Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing: November 20, 2016 – March 5, 2017; West Building, Main Floor

Stuart Davis, Arch Hotel, 1929, oil on canvas, Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Anna R. and Frank M. Hall Charitable Trust. Photo © Sheldon Museum of Art.

This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.

Stuart Davis (1892–1964) was an American original. Born in Philadelphia to artists and raised in East Orange, New Jersey, he dropped out of high school to study painting in Manhattan with Robert Henri, the legendary teacher who urged his students to sketch daily life, read widely, ignore convention, and above all to find their own voices. Davis fell in love with the poetry of Walt Whitman, “our one big artist,” and hoped to capture “the thing Whitman felt—America.” And like Whitman, he gravitated to the bustling life of ports and docks, streets and taverns. Another formative influence, indeed “a complete bombshell,” was the 1913 Armory Show in New York, which introduced him to the expressive colors and forms of modernists like Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Henri Matisse. From then on Davis devoted himself to painting, surviving years of poverty to become one of the deans of American painting, aware of all movements yet beholden to none. Embracing “high” and “low” culture, abstraction and realism, image and text, Davis’s vision is remarkable for its breadth and inventiveness.

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing passes over the artist’s earliest efforts to begin in 1921 with his breakthrough paintings of tobacco packages. Moving ahead through five decades to his final canvas, the exhibition often strays from chronology to explore Davis’s habit of recycling earlier work for new compositions. With more than one hundred of his most important, visually complex compositions on view, the exhibition highlights Davis's ability to assimilate the imagery of popular culture, the aesthetics of advertising, the lessons of cubism, and the sounds and rhythms of jazz into works that hum with intelligence and energy.

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Stuart Davis, Lucky Strike, 1921, oil on canvas, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of the American Tobacco Company, Inc. © Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Stuart Davis, Odol, 1924, oil on cardboard, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Mary Sisler Bequest (by exchange) and purchase. © Estate of Stuart Davis/ Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Stuart Davis, Egg Beater No. 2, 1928, oil on canvas, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth. © Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Stuart Davis, Egg Beater No. 3, 1928, oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of the William H. Lane Foundation. © Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Stuart Davis, Arch Hotel, 1929, oil on canvas, Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Anna R. and Frank M. Hall Charitable Trust. © Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Stuart Davis, Landscape with Garage Lights, 1931–1932, oil on canvas, Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Marion Stratton Gould Fund. © Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Stuart Davis, New York Mural, 1932, oil on canvas, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Purchase, R.H. Norton Trust. © Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Stuart Davis, Swing Landscape, 1938, oil on canvas, Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington, Museum Purchase with Funds from the Henry Radford Hope Fund. © Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Stuart Davis, Town Square, c. 1929, watercolor, gouache, ink, and pencil, The Newark Museum, Purchase 1930, The General Fund. © Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Stuart Davis, Report from Rockport, 1940, oil on canvas, Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Edith and Milton Lowenthal Collection, Bequest of Edith Abrahamson Lowenthal, 1991. © Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Stuart Davis, House and Street, 1931, oil on canvas, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Purchase. © Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Stuart Davis, The Mellow Pad, 1945–1951, oil on canvas, Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Edith and Milton Lowenthal. © Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Stuart Davis, Percolator, 1927, oil on canvas, Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund. © Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Stuart Davis, Owh! in San Pao, 1951, oil on canvas, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Purchase. © Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Stuart Davis, Landscape, Gloucester, 1922/1951/1957, oil and wood on panel, Ted and Mary Jo Shen. © Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Stuart Davis, Colonial Cubism, 1954, oil on canvas, Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Gift of the T.B. Walker Foundation, 1955. © Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Stuart Davis, Rapt at Rappaport’s, 1951–1952, oil on canvas, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington. © Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Stuart Davis, Little Giant Still Life, 1950, oil on canvas, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, The John Barton Payne Fund. © Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Stuart Davis, Blips and Ifs, 1963–1964, oil on canvas, Amon Carter museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Acquisition in memory of John de Menil, Trustee, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, 1961–1969. © Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Organization: Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Sponsors: This exhibition is made possible by Altria Group in celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art.

Major support is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation.

The Terra Foundation for American Art also provided generous support.

The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Passes: Admission is always free and passes are not required

Other venues: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, June 30–October 10, 2016
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, April 8–August 6, 2017
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, September 16, 2017–January 8, 2018

Audio Tour

Access this free audio tour directly from the browser on your mobile device. Narrated by Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art, the tour includes commentary from exhibition curators Harry Cooper, National Gallery of Art, and Barbara Haskell, Whitney Museum of American Art.

A limited number of headphones are available at the Acoustiguide desk near the Rotunda. As a courtesy to fellow visitors, the use of headphones is required within the exhibition space.