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Study for Men without Women, Radio City Music Hall Men's Lounge Mural

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© Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY


Study for Men without Women, Radio City Music Hall Men's Lounge Mural

1932
gouache on paper
10 3/4 in. x 16 3/4 in. (27.31 cm x 42.55 cm)
Museum Purchase in Honor of Marilyn F. Hoffman, Director 1988-1995: Bequest of Phyllis E. Hodgdon, Anne Slade Frey, Ilya T. Bonnecaze, Olga Wheeler Fund, Memorial Gifts Fund, Gift of the Friends and by Exchange, 1995.3

Stuart Davis
American
1892–1964

ON VIEW

Known for his colorful and dynamic compositions, Stuart Davis occupies a transitional position between American modernism of the early twentieth century and later developments including Abstract Expressionism and Pop. Born to the art editor of the Philadelphia Press and his sculptor wife, Davis was introduced to art at an early age. His parents encouraged his desire to become a painter and were happy to lend their support when Davis dropped out of high school to study with Robert Henri (q.v.). After three years as a student in Henri's school, Davis took a studio with Henry Glintenkamp (1887-1946) in Hoboken, New Jersey. The following year, 1913, he sent several watercolors to the International Exhibition of Modern Art at the Sixty-ninth Regiment Armory in New York City. The first major survey of modernism in the United States, the Armory Show was arguably the most influential art exhibition of the American twentieth century.

During the 1910s Davis progressed from a Henri-inspired Realism to a more abstract style based on the Cubism of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). By the following decade, he had begun to make bold, fragmented paintings that were less obviously derivative of the Spanish master and his followers. Combining bright geometric forms with motifs drawn from popular culture, Davis developed an original style that he pursued for the rest of his career. His innovations gained a number of admirers, and in 1925 he held his first one-person museum exhibition at the Newark (New Jersey) Museum. With the onset of the Great Depression during the 1930s, Davis became involved in the mural movement and was an active participant in a number of politically charged artists' societies. His long standing commitment to abstraction led to greater recognition as Abstract Expressionism came to the fore following the World War II, and during the 1940s and 1950s Davis was recognized as a foundational figure in modern American art. The artist received numerous awards and honors in his final years and was still active when he died of a stroke in New York on June 24, 1964.

In the spring of 1932 Davis participated in the exhibition Murals by American Painters and Photographers, held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His designs impressed Donald Deskey of the Radio City Art Advisory Committee, who invited Davis to join a select group whose task was to supply decorations for the new Radio City Music Hall. Davis provided a mural for Radio City's Men's Smoking Lounge, an assignment for which he received the welcome sum of $700. Originally planned as a composition in cut linoleum, Davis's mural was ultimately executed in oil on canvas. The Art Advisory Committee gave it the name Men without Women, probably in reference to a short story written by Ernest Hemingway. Davis himself was never fond of the title, but he made no strenuous objection to it. The mural remained in place at Radio City for decades, until it was donated to the Museum of Modern Art in 1975.

The Currier's Study for "Men without Women" is close to the final design of the mural itself. Intended to evoke the pleasures of smoking and other traditionally masculine recreations, it features a montage of stylized images rendered in a limited palette of maroon, blue, black, and white. A cigar, pipe, and tobacco pouch appear prominently in the center, bracketed on the left by a gas pump and on the right by barber poles. A sailboat, playing card, and racehorse (appearing here as a pictorial label on the tobacco pouch) are among the other items rounding out Davis's picture of "manly" entertainments.

Although Davis had developed a largely original style by the early 1930s, Cubism remained a strong influence in much of his work. In Men without Women, the bold, flat forms and associative elements recall the Synthetic Cubist paintings of Picasso and Juan Gris (1887-1927). In addition, Davis's focus on smoking paraphernalia and playing cards echoes Cubist still lifes in which wine bottles, newspapers, and glasses conjure images of Parisian café life. Relatively fresh from an extended visit to Paris during 1928-29, Davis was probably well aware of the parallels between his mural design and its French antecedents. Unlike Picasso and Gris, however, he chose typically "American" themes, depicting them with a boldness not frequently seen in the aestheticized compositions of the Cubists. The result was a kind of modernism that Americans could relate to: a graphic, even cartoonish modernism that seemed less alien than its European counterpart. Men without Women was apparently a success, and in the years to follow, Davis completed several other public murals, including Swing Landscape (1937-38, Indiana University, Bloomington) for the Williamsburg Federal Housing Project in Brooklyn and History of Communications (c. 1939, destroyed) for the Hall of Communications at the New York World's Fair.

Davis's Study for "Men without Women"was purchased by the Currier Museum of Art in 1995.

VSD

REFERENCES

John R. Lane. Stuart Davis: Art and Art Theory. Ex. cat. Brooklyn Museum, 1978.

Beth Urdang. Stuart Davis: Murals. An Exhibition of Related Studies 1932-1937. Ex. cat. Zabriskie Gallery, New York, 1976.


Exhibition
1997 Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, "What's New At The Currier: Recent Acquisitions to the Permanent Collection." Feb. 7 - March 31.

2000-2001 Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, "America by Design 1930-1960: Three Decades of Innovation." Oct. 7, 2000 - Jan. 7, 2001.
2010 Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH, "From Homer to Hopper: American Watercolor Masterworks from the Currier Museum of Art." March 6 - June 7.
2016-17 Whitney Museum of American Art. "In Full Swing: The Art of Stuart Davis" June 10-Sept. 25, 2016; National Gallery of Art, Nov. 20, 2016 - Mar. 5, 2017.

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