Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Whitney Museum of American Art June 10 through September 25, 2016

National Gallery of Art from November 20, 2016 through March 5, 2017

De Young Museum in San Francisco from April 8 through August 6, 2017

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, from September 16, 2017 through January 8, 2018.

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing features 100 artworks by an artist whose formal brilliance and complexity captured the energy of mass culture and modern life. The exhibition is unusual in its focus on Davis’s mature work, from his paintings of consumer products of the early 1920s to the work left on his easel at his death in 1964, and in exploring Davis’s habit of using preexisting motifs as springboards for new compositions. The exhibition departs in significant ways from earlier presentations of the artist’s work. The exhibition omits Davis’s decade of apprenticeship to European modernism (following his introduction to it at the 1913 Armory Show) in favor of the series of breakthroughs he made beginning in 1921 with his paintings of tobacco packages and household products, and continuing into his last two decades in which he employed abstract shapes, brilliant color, and words to evoke the ebullience of popular culture.

“Stuart Davis has been called one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century and the best American artist of his generation, his art hailed as a precursor of the rival styles of pop and geometric color abstraction,” remarks Barbara Haskell. “Faced with the choice early in his career between realism and pure abstraction, he invented a vocabulary that harnessed the grammar of abstraction to the speed and simultaneity of modern America. By merging the bold, hard-edged style of advertising with the conventions of avant-garde painting, he created an art endowed with the vitality and dynamic rhythms that he saw as uniquely modern and American. In the process, Davis achieved a rare synthesis: an art that is resolutely abstract yet at the same time exudes the spirit of popular culture.”

Co-organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.,

Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Odol, 1924. Oil on cardboard, 24 x 18 in. (60.9 x 45.6 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Mary Sisler Bequest (by exchange) and purchase, 1997. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Percolator, 1927. Oil on canvas, 36 x 29 in. (91.4 x 73.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1956. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis (1892–1964), New York Mural, 1932. Oil on canvas, 84 x 48 in. (213.4 x 122 cm). Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida; purchase, R. H. Norton Trust. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Visa, 1951. Oil on canvas, 40 x 52 in. (101.6 x 132.1 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York; gift of Mrs. Gertrud A. Mellon, 1953. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

 

Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Colonial Cubism, 1954. Oil on canvas, 45 1/8 x 60 1/4 in. (114.6 x 153 cm). Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; gift of the T. B. Walker Foundation, 1955. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

 

Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Fin, 1962–64. Casein and masking tape on canvas, 53 7/8 x 39 3/4 in. (136.8 x 101 cm). Private collection. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Owh! in San Pao, 1951. Oil on canvas, 52 3/16 × 42 in. (132.6 × 106.7 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase 52.2. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

 

Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Town Square, c. 1929. Watercolor, gouache, ink, and pencil on paper, 15 1/2 x 22 7/8 in. (39.4 x 58.1 cm). The Newark Museum; purchase 1930, The General Fund. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Salt Shaker, 1931. Oil on canvas, 49 7/8 x 32 in. (126.7 x 81.3 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York; gift of Edith Gregor Halpert, 1954. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

 

Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Tropes de Teens, 1956. Oil on canvas, 45 1/4 x 60 1/4 in. (114.8 x 153 cm). Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Photograph by Cathy Carver

 

Stuart Davis (1892–1964), The Paris Bit, 1959. Oil on canvas, 46 1/8 × 60 1/16 in. (117.2 × 152.6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art 59.38. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

 

Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Place Pasdeloup, 1928. Oil on canvas, 36 3/8 × 29 in. (92.4 × 73.7 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney 31.170. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Report from Rockport, 1940. Oil on canvas, 24 x 30 in. (61 x 76.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Edith and Milton Lowenthal Collection, bequest of Edith Abrahamson Lowenthal, 1991. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

  

 

Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Semé, 1953. Oil on canvas, 52 x 40 in. (132 x 101.6 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art; George A. Hearn Fund, 1953. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Swing Landscape, 1938. Oil on canvas, 86 3/4 x 173 1/8 in. (220.3 x 400 cm). Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington; museum purchase with funds from the Henry Radford Hope Fund. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

 
 

Stuart Davis (1892–1964), American Painting, 1932/42–54. Oil on canvas, 40 x 50 1/4 in. (101.6 x 127.7 cm). Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha; on extended loan from the University of Nebraska at Omaha Collection. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

 

Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Egg Beater No. 2, 1928. Oil on canvas, 29 1/4 x 36 1/4 in. (74.3 x 92.1 cm). Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis (1892–1964), Lucky Strike, 1921. Oil on canvas, 33 1/4 x 18 in. (84.5 x 45.7 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York; gift of the American Tobacco Company, Inc., 1951. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonne (Yale Art Gallery) (3 Vol. Set) 

In these three volumes, the editors have catalogued 1,749 artworks by Stuart Davis, including more than 600 works never previously illustrated, providing extensive documentation and information about each one.