TRANSCEND CUBISM

I had never heard of Stuart Davis.

That is, until Schjaldahl’s 20 June New Yorker article made the introduction.

Davis was an early modernist painter who completely believed in his artistic mission.  He also incorporated politics into his work, as he believed painting could change society.  Like I said, he was a true believer.

The passage in the article that caught my attention, though, was this.

Davis made “…a concerted effort to transcend Cubism, and even to challenge Picasso…”

Transcend Cubism.  The article used this image of Davis’s “Egg Beater no. 4” as an example of his efforts to transcend Cubism.

How does this piece strive to transcend Cubism?  The only way that I see that it does is that it is trying for transparency.  The right half of the work shows a few flat shapes.  But the white and orange lines seem to show the planes of transparent three dimensional forms.  The left half of the painting is typically flat.

This observation of mine made me ask the question, what, other than transparency, could transcend Cubism?

Maybe the Futurists with their depiction of moving forms.  Yet most everything they painted was opaque.  Duschamp with his Nudes Descending speaks toward a Muybridge inspired time depiction.  Yet Nudes Descending is opaque.

It would be interesting if scientific theories mapped onto art.  For instance, does the theory of Relativity inform transcendence?  I don’t know.

Yet it seems to me that transparency is at least a route toward transcendence.  With the entire form depicted, we don’t need the Cubist contortion of showing more than one side of the form.  With the entire shape drawn transparently, we don’t need the Futurist / Duschamp / Muybridge time depiction.

All of these features are accomplished, with transparency, pretty much as a no brainer.  The Theory of Transparent Drawing simply does it.  It may transcend Cubism, after all.