Premiere

© Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
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green, red: black: green: blue: new: juice: cat: large: bag: pad: cow
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Premiere

Alternate Title: Première

United States, 1957
Paintings
Oil on canvas
58 × 50 in. (147.32 × 127 cm)
Museum Purchase, Art Museum Council Fund (M.60.4)
Modern Art
Not currently on public view

Label

Premiere’s colorful quadrants combine geometric abstraction and the graphic appeal of consumer goods in anticipation of the Pop art of the 1960s....
Premiere’s colorful quadrants combine geometric abstraction and the graphic appeal of consumer goods in anticipation of the Pop art of the 1960s. In response to a commission by Fortune magazine, which invited several artists to make still life paintings of ordinary products, Stuart Davis purchased common items from the supermarket, such as coffee, juice, and Brillo cleaning pads, and arranged them on the floor of his studio. Drawings of the process—also in LACMA’s collection— reveal the artist’s exacting approach to finding the right rhythm of color and sensory impact of the scene. In the end, Davis highlighted simple shapes and contrasting colors with bold terms such as “large,” “free,” and “new.” These are the hyperboles of advertising, but they also comment on the vocabulary of Abstract Expressionism, which was becoming cliché and giving way to Pop’s irony and humor.

Wall label, 2021.
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Bibliography

  • Selleck, Jack. Line. Worcester, MA: Davis Publications, 1974.
  • Cooper, Harry, and Barbara Haskell. Stuart Davis: In Full Swing. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2016.
  • Sims, Lowery Stokes. Stuart Davis: American Painter. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991.
  • Selleck, Jack. Line. Worcester, MA: Davis Publications, 1974.
  • Cooper, Harry, and Barbara Haskell. Stuart Davis: In Full Swing. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2016.
  • Sims, Lowery Stokes. Stuart Davis: American Painter. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991.
  • Hunter, Sam. Art Since 1950, American and International.  Seattle: Seattle World's Fair, 1962.
  • Hopkins, Henry T., ed. Illustrated Handbook of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  West Germany:  Bruder Hartmann, 1965.
  • Donahue, Kenneth. Los Angeles County Museum of Art Handbook. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1977.
  • Greenberg, Jan.  Heart to Heart, New Poems Inspired by Twentieth-Century American Art.  New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001.
  • Bridges, Bill and Lunsford, Ronald F.  The Longwood Guide to Writing.  New York: Pearson Education, 2002.
  • Stuart Davis: Major Late Paintings.  New York: Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, 2002.
  • LACMA: Obras Maestras 1750-1950: Pintura Estadounidense Del Museo De Arte Del Condado De Los Angeles. Mexico, D.F.: Museo Nacional de Arte, 2006.
  • Boyajian, Ani; Rutkoski, Mark. Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007.
  • Green, Dominic. "Music of the Eye." Art & Antiques 39, no.6 (2016): 64-71.
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