Walk into your local Art Museum and look for a Stuart Davis piece or, in relevant times, just look it up online!
With more than 45,000 works of art at the Sidney Lois Eskenazi Museum, I was impressed by the vast collection the online catalog consists of. One of my favorite art movements in the collection and in general is twentieth-century Modern Art. I’m intrigued by the bold, brash, and colorful compositions the twentieth-century Modern Art era expounds on.
Swing Landscape by Stuart Davis
More specifically, Swing Landscape, a mural completed in 1938 by an American artist, Stuart Davis, is distinguished by a vibrant, high-keyed palette and an exuberant Cubist-inspired composition. Although Davis is not on the same level of recognition as similar modern artists, such as Jackson Pollock or Andy Warhol, Swing Landscape is referenced in over one hundred publications and has been identified as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century American art.
Furthermore, Davis considers jazz the musical equivalent to abstract visual concepts, characterized by its energy with bold colors and rhythmic geometries. Swing Landscape focuses on the influences of jazz music, referring to Davis’s musical passion. While it’s difficult to draw parallels between the painting and any particular jazz recording, it’s easy to imagine this inspiration within the endless complexities of color and movement.
Similar to my graphic design process, Davis and I are both deeply connected with the formal arrangement and relationship between forms and colors in a composition. The conscious placement of geometric shapes paralleled with bold, vibrant colors is the style I always resort to. All in all, I appreciate the fascinating blend of visual motifs that Davis incorporates in his work.
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