.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
Upon arriving in New York from his hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Charles Demuth was immediately drawn to the Bohemian culture of Greenwich Village. He spent much of his early career indulging in and capturing the vitality of the city's vaudeville, cabaret and nightclubs. In At "The Golden Swan," Sometimes Called "Hell Hole" the artist depicts himself and Marcel Duchamp, the acclaimed French Dadaist, seated at the left table of the popular meeting spot for young artists and bohemians. Other patrons included the artist John Sloan, who produced an etching of the bar in 1917, and the playwright Eugene O'Neill, who incorporated it into some of his plays including The Iceman Cometh.
As noted by historians Arthur and Barbara Gelb in their book, O'Neill, "The Hell Hole was a representative Irish saloon. It had a sawdust covered floor, rude wooden tables, and was filled with the smell of sour beer and mingled sounds of alcoholic woe and laughter. Its barroom was entered from the corner of Sixth Avenue and Fourth Street--the 'front room,' in which women were not allowed. Above the doorway swung a wooden sign decorated with a tarnished gilt swan. Farther east, on Fourth Street, was the 'family entrance,' a glass door that gave access to a small, dank, gaslit chamber known as the 'backroom.' Wooden tables clustered about a smoking potbellied stove, and it was here that respectable Irish widows came to cry into their five-cent mugs of beer..." (as quoted in B. Fahlman, Pennsylvania Modern: Charles Demuth of Lancaster, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1983, p. 38)
Demuth's use of thin washes and slight pencil lines allows him to imbue the picture with narrative and suggestive, even raucous details. His delicate approach to the squalid scene and wry, ironic title manifests Wanda Corn's observation that, "Demuth was an ironist and an early pop culturist who spent his entire career trying to figure out how to reconcile his desire to paint beautiful pictures with his need to embrace and be reconciled with the ugliness and vulgarity of the city streets." (The Great American Thing: Modern Art and National Identity, 1915-1935, Berkeley, California, 1999, pp. 216-17) In At "The Golden Swan," Sometimes Called "Hell Hole" it seems to be a vulgarity of his own choosing and one that delighted him.
As noted by historians Arthur and Barbara Gelb in their book, O'Neill, "The Hell Hole was a representative Irish saloon. It had a sawdust covered floor, rude wooden tables, and was filled with the smell of sour beer and mingled sounds of alcoholic woe and laughter. Its barroom was entered from the corner of Sixth Avenue and Fourth Street--the 'front room,' in which women were not allowed. Above the doorway swung a wooden sign decorated with a tarnished gilt swan. Farther east, on Fourth Street, was the 'family entrance,' a glass door that gave access to a small, dank, gaslit chamber known as the 'backroom.' Wooden tables clustered about a smoking potbellied stove, and it was here that respectable Irish widows came to cry into their five-cent mugs of beer..." (as quoted in B. Fahlman, Pennsylvania Modern: Charles Demuth of Lancaster, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1983, p. 38)
Demuth's use of thin washes and slight pencil lines allows him to imbue the picture with narrative and suggestive, even raucous details. His delicate approach to the squalid scene and wry, ironic title manifests Wanda Corn's observation that, "Demuth was an ironist and an early pop culturist who spent his entire career trying to figure out how to reconcile his desire to paint beautiful pictures with his need to embrace and be reconciled with the ugliness and vulgarity of the city streets." (The Great American Thing: Modern Art and National Identity, 1915-1935, Berkeley, California, 1999, pp. 216-17) In At "The Golden Swan," Sometimes Called "Hell Hole" it seems to be a vulgarity of his own choosing and one that delighted him.