Study: Compote
Stuart Davis
STUART DAVIS, 1928. BRUSH, INK, AND GRAPHITE ON PAPER
Stuart Davis was known for his hard edge, lively abstractions that married European abstraction with a distinctly American modernism, creating dynamic works that sung with the tempo of jazz and spoke to urban existence. His work was charged with advertising motifs, sharp corners and graphic displays of color that bring rigidity alive, so to see him so loose with his hand here is both unusual and revealing. Many later artists and critic position Davis as a proto-pop artist, predating the movement by nearly four decades, and despite the simplicity of his drawing here, that remains evident. In so few lines he renders a martini and a plant and imbues them with a sense of style, of American cool. It is hard to look at this work and not see its influence of Warhol’s drawings of the 1950s and 60s, capturing a mood and a time with vivid feeling and minimal detail.