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Stuart Davis
STUART DAVIS, 1957. OIL ON CANVAS.
On the precipice of modernity, the long shadow of the Second World War starting to wane and the art forms that had sprung up in its wake becoming tired and clichéd, Stuart Davis built a bridge. The geometric abstractions, colour-field paintings, modernist simplifications and abstract expressionists that had dominated the aesthetic language for preceding decade meet with the burgeoning pop-art style, neither named nor acknowledged at scale at the time this work was made. Consumer products and bold slogans of capitalism and commerce combine with jazz-inspired formalism, to create a work that refuses to fit neatly into any genre. Davis was a visionary, and ahead of his time at every stage of his career. He was acutely aware of the political purpose of his art, and used his medium to push the discourse and the vision of a better future, and comment on the idiosyncrasies and flaws of the present he was living in.