Stuart Davis- The King of Swing

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited)

Try it yourself.

Walk into your local Art Museum and look for Stuart Davis. I bet they own at least one, and I also bet it’s on display. I’m making this wager based on my experience that every American Museum I’ve been to, including many smaller ones, owns at least one work by Stuart Davis, and that work seems to always be on view1. This is a testament to his wide, and ongoing, appeal. Stuart Davis’ Art still has a contemporary look and feel to it. Maybe that’s because so many Artists who have come after him, like much of “Pop Art,” have been influenced by him. Somehow, Davis is also an Artist who is rarely given a show. The last big one I know of was “Stuart Davis: American Painter” at The Met in 1991. It’s left me with years of longing to see more than one or two of his works at a time, so I was very excited when I heard about “Stuart Davis: In Full Swing,” June 10-September 25 at the Whitney.

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It turns out to have been worth the wait. With 75 works ranging from 1923 until his final work left unfinished on his easel the night he died in 1964, we get to see much, if not all, of his accomplishment. The 1991 Met show featured 175 works, 31 before the earliest work in this show. While I’m a bit disappointed the show is missing the first decade of his work, (the title “Stuart Davis: In Full Swing” refers to his career being in full swing during the period of his work displayed), what’s included has been marvelously hung adding much insight into Davis’ process and development.

Davis' seminal 4 "Egg Beater" Paintings, 19__, rarely united

Davis’ seminal 4 “Egg Beater” Paintings, 1927-28, rarely united.

…I nailed an electric fan, a rubber glove and an eggbeater to a table and used it as my exclusive subject matter for a year.” Egg Beater No. 4," 1928

Breakthrough. “I nailed an electric fan, a rubber glove and an eggbeater to a table and used it as my exclusive subject matter for a year.2” Egg Beater No. 4,” 1928

Beyond this, it’s simply gorgeous to behold. Davis, the colorist, is  something not often  spoken about, and for me, is under-appreciated. His work needs to be seen in person, where his color makes a vibrant, stunning, often shocking first impression- even in 2016. Looking closer, it becomes apparent that though he uses relatively few colors and repeats them from piece to piece he is a master of color schemes. Has any American Artist used Yellows or Oranges the way Davis has?

"Cliche," 1955

“Cliche,” 1955

Having come out of the end of the era of  “Ashcan School,” Davis’s early work, often depicting street scenes of the greater New York area, shared their darker palette. Here and there he’d inject very bright passages of color, as in “Bleecker Street,” 1912. Soon, they would dominate as the influence of the Europeans, the Cubists 3, and Joan Miro took hold, his palette brightened. Matisse was also an early influence, and  even in the 1950s, Davis’ work features shapes that echo those found in Matisse’s late Cut-Outs.

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“Midi,” 1954

The title “Stuart Davis: In Full Swing” is a double entendre, also referring to his love of Jazz- “swing” being the most popular form of the music in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Stuart Davis loved Jazz. As I wrote not all that long ago upon accidentally discovering where he lived for 20 years in Greenwich Village, it was, coincidentally or not, around the corner from some of the greatest jazz clubs in the world4.

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The plaque outside Davis’ home of 20 years where he created works that have “come home” to the nearby Whitney.

Looking at his work, it’s clear that he “gets” what it’s like to play Jazz, what goes on in the mind of the musician or singer, and it comes out of his hands, like it does for musicians, too.

Davis In Full Swing. "Swing Landscape," 1937

In Full Swing. “Swing Landscape,” 1938, over 14 feet long, the largest work here, originally intended for a Brooklyn Apartment Building.

Walking around, I spent quite a bit of time trying to associate Davis’ work with specific Jazz Artists. While I found there were many who came to mind for specific works, I came to feel that Davis’ work was ahead of it’s time, musically, as well as visually/Artistically. His shapes seem to anticipate the angular developments of Musicians like Thelonious Monk and Andrew Hill. Standing in front of a work like “Swing Landscape,” 1938, an endlessly fascinating blend of nautical visual motifs in a riot of color, the feeling is like listening to a great Big Band. Take Duke Ellington’s or Count Basie’s classic Big Bands that were chock full of unique soloists. each one with a recognizable solo voice. When Lester Young soloed on Tenor Sax for Basie, there was no doubt who was playing. Same for Johnny Hodges, “Tricky” Sam Nanton, Ben Webster, or Bubber Miley with Duke, not to mention Duke and the Count, themselves. Looking at “Swing Landscape,” is like hearing a big band to me, a band comprised of unique voices (colors on shapes), each playing their own part, but still a part of the whole. There is an overriding feeling of joy, and life. But, there were other works that looked to me more like the music of non-swing Masters Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and even early Ornette Coleman. Though I mixed them in, and many others, I found myself repeatedly returning to Duke Ellington, one of the greatest composers of the century, in any style of music, who also continually pushed and evolved his style, taking the Big Band to many other places musically, like Davis did with Cubism, as the soundtrack for my visits.

Stuart Davis with Duke Ellington, 1943, from the show's catalog.

Let’s talk about Jazz. Stuart Davis with Duke Ellington at a Davis show, 1943, from this show’s catalog.

Also like a Jazz Artist, Davis returned again and again to earlier compositions and “riffed” on them, as Patricia Hills said 5. Davis re-interpreted his earlier compositions the way Jazz Artists reinterpret standards- using his original theme as a jumping off point to create something entirely new.

Progress in the Process. All 3 of these works are based on the center work from 192_. Left, 195_ and 19__, right

Riffin’ on a Theme. All 3 of these works are based on “Landscape, Goucester,” center, as follows.

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“Landscape, Goucester,” 1922…

"Colonial Cubism," 1954

Became this- “Colonial Cubism,” 1954

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And then, this- “Memo, #2,” 1956

In terms of Jazz in Art, I can’t think of another Artist who has a similar effect on me. Other Artists listened to Jazz, during the same time and later, but Stuart Davis’ work looks like Jazz to me. I get that feeling from isolated works by other Artists, especially that of Romare Bearden, who Davis told to visualize the relationships between jazz and art in 1940, though his works are primarily collages, not paintings, but Davis’s whole body of work, with rare exception, gives me that feeling6.

Blue Note. "The Woodshed," 1969, collage by Romare Bearden. The "Woodshed," or "Shed" is where musicians hone their craft.

Blue Note. “The Woodshed,” 1969, collage by Romare Bearden, at The Met Breuer.. The “Woodshed,” or “Shed” is where musicians hone their craft.

Yet, there’s more going on here than Jazz.

Revolutionizing the still life. “Super Table,” 1924. For me, the earliest masterpiece in this show.

We watch Davis breaking through and coming into his own in works like “Super Table,” 1924, and the “Egg Beater” series of 1927-28, which were revolutionary takes on the Cubist “still life,” that proved to be the jumping off points for all his future work that would see him develop his own approach to Cubism, becoming one of the very few outside of the inventors of the style to do so. While he built upon the influences of others, he was very influenced by place and environment as well. His 1928 trip to Paris crops up again and again in his later work. His summers along the water in Gloucester, Mass supplied a life long reservoir of nautical imagery, as did, NYC, while Jazz provided inspiration. Products appear in Davis’ work, possibly evolving out of the still life works of the Cubists, but quickly becoming his own. He then takes words, first seen in ads and on products, and uses them in new ways, sometimes referencing the “hip” jargon of the time, sometimes cryptically, that only he really understands.

"Odol," 1924, a bottle of mouthwash, presaging Warhol by 35 years.

“Odol,” 1924, a bottle of mouthwash, presaging Warhol by 35 years.

A walk through the show reveals that Pop Art, and a number of it’s leading lights were creating work that featured elements Stuart Davis began using way back in the 1920’s. In fact, after seeing it, you may never look at Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns or James Rosenquist quite the same again. Beyond his use of products, his use of words is something that many Artists since Davis, right up to Ed Ruscha, Jenny Holzer and Wayne White, have continued, some basing their entire Artistic output on them. While his influence is huge, it’s also interesting to me how different his work is from the work of the other Abstract Artists of his time, especially the Abstract Expressionists, who were then working right around him every day in NYC and it’s suburbs. Philip Guston speaks of knowing him 7. What about Jackson Pollock, (who was born, lived and work, then died during the time Davis was alive)? Did Davis know him? It would seem to me they must have met, especially since they both worked for the WPA (Works Progress Administration). It’s hard to imagine two more different Abstract Artists.

The end. "Fin," 1962-64, as it was left on his easel when he died.

The end. “Fin,” 1962-64, as it was left on his easel when he died. The yellow-ish lines are masking tape Davis used as guides.

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“Arboretum by Flashbulb,” 1942

It must also be mentioned that Mrs. Gertrude V. Whitney was a substantial, and early, supporter of Davis, in a number of ways, both financially (buying his Art and advancing him funds) and through the Whitney Studio Club, the precursor of the Whitney Museum, where he got his “big break,” 8 with a 2 week retrospective exhibit in December, 1926. 90 years later, Davis returns to the latest incarnation of the Whitney Museum, a few minutes walk from where he once lived, something of a “champion” of American 20th Century Art, himself. His influence is ongoing. His achievement is still being considered. Yet? All in Stuart Davis’ Legacy is not painted in the bright colors he used so masterfully in his work.

"Little Giant Still Life," 1950, a box of "Champion" matches

“Little Giant Still Life,” 1950, a box of “Champion” matches.

While the joy, beauty and insights this show provides will stay with me for a very long time, it’s impossible not to also be reminded of the fact that 90 works by Stuart Davis were discovered to have been “looted” 9 from the Artist’s Estate by Laurence Salander of Salander-O’Reilly Gallery, the long time dealer for Stuart Davis’ Estate, in 2007. The court ruled that Salander owes Earl Davis and the Estate $114.9 million dollars, but being as Salander is behind bars on Riker’s Island no one knows if and when any of that money will be repaid. As bad as that is, perhaps even more tragically, to this day, I’m not sure that all of Davis’ works have been accounted for. The case led to the creation of new laws pertaining to Artist/Gallery dealings. That is the saddest part of what is otherwise the great and ongoing influence that is the legacy of Stuart Davis, one of America’s greatest, and most influential, Artists.

Even his beautiful signature, boldly featured in many of his works, has the peaks and valleys, the ebbs and flow, of a Jazz solo.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” by Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, the title of which appears on Davis’ painting “Tropes de Teens,” 1956.

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  1. I’m not wagering “anything” on this, so if you find one that doesn’t have a Stuart Davis, write me and let me know and I’ll send this Post to them to hopefully influence their future purchases!
  2. Stuart Davis “Autobiography” in “Stuart Davis” edited by Diane Kelder, P.26
  3. Davis, 21, was the youngest artist to be included in the legendary Armory Show of 1913, the first modern art show in America, which marked the arrival of Cubism in New York.
  4. His parents had lived in the Hotel Chelsea, 11 blocks north.
  5. “Stuart Davis,” by Patricia Hills, P. 19
  6. I am only talking about Artists who were/are Painters first, so I am leaving out Musician/Artists like Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Tony Bennett, Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, et al..
  7. Guston “Collected Writings” P.40
  8. according to Patricia Hills “Stuart Davis” P.73
  9. Artnews April 18, 2014

13 Years At The Metropolitan Museum – Part Two – The Light

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

This is Part Two of my ongoing series, “Thirteen Years At The Metropolitan Museum.” Part One is here.

Her Aim Is True. With an arrow to my heart, Saint-Gaudens’ Diana points the way to the undiscovered land.

It happens more than I’d like.

I stop into the bookshop every time I go to The Met (TM), either on my way in, or out. As these 13 years have gone on, unfortunately, it’s become one of the few decent art book stores left. They have a good stock of current and new art books and, of course, a very good supply of Met Museum Publications. Nothing old or out of print, still, I always find something of interest, either about whatever artist I’m currently fixated on (there’s always at least one), or someone I’m only discovering through a show, or right there on their shelves.

My apartment. Almost. No, it’s The Met’s Bookstore.

Then, it happened.

I picked up this heavy hardcover called Portraits By Ingres. Ingres. Yes. There are a few of his portraits upstairs in the European Paintings Gallery and an amazing one, which has become my very favorite painting in The Museum, in the Robert Lehman Collection Galleries. I start looking through the book. There, on page after page after page are THE most incredible drawings I may have ever seen! What? I’m amazed. Astounded. The line! The delicacy. He knows exactly what to leave out and still, somehow, capture the essence of his subject’s face, like in Chinese or Japanese painting, but more so. He’s using graphite. No washes, no ink, no nothing. The most amazingly beautiful lines I’ve ever seen on paper.

How did I not know about this?

Since the book is old, it’s on sale. How old is it? I look at the publishing data. “Published on the occasion of Portraits by Ingres at the Metropolitan Museum October 5, 1999 through January 2, 2000” (You can actually download it now, direct from TM(!), here, for free.)

UGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH! You mean, this was A SHOW?

AND? I MISSED IT?????

Oh my god… ….. ………….

And, that’s how I discovered THE WORST feeling I ever get when I to go TM. While Portraits By Ingres is the “big one that got away,” unfortunately, it’s happened more than once. And that’s only in the recent past.

Portraits By Ingres NYT 1999P

And? Look what I found recently on the back of an article I saved in the NY Times from 1999. History tugged my sleeve…and now mocks me.

Since then, I live with a terrible fear of missing a great show. Why? When a show is over? It’s gone…forever. It “lives on”, but to a much lesser extent in exhibition catalogs (thank goodness!) and through websites, online videos, maybe an app or two, but that’s it. The catalogs may or may not have all the works that were in the show and almost certainly won’t have them in their original sizes (maybe, one day, e-catalogs will, but the resolution of art e-books today is nowhere near there). Almost never are shows documented with a film or documentary, the way Leonardo: da Vinci: Painter At The Court Of Milan was.

In fact, I only discovered “the show of the Century,” Leonardo da Vinci: Painter @ CoM 3 days before it ended at the National Gallery, London. (It was put together by Luke Tyson, who I wrote about in Part One of this series, who is now working at TM.) I jumped on an over night flight and went straight to the National Gallery, without a ticket for the sold-out show, minutes before doors opened on its very last day. I got in (a story unto itself. The NY Giants won the Super Bowl that same night. Something crazy to watch in London). It’s the first and last time 9 of Leonard’s incomparable 17 (or so) paintings were being shown in one place. And, possibly, the first time ever both version of the “Virgin of the Rocks” were being shown together- in the same room (I had to take a step aside and pinch myself in utter amazement when I walked in to that gallery), and so much more as you can see on the checklist, here, including, astonishingly, a full size copy of The Last Supper done in 1520, shortly after the original had been painted! To think…If I hadn’t happened to accidentally stumble on that documentary at 3am on PBS, I would have missed it!

So, impelled by this fear, I have since designed each visit to TM around their exhibition calendar- I go and see whatever’s closing soonest, if I haven’t seen it already.

This has paid off, for me, in uncountable and undreamt of ways.

I have discovered countless artists I never knew about, who have enriched my life and my knowledge of art history in so many ways I can’t even count including Sanford Gifford (besides being a brilliant underknown member of the Hudson River School, he was also a Met Museum Founder in 1880), Henrick Goltzius (who overcame a fall into a fire that disfigured his drawing hand but turned that to his advantage becoming a graphic artist, perhaps, only equalled in the north by Durer), Thomas Eakins, Alexander McQueen, Christo & Jeanne-Claude (who I got to meet right before The Gates), Philip Guston, Bernini, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Chasseriau, Ellsworth Kelly, Girodet, Sean Kelly, Degas, Thomas Hart Benton, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Cezanne, Antonio Canova, Liu Dan in the revelatory Ink Art in China show, Faberge, William Kentridge, Balthus, Paul Klee, Neo Rauch, among individual artists I “discovered” at Special Exhibitions at TM since 2002! Some I had heard of or knew a little about but I “discovered” them here.

As someone obsessed with Art History who draws a little bit, these artists had/have a huge and ongoing influence on me. I learned so much from all of them. They have helped me refine my focus. Before 1999 I was solely interested in modern and contemporary art. After seeing the Mark Rothko Show at the Whitney in 1998, I started to draw. Then, I realized I needed to go back through the entire history of art and learn from the masters who could draw. That led me to TM. TM led me to “the Light.”

This is not to mention artists I’ve discovered by wandering the galleries, like Ingres, Stuart Davis, Tiepolo, Remington, Caravaggio, Goya, Yves Tanguay and Juan Gris among them.

I’ve seen the light.

Even now, today, September 18, 2015, I returned from TM after spending a large part of last weekend there for the last few days of China, with a fresh revelation- George Caleb Bingham. Bingham. Hmm… I know of him though the one intriguing painting that’s been continually on display in the American Wing. It’s a work you walk by and always draws you closer. You ponder it and are left thinking. “It’s interesting…different…powerful and real. Bingham, huh? I don’t know him.” There’s no other by him work on view to reinforce the feeling that “I really need to look into him.” Well, maybe he was a one hit wonder.

23 year old Bingham’s Self Portrait beckons us in to “discover” his unique light.

It turns out, he was far from it. After seeing his about to close show, Navigating the West featuring his River paintings and drawings, I came away struck by an artist that seems to be something of a missing link. Someone who fills in a gap before Thomas Eakins. He’s a master of the natural pose,while making that pose always seem uniquely American, a powerful draughtsman, with a real gift for setting the stage in his compositions, which often feature beautifully out of focus backgrounds years before cameras showed such things, and in ways I haven’t seen many other artists do this well. Ever since Leonardo artists have put in very realistic backgrounds, often consisting of modern towns or locations regardless of the time period being depicted (which no doubt charmed contemporaries, but always struck me as being weird and bizarrely out of place in the story). Bingham’s rarely depict a recognizable location (according to the catalog), but they add to the air of authenticity that he is trying to present more convincingly than some of his Renaissance predecessors. Interestingly, Bingham was influenced by the Hudson River School after his first trip east, and his early landscapes show their trademarked lush and thickly detailed flora and fauna. As time went on, he paid more and more attention to the focus of his work- his characters. Carefully working and reworking them in masterful preparatory drawings, he was able to simply transfer them to his canvas and then make sure that everything else supported them, or they got left out. He became an editor as much as he was a draughtsman. The Met has prepared a fascinating short analysis of the process Bingham used in creating his masterpiece, “Fur Traders Descending The Missouri,” The Met’s painting that first caught my eye. He was downright ruthless in his editing, down to the smallest detail, creating a work of sublime economy that I wonder if it in turn influenced another masterpiece of American River art, Thomas Eakins’  Max Schmitt In A Single Scull, which happens to call TM its home, too.

His light runs the full range from soft to hard, and is never more masterful than in Fur Traders. The foreground water, in particular. Then there is a pair of masterful, yet entirely different, self portraits, one, early, of the artist in his 20’s, the other done 2 years before his passing. They speak volumes about his growth and the evolution of his technique and style. The early one is a marvel of seamlessly smooth skin coloring and belies a style of its own. It actually reminds me of early Ingres in this regard. The face just pops from the canvas 180 years later, and I found myself marveling at how few colors he accomplished this with. Ah, but then a closer look reveals his mastery of economical blending. The overall effect is both brilliant and unforgettable. All we see is his torso. No arms. No hands. Its all in back, except for the collar of his white shirt, and his face. He looks out at us with an expression that says “Yes, I may be young, but I’m already THIS good, and I’m taking no prisoners from here on.” And? he didn’t. The late self portrait was done by an entirely different artist, one who had learned nuance, who’s craft had vastly deepened and who wasn’t afraid of truth or age. Interestingly, he paints himself in the act of drawing. After seeing the many drawings on view, it’s a tribute well earned. His drawings hold every bit of their own even when viewed right next to the paintings they preceded, including his masterpieces, like TM’s own “Fur Traders Descending The Missouri” from about 1845, the work I had seen before in the American Wing-

Bingham’s Fur Traders Descending The Missouri. The work that drew me to his light.

Everything about Bingham’s river paintings (and the drawings/studies that led to their creation) says “American,” in exactly the same way as Mark Twain’s writing does. From the attire to the attitude, all done with masterful attention to detail and shadow, THIS is American art for the people. The show is devoid of portraits of the well-to-do, the famous, or the powerful and is, instead, populated by the people who were trying to survive in a new land while helping their new country survive in the process. Is it any wonder that the school children of Missouri took up a state wide collection to help the State buy (and thereby preserve) a collection of Bingham’s masterful, iconic drawings? While being an act they all can be eternally proud of, it shows those kids had better taste in art than some of the dealers in Chelsea do today.

While not a big show, it’s a very deep show, and since its doors are closing for good on Sunday at 5:15pm, I’m going to be scrambling to see it one or two more times before it does.

Afterall? I well know what happens then.

These wonderful work will go back to where they belong, possibly never to be seen together again.

The light will go off in those galleries Sunday night.

But, it will remain “on” inside me for the rest of my life.

The second best thing I’ve gotten out of going to The Met so often for 13 years is Discovery.

Hark! A Met Angel Beckons me to the Light. To not hear it is my loss.

*-Soundtrack for this post is “The Shape Of Jazz To Come” by Ornette Coleman, 1959. I chose this to honor Ornette, who led us into many new frontiers of music, like TM has with Art, since he recently passed. He was exceedingly nice to me, a complete stranger to him, the one time I had the privilege of meeting him.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free for over 8 years, during which 300 full-length pieces have been published! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate to allow me to continue below. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art & Photography books, and Music from my collection! Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.