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Lot Essay
Coast Town Landscape Study is the final work from a series of three "Art Space" compositions of the same scale, all inspired by a 1924 watercolor titled Gloucester Harbor in the collection of the Butler Art Institute in Youngstown, Ohio. Other works from the series include the first, Art Space #1 (1940, Slong & Midas Properties, Inc., New York) and the second, Triatic (1940 and 1951, Private collection, Pennsylvania).
Informed by his physical surroundings and often the aural harmonies of Jazz, Stuart Davis’ work earned him the title the “Ace of American Modernism” and his powerful visual symphonies, such as Coast Town Landscape Study, are enduring icons of what it meant to be an American artist in the first half of the twentieth century. Based on his 1924 watercolor yet executed over a decade later, the present work embodies the “Amazing Continuity” found between the artist’s early works and his later, more abstracted approach. With a lusciously rendered surface and ebullient composition, in Coast Town Landscape Study, Davis utilizes vibrant color to create a dynamic composition with Cubist influences and proto-Pop style.
Coast Town Landscape Study is the most vibrant of the three paintings Davis rendered in 1940 based off his 1924 watercolor. In the present work, Davis forgoes the muted browns and tans of his earlier composition in favor of high-keyed hues of crimson, turquoise, and lavender. Deliberately interlocking forms, color and pattern, Davis brilliantly juxtaposes the geometric against the bustling townscape in the background to render just a hint of perception. Simultaneously, the front and center written “M” rests at the center of the composition—its one letter just giving a sense of written signage without any confirmation of confirmed place.
Davis’ knowledge of and interaction with Abstraction and European Modernism are clearly evident in the present work. The work of Henri Matisse such as The Codomas (Les Codomas) from Jazz (1947, The Museum of Modern Art, New York) was a source of inspiration for Davis, as was the palette of Paul Gauguin and the Synthetic Cubism of George Braque and Pablo Picasso. However, Davis also maintained a remarkable dedication to presenting classic American subjects throughout the entirety of his 50-plus years of work. Agee suggests that “besides the rich color, the way Davis’s compositions are constructed, with each shape having its own, autonomous identity and position—as if placed in as well as on the canvas…brings to mind Matisse’s cutouts.” (Stuart Davis: American Painter, New York, 1991, pp. 93-94) Additionally, Agee argues that the directness, surface patterning and rich lines of black and white can be seen as paralleling, and perhaps even responding to, the works of Abstract Expressionists like Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. Davis’ distinct brand of almost proto-Pop work also seems to directly foreshadow, if not influence, the generation of Pop artists who followed him, including Roy Lichtenstein.
Radiant and reverberating with a palpable energy, Coast Town Landscape Study embodies Davis at the peak of his craft. Indeed, Diane Kelder has observed, “Davis’s gestation of modern concepts was longer than that of most of his contemporaries and it produced a more original assimilation. When the initial enthusiasm for European vanguard art gave way to political and cultural isolationism in the 1920’s and 1930’s, Davis emerged as American modernism’s champion; he was the only major painter who never lost faith in its progressive character, nor his determination to reconcile the formal and philosophic issues it raised with the quality of the American experience.” (Stuart Davis: American Painter, New York, 1991, p. 17)
Informed by his physical surroundings and often the aural harmonies of Jazz, Stuart Davis’ work earned him the title the “Ace of American Modernism” and his powerful visual symphonies, such as Coast Town Landscape Study, are enduring icons of what it meant to be an American artist in the first half of the twentieth century. Based on his 1924 watercolor yet executed over a decade later, the present work embodies the “Amazing Continuity” found between the artist’s early works and his later, more abstracted approach. With a lusciously rendered surface and ebullient composition, in Coast Town Landscape Study, Davis utilizes vibrant color to create a dynamic composition with Cubist influences and proto-Pop style.
Coast Town Landscape Study is the most vibrant of the three paintings Davis rendered in 1940 based off his 1924 watercolor. In the present work, Davis forgoes the muted browns and tans of his earlier composition in favor of high-keyed hues of crimson, turquoise, and lavender. Deliberately interlocking forms, color and pattern, Davis brilliantly juxtaposes the geometric against the bustling townscape in the background to render just a hint of perception. Simultaneously, the front and center written “M” rests at the center of the composition—its one letter just giving a sense of written signage without any confirmation of confirmed place.
Davis’ knowledge of and interaction with Abstraction and European Modernism are clearly evident in the present work. The work of Henri Matisse such as The Codomas (Les Codomas) from Jazz (1947, The Museum of Modern Art, New York) was a source of inspiration for Davis, as was the palette of Paul Gauguin and the Synthetic Cubism of George Braque and Pablo Picasso. However, Davis also maintained a remarkable dedication to presenting classic American subjects throughout the entirety of his 50-plus years of work. Agee suggests that “besides the rich color, the way Davis’s compositions are constructed, with each shape having its own, autonomous identity and position—as if placed in as well as on the canvas…brings to mind Matisse’s cutouts.” (Stuart Davis: American Painter, New York, 1991, pp. 93-94) Additionally, Agee argues that the directness, surface patterning and rich lines of black and white can be seen as paralleling, and perhaps even responding to, the works of Abstract Expressionists like Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. Davis’ distinct brand of almost proto-Pop work also seems to directly foreshadow, if not influence, the generation of Pop artists who followed him, including Roy Lichtenstein.
Radiant and reverberating with a palpable energy, Coast Town Landscape Study embodies Davis at the peak of his craft. Indeed, Diane Kelder has observed, “Davis’s gestation of modern concepts was longer than that of most of his contemporaries and it produced a more original assimilation. When the initial enthusiasm for European vanguard art gave way to political and cultural isolationism in the 1920’s and 1930’s, Davis emerged as American modernism’s champion; he was the only major painter who never lost faith in its progressive character, nor his determination to reconcile the formal and philosophic issues it raised with the quality of the American experience.” (Stuart Davis: American Painter, New York, 1991, p. 17)