Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Barbara Haskell; Harry Cooper

ISBN 10: 3791355104 / ISBN 13: 9783791355108

Published by Prestel, 2016

About this Item

SOFTCOVER edition. Oversize softcover in its own deep flaps. Crisp & clean, tight & unopened copy. With 209 illustrations in color. Printed on thick matte paper. HEAVY to due quality of paper. Seller Inventory # 044228

Bibliographic Details

Title: Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Publisher: Prestel

Publication Date: 2016

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis:

This book pays tribute to the mature work of Stuart Davis, a distinctly American artist whose work reflected the sights, sounds and rhythms of popular culture..

Beginning in 1921, a series of creative breakthroughs ledDavis away from figurative painting and toward a more abstract expression of the world he inhabited. Drawing uponhis admiration for the works of Cezanne, Leger and Picasso,Davis developed a style that would over the next four decades evolve, challenge and influence contemporary art. Davis's visionary depictions of modern life and culture both high and low remain relevant more than 50 years after his death.Focusing on the images and motifs that became a hallmark of his career, this book features approximately 100 works-from his paintings of early 1920s tobacco packages, the abstractEgg Beater series and the WPA mural works from the 1930s,to the majestic works of his last two decades. The authors take a critical approach to the indelible influence Davis had upon contemporary art and the traceable impact his earlier work had upon his later masterpieces. They also offer important biographical perspectives and discuss Davis's unique ability to assimilate into his art not only the lessons of Cubism,modernism and abstraction, but also the imagery of popular culture, the aesthetics of advertising and the sounds and rhythms of jazz-his great musical passion. Presenting newly discovered primary documents, including photographs and excerpts from the artist's writings, the detailed chronology is, in effect, the first-ever Davis biography. Together, these elements create a vital portrait of an artist whose works hum with intelligence and energy.

Review:

"This engaging analysis of Davis's place in abstraction and in American painting is an important addition to the literature on American art. Summing up: ★ ★ ★ Highly recommend"

-Choice
"The catalog for the exhibition is a quietly luxurious affair. The pictures stand out in good, big reproductions, each on its own otherwise empty page. Haskell's essay on all aspects of Davis's career lucidly picks up the many strands, and Harry Cooper, writing on the painter's way of continually reworking his earlier pictures - or making essentially an art about art- presents a Davis who is often lost sight of: an aesthete-engineer who could be entirely oblivious of his time and place. The highlight of this catalog, however, is a book-length chronology- at times going by the month, even the week- that Haskell has compiled. Her "A Chronicle" forms the fullest biography we have of the painter."

--New York Review Books