Men and Machine by Stuart Davis in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2019

Men and Machine
1934


Object Details

Artist: Stuart Davis (American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1892–1964 New York)

Date: 1934

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 32 x 40 in. (81.3 x 101.6 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Jay R. Braus, 1981

Accession Number: 1981.406


Heralded for his abstract visual evocations of jazz, Davis also responded profoundly to the industrial age in his art. The present work features two men standing before a schematically rendered structure with their backs to the viewer. Likely representing a construction site with the foreman and investor looking on, the painting alludes to New York’s interwar construction boom. Highlighting the degree to which industrialism was associated with masculinity, Davis’s painting, consisting of primary colors on a white ground, also testifies to the artist’s respect for Piet Mondrian.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/482313