Multiple Views

1918

Stuart Davis

Painter, American, 1892 - 1964

This vertical painting is made up of eleven vignettes loosely arranged in four rows. The scenes are roughly painted so many details are difficult to make out, and one flows into the other, creating a somewhat surreal impression. They seem to illustrate the people and places of a specific location. For example, just right of center are two women in acid-green dresses. One stands with her back to us while the other sits to our left with her head turned away . Directly above them, a man silhouetted in black stands at the corner of a purple and peach building. He wears a wide-brimmed hat and holds onto a tall black object that is hard to identify. He stands against an ivory-white sky with indistinct brown and coral-orange shapes below it. An area in tones of charcoal gray flows away from him toward the right. Another vignette in the upper right shows a black gate and fence that enclose a cemetery stretched out before a church. The lower left has a scene of a black Model-T car parked facing us in front of a white building. The structure has a large window next to a wide opening where a man in black coveralls leans against the right side. An orange, old-fashioned gasoline pump stands before a forest-green tree trunk to the right of the car. Finally, filling the lower right is a tan-colored street running past a turquoise-blue house with a peanut-brown roof. Quick strokes of color suggest two people in front of the house. Further back along the road are two nickel-gray horses. The overall palette is dominated by green, blue, white, black, red, orange, and brown. The artist signed and dated the lower right, “STUART DAVIS 1918.”
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In February 1918 Stuart Davis was invited to participate in the Exhibition of Indigenous Painting at Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s Whitney Studio Club at 8 West Eighth Street in New York. The participating artists were asked to draw lots for canvases, and then to spend three days painting them on-site. Davis’s contribution to the event was Multiple Views, an unusual composite of paintings and sketches that he had made while working in the historic fishing town of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and that he apparently managed to recall or consult while working on the painting. The images include a car at a gas pump, a garage, a churchyard, and bits of seascape, all anchored by two women in green, one standing and one seated, looking into the distance.

In 1953 Davis recalled that Multiple Views was “made out of things I had been painting recently and had in my mind. . . . I had done that kind of composition before that time . . . composing things that you don’t usually see at one time. I have drawings done in that manner.” Combining vignettes to create a single image was a common practice in cartooning, and Davis had employed it in ink drawings the previous year. It is also possible that Davis used Multiple Views to explore cubist ideas about simultaneity, discontinuous space, and shifting viewpoints, while retaining naturalistic imagery. However problematic and complex, Multiple Views is an important early work whose insistent two-dimensionality and prominent use of words and signage (in the garage at right) make it a harbinger of Davis’s mature work.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Earl Davis

  • Dimensions

    overall: 120.02 x 89.54 cm (47 1/4 x 35 1/4 in.)
    framed: 132.72 × 102.87 × 7.62 cm (52 1/4 × 40 1/2 × 3 in.)

  • Accession

    2008.124.1

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Multiple Views, 1918

This nearly square painting shows an industrial area with buildings, storage silos, a smokestack, and railroad tracks. A mound of brown dirt or other material is in shadow in the lower left corner of the painting. Next to the mound, railroad tracks extend diagonally from the lower center of the painting into the distance to our right. The tracks end at a white building with staggered gray rooflines to our right in the distance. A tall terracotta-red smokestack rises high beyond the white building, smoke pouring out of its top and blending into the clouds above. Just beyond the mound of dirt, piles of white material, perhaps in unseen bins, line the railroad track to our left and lead back to a row ten interconnected, coral-orange silos. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting, and it is lined with a row of long white and gray warehouses. The artist signed and dated the work with brown paint in the lower right corner: “Sheeler 31.”

Scholarly Series:  American Paintings, 1900–1945

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist's son, Earl Davis; gift 2008 to NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1918

  • Exhibition of Indigenous Paintings, Gertrude Vanderbilt (Mrs. Harry Payne) Whitney's Studio Club, New York, 1918, pamphlet no. 10.

1973

  • Portrait of a Place: Some American Landscape Painters in Gloucester, Cape Ann Historical Association, Gloucester, 1973, no. 25, repro.

1978

  • William Carlos Williams and the American Scene 1920-1940, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1978-1979, unnumbered catalogue, fig. 30.

  • Stuart Davis: Art and Art Theory, The Brooklyn Museum; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1978, no. 4, repro.

1982

  • The Gloucester Years, Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York, 1982, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

1986

  • Stuart Davis: Provincetown and Gloucester Paintings and Drawings, Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York, 1986.

1990

  • Stuart Davis: Scapes, Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, Inc., New York, 1990, no. 34, repro.

1991

  • Stuart Davis, American Painter, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Art, 1991-1992, no. 23, repro.

1995

  • Stuart Davis: Retrospective 1995, Koriyama City Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, Shiga; Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, 1995, no. 21, repro.

1999

  • Stuart Davis in Gloucester, Cape Ann Historical Museum, Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1999, unnumbered catalogue, pl. 4.

2002

  • Stuart Davis in Gloucester, Alpha Gallery, Boston, 2002, checklist no. 13.

Bibliography

1959

  • Goossen, E.C. Stuart Davis. New York, 1959: 16, 18, 19, fig. 4.

1960

  • Blesh, Rudi. Stuart Davis. New York and London, 1960: 15, fig. 8.

1962

  • Nordness, Lee, ed. Text by Allen S. Weller. Art USA Now. 2 vols. Lucerne, 1962: 1:opp. p. 70.

1965

  • Stuart Davis Memorial Exhibition. Exh. cat. National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, D.C.; Art Institute of Chicago; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Art Galleries, University of California at Los Angeles. Washington, D.C., 1965: 17, as Gloucester Tour (Multiple Views).

1971

  • Kelder, Diane, ed. Stuart Davis. New York, Washington, and London, 1971: 6, fig. 6.

1973

  • O'Doherty, Brian. American Masters: The Voice and the Myth. New York, 1973: 51, 52, repro.

1979

  • Kelder, Diane. "Stuart Davis: Pragmatist of American Modernism." Art Journal 39, no. 1 (Fall 1979): 30, fig. 2, 35.

  • Baigell, Matthew. Dictionary of American Art. New York, 1979: 88.

1984

  • Marks, Claude. World Artists 1950-1980. New York, 1984: 183.

1986

  • Myers, Jane, ed. Stuart Davis: Graphic Work and Related Paintings with a Catalogue Raisonné of the Prints. Exh. cat. Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, 1986: 3-4, 8, repro.

1987

  • Agee, Wililam C. Stuart Davis (1892-1964): The Breakthrough Years 1922-1924. Exh. cat. Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, Inc., New York, 1987: n.p.

  • Wilkin, Karen. Stuart Davis. New York, 1987: 71, pl. 71.

1988

  • O'Doherty, Brian. American Masters: The Voice and the Myth. New York, 1988: 51.

1990

  • Berman, Avis. Rebels on Eighth Street: Juliana Force and the Whitney Museum of American Art. New York, 1990: 151.

1991

  • Polcari, Stephen. Abstract Expressionism and the Modern Experience. Cambridge, Massacusetts, 1991: 13 fig. 7, 14.

1996

  • Hills, Patricia. Stuart Davis. New York, 1996: 42, 46, 47 pl. 34, 49.

1997

  • Rylands, Philip. Stuart Davis. Exh. cat. Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; Palazzo delle esposizione, Rome; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C. Milan, 1997: 30 repro., 94.

2002

  • Kelder, Diane. Stuart Davis: Art and Theory, 1920-1931. Exh. cat. Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, 2002: 2-3, fig. 2.

2007

  • Boyajian, Ani and Mark Rutkoski. Stuart Davis, A Catalogue Raisonné. 3 vols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007: 1:6, 76, 109, 130; 3:71-73, no. 1418, repro.

Inscriptions

lower right: STUART DAVIS 1918

Wikidata ID

Q20192186

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