means to understand the shapes and planes that comprised them. This experiment became a turning point in Davis’s career. He developed a mature style in which he deconstructed objects and captured their essential character. Typically, his paintings are composed of bright colors, letters, sharp shapes, and dynamic spatial combinations.
Davis was eloquent and passionate about modern art, and in 1918 began to write about his theories. During the Depression he became very involved with the protection of artists’ rights, joined the Artists’ Union, and served as its president for a year. He taught at Yale University and exhibited at both international and American venues. Toward the end of his career he received many accolades, including winning the Guggenheim Museum International Award in 1960. Davis remains an important figure in American art because of his groundbreaking abstract compositions and his influential writing. Regardless of the categories that can be assigned to his work, he was a pioneer of American modernism and a predecessor to the Pop artists of the sixties.
Notes:
[1] Davis interview with John Wingate, Night Beat, October 10, 1957, transcription, Stuart Davis, Philip Rylands, ed. (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1997), 67, and Ben Sidran, “The Jazz of Stuart Davis,” in Stuart Davis, 14.
[2] Gloria-Gilda Deák, Kennedy Galleries’ Profiles of American Artists (New York: Kennedy Galleries. 1984), 68–69.
[3] Ben Sidran, " The Jazz of Stuart Davis," in Stuart Davis. Editor, Philip Rylands. Boston: Little Brown, 1997, p. 14.
