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拍品專文
Stuart Davis’s best work, including Study for ‘The Paris Bit,’ forms an important bridge between the Cubism of early 20th Century Europe and the Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism of post-War America. First inspired by Davis’s seminal trip to Paris in 1928-29, yet executed in the 1950s as a counterpart to The Paris Bit (1959, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York), the present work embodies ‘The Amazing Continuity’ found between Davis’s early works and his later, more abstracted approach. With an intriguing juxtaposition of still-life elements within a stage-like cityscape peppered with lettering, Davis employs bold line and a limited but vibrant palette to create a visual symphony of ideas recalling the harmonic improvisations of Jazz.
Like many American artists of his era, Davis set off for Paris in the late 1920s to experience the cultivation of new ideas in the capital of the modern art world. Davis later reminisced, “I had the feeling that this was the best place in the world for an artist to live and work; and at the time it was…Paris was old fashioned, but modern as well. That was the wonderful part of it…There was a timelessness about the place that was conducive to the kind of contemplation essential to art.” (as quoted in Stuart Davis, New York, 1945, pp. 18-19)
During this trip, he made drawings in his sketchbook of a Paris street, a beer mug in a café and seltzer and water bottles, which he combined into the celebrated 1928 oil Rue Lipp (Private Collection; sold at Sotheby’s, New York, 12 November 2018, lot 52 for $6,847,200). Named not for an actual street but rather a popular watering hole Brasserie Lipp, the work employs a type of synthetic cubism to represent building facades as flattened plans of color, with superimposed lines providing the suggestion of architectural detail. In the foreground, the still life appears larger-than-life and imbedded with visual puns; for example, the top hat to be seen within a half-full beer stein is emphasized with the inscription “Biere Hatt.” As Lewis Kachur summarizes, “Thus we have a café-sitter’s view of the stage-set space of the street and its passing spectacle.” (Stuart Davis: An American in Paris, New York, 1987, p. 9)
In the early 1940s, Davis began to revisit and re-approach compositions from the 1920s and early 30s with a greater emphasis on strong color and overall pattern. In 1941, he transformed the Rue Lipp composition into Still Life in the Street (Private Collection; sold at Christie’s, New York, An American Place: The Barney A. Ebsworth Collection, 13 November 2018 for $780,500). Davis simplified the elements of the scene, leaving realism behind with a lively pink, green, blue and orange palette vibrating with energy.
As early as 1951, Davis came back to the Rue Lipp inspiration and created the original drawing for the present work, laying down early washes of yellow ochre and transparent blue on the canvas, which he referred to as Paris Street. He did not return to the painting until January 1957, when he recorded in his diary: “Drew new element of TABAC on the 28 x 36 canvas of Paris St which has been waiting 6 or 7 years. Good!” (as quoted in A. Boyajian, M. Rutkowski, Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonné, vol. III, New Haven, Connecticut, 2007, p. 447) In November 1959, he “finished casein color determination” on the painting which he now referred to as Double-Take, and by September 1960 he completed the oil overpainting and black linework to form the final version of Study for ‘The Paris Bit.’
In the middle of the process of painting the present work, Davis also created The Paris Bit of 1959 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York). “The two pictures form what the artist would have called a complementary-color pair, for Study for ‘The Paris Bit’ is painted in red and green with an orange border, while The Paris Bit is in the colors of the French and American flags.” (Stuart Davis: American Painter, New York, 1991, p. 300) During the time of its creation, Davis declared, “I submit ‘The Paris Bit’ as my favorite because I am working on it at the time of writing.” (“Stuart Davis: ‘This Is My Favorite Painting,’” Famous Artists Magazine, Winter 1960)
In both this painting and the Whitney version, Davis compresses the Cubist cityscape into color fields overlaid with a flat network of thick black lines. Davis explained of his process of creating this composition, “I compose and develop my picture as a line drawing because it is a method most amenable to inspiration and change…I do not regard this drawing process as a thing apart from or preliminary to making the painting. I consider that it is the painting at a certain stage of its maximum development.” (“Stuart Davis: ‘This Is My Favorite Painting’”) In The Paris Bit, he even adds the notation ‘LINES THICKEN’ in the painted border, further underscoring the importance of linework within the composition.
Davis’s emphasis on line as a means of his expression relates his work to other post-War painters. As William C. Agee writes: “The densely impacted drawing in The Paris Bit of 1959 may be seen as more studied and calculated equivalents of the linearity that characterized the works of Pollock, de Kooning, and Kline. The intensity, and density, of Davis’s use of rich blacks and whites can also be interpreted as a rejoinder directed at the black-and-white paintings of Pollock, de Kooning, Kline, and Motherwell, which accounted for much of the best Abstract Expressionist painting.” (Stuart Davis: American Painter, p. 84)
Study for ‘The Paris Bit’ also exhibits Davis’s proto-Pop use of advertisements and lettering within his canvases. Even before he went to Paris in the 1920s, and well before artists like Andy Warhol and Edward Ruscha, Davis elevated elements of branding in popular culture to the realm of fine art in canvases such as Lucky Strike (1921) and Odol (1924, both Museum of Modern Art, New York). In the present work, he pulls ideas from the street signage of the original Rue Lipp composition, making witty references to the source material while also integrating the forms of the text to become just another part of the network of outlines.
As Lewis Kachur explains, “Words and symbols clarify the original elements of Rue Lipp: EAU is superimposed over the water bottle on the table; BELLE FRANCE appears once again, seeming to summarize Davis’s reaction to Paris; and ’28 recalls the date of the earlier canvas. Above the mirror-image, squiggly signature one finds a combined top hat and beer mug—a color rendition of the beer/hat optical pun found in Rue Lipp. The TABAC sign in the latter is integrated here into the infrastructure at the lower right.” (Stuart Davis: American Painter, p. 300) The almost frenetic use of the text throughout the composition reads like a visual jazz improvisation; Guy Davis compares it to “the taxi horns in Gershwin, the fragments of print in Schwitters, the trade names in Cummings.” (“Stuart Davis: The Paris Bit, 1959,” Artforum, May 1998, p. 131)
As fully manifested in the transformation of Rue Lipp to Still Life in the Street to the present work and The Paris Bit, Harry Cooper writes of Davis’s modern recursive series, “All the elements of the earlier painting are present—transferred in loving detail…and some…have even been strengthened. And yet none of them are there. Instead of being drawn to the work of deciphering, we are overcome by a colorful blaze of shape and pattern, very much on the surface.” (“Unfinished Business: Davis and the Dialect-X of Recursion,” Stuart Davis: In Full Swing, New York, 2016, p. 45) Indeed, in Study for ‘Paris Bit,’ all the influences and innovations of Davis’s creative process over the years come together to create a remarkably cohesive, emblematic painting that immediately captivates with its overall balance and bold color. As Davis himself summarized, “The essential content and meaning of the picture are not changed in this process but simply made more memorable.” (Stuart Davis: “This Is My Favorite Painting”)
Like many American artists of his era, Davis set off for Paris in the late 1920s to experience the cultivation of new ideas in the capital of the modern art world. Davis later reminisced, “I had the feeling that this was the best place in the world for an artist to live and work; and at the time it was…Paris was old fashioned, but modern as well. That was the wonderful part of it…There was a timelessness about the place that was conducive to the kind of contemplation essential to art.” (as quoted in Stuart Davis, New York, 1945, pp. 18-19)
During this trip, he made drawings in his sketchbook of a Paris street, a beer mug in a café and seltzer and water bottles, which he combined into the celebrated 1928 oil Rue Lipp (Private Collection; sold at Sotheby’s, New York, 12 November 2018, lot 52 for $6,847,200). Named not for an actual street but rather a popular watering hole Brasserie Lipp, the work employs a type of synthetic cubism to represent building facades as flattened plans of color, with superimposed lines providing the suggestion of architectural detail. In the foreground, the still life appears larger-than-life and imbedded with visual puns; for example, the top hat to be seen within a half-full beer stein is emphasized with the inscription “Biere Hatt.” As Lewis Kachur summarizes, “Thus we have a café-sitter’s view of the stage-set space of the street and its passing spectacle.” (Stuart Davis: An American in Paris, New York, 1987, p. 9)
In the early 1940s, Davis began to revisit and re-approach compositions from the 1920s and early 30s with a greater emphasis on strong color and overall pattern. In 1941, he transformed the Rue Lipp composition into Still Life in the Street (Private Collection; sold at Christie’s, New York, An American Place: The Barney A. Ebsworth Collection, 13 November 2018 for $780,500). Davis simplified the elements of the scene, leaving realism behind with a lively pink, green, blue and orange palette vibrating with energy.
As early as 1951, Davis came back to the Rue Lipp inspiration and created the original drawing for the present work, laying down early washes of yellow ochre and transparent blue on the canvas, which he referred to as Paris Street. He did not return to the painting until January 1957, when he recorded in his diary: “Drew new element of TABAC on the 28 x 36 canvas of Paris St which has been waiting 6 or 7 years. Good!” (as quoted in A. Boyajian, M. Rutkowski, Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonné, vol. III, New Haven, Connecticut, 2007, p. 447) In November 1959, he “finished casein color determination” on the painting which he now referred to as Double-Take, and by September 1960 he completed the oil overpainting and black linework to form the final version of Study for ‘The Paris Bit.’
In the middle of the process of painting the present work, Davis also created The Paris Bit of 1959 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York). “The two pictures form what the artist would have called a complementary-color pair, for Study for ‘The Paris Bit’ is painted in red and green with an orange border, while The Paris Bit is in the colors of the French and American flags.” (Stuart Davis: American Painter, New York, 1991, p. 300) During the time of its creation, Davis declared, “I submit ‘The Paris Bit’ as my favorite because I am working on it at the time of writing.” (“Stuart Davis: ‘This Is My Favorite Painting,’” Famous Artists Magazine, Winter 1960)
In both this painting and the Whitney version, Davis compresses the Cubist cityscape into color fields overlaid with a flat network of thick black lines. Davis explained of his process of creating this composition, “I compose and develop my picture as a line drawing because it is a method most amenable to inspiration and change…I do not regard this drawing process as a thing apart from or preliminary to making the painting. I consider that it is the painting at a certain stage of its maximum development.” (“Stuart Davis: ‘This Is My Favorite Painting’”) In The Paris Bit, he even adds the notation ‘LINES THICKEN’ in the painted border, further underscoring the importance of linework within the composition.
Davis’s emphasis on line as a means of his expression relates his work to other post-War painters. As William C. Agee writes: “The densely impacted drawing in The Paris Bit of 1959 may be seen as more studied and calculated equivalents of the linearity that characterized the works of Pollock, de Kooning, and Kline. The intensity, and density, of Davis’s use of rich blacks and whites can also be interpreted as a rejoinder directed at the black-and-white paintings of Pollock, de Kooning, Kline, and Motherwell, which accounted for much of the best Abstract Expressionist painting.” (Stuart Davis: American Painter, p. 84)
Study for ‘The Paris Bit’ also exhibits Davis’s proto-Pop use of advertisements and lettering within his canvases. Even before he went to Paris in the 1920s, and well before artists like Andy Warhol and Edward Ruscha, Davis elevated elements of branding in popular culture to the realm of fine art in canvases such as Lucky Strike (1921) and Odol (1924, both Museum of Modern Art, New York). In the present work, he pulls ideas from the street signage of the original Rue Lipp composition, making witty references to the source material while also integrating the forms of the text to become just another part of the network of outlines.
As Lewis Kachur explains, “Words and symbols clarify the original elements of Rue Lipp: EAU is superimposed over the water bottle on the table; BELLE FRANCE appears once again, seeming to summarize Davis’s reaction to Paris; and ’28 recalls the date of the earlier canvas. Above the mirror-image, squiggly signature one finds a combined top hat and beer mug—a color rendition of the beer/hat optical pun found in Rue Lipp. The TABAC sign in the latter is integrated here into the infrastructure at the lower right.” (Stuart Davis: American Painter, p. 300) The almost frenetic use of the text throughout the composition reads like a visual jazz improvisation; Guy Davis compares it to “the taxi horns in Gershwin, the fragments of print in Schwitters, the trade names in Cummings.” (“Stuart Davis: The Paris Bit, 1959,” Artforum, May 1998, p. 131)
As fully manifested in the transformation of Rue Lipp to Still Life in the Street to the present work and The Paris Bit, Harry Cooper writes of Davis’s modern recursive series, “All the elements of the earlier painting are present—transferred in loving detail…and some…have even been strengthened. And yet none of them are there. Instead of being drawn to the work of deciphering, we are overcome by a colorful blaze of shape and pattern, very much on the surface.” (“Unfinished Business: Davis and the Dialect-X of Recursion,” Stuart Davis: In Full Swing, New York, 2016, p. 45) Indeed, in Study for ‘Paris Bit,’ all the influences and innovations of Davis’s creative process over the years come together to create a remarkably cohesive, emblematic painting that immediately captivates with its overall balance and bold color. As Davis himself summarized, “The essential content and meaning of the picture are not changed in this process but simply made more memorable.” (Stuart Davis: “This Is My Favorite Painting”)