Stuart Davis’s diary

One hundred years ago today … Stuart Davis’s diary for August 1921:

On graph paper, Davis writes: “A painting is a bas-relief in color” and goes on to muse about drawing, color, and light. The sketch at the bottom seems to show a (Matisse-esque?) woman taking in a Cubist painting.

1921 was a pivotal year for Davis, who had been a fixture on the New York art scene since the famous Armory show of 1921. By the time of this diary entry, he had exhibited at important modernist shows such as the Society of Independents in March and the Whitney Studio Club in May (as mentioned in our post about Joaquin Torres Garcia). He also became a newspaper contributor, sketching, author Floyd Dell for the Herald, and interviewing the author about psychoanalysis.

Perhaps most significantly, 1921 was the year he painted  “Lucky Strike,” one of his first sallies into incorporating advertising and marketplace material into his work.

According to The Art Story:

Lucky Strike is a testament to Davis's success applying European modern painting techniques to a distinctly American subject, thereby offering viewers an Americanized Cubist style. Like his contemporaries Charles Demuth and Gerald Murphy, Davis created modern masterpieces that call attention to American consumerism. In this case, Davis painted a newly mass-produced product - cigarettes - which by 1930 had replaced loose leaf tobacco and rolling papers. His use of a widely known brand as a subject for art anticipates the Pop art movement of the 1960s.

– Jonathan Goldman, August 5, 2021

TAGS: painting, art, modernism, cubism, advertising, commodities, cigarettes, diaries, journals, journaling