Stuart Davis

House and Street
1931

A vibrant abstract painting depicting a stylized architectural scene with two contrasting building facades, one labeled "SMITH" in bold letters, and the other featuring geometric patterns and a small butterfly motif. The artwork is framed by a thick black border with a red stripe at the top.

Although photographs from the 1930s reveal that House and Street represents the intersection of Front Street and Coenties Slip in lower Manhattan, complete with a backdrop of tenements and commercial skyscrapers, the painting’s most striking formal feature is the splitting of the intersection into two simultaneous, yet distinct street views—what Stuart Davis referred to as a “mental collage.” Davis was a movie fan, and it seems likely that he structured his composition like frames in a strip of film. House and Street, like many of his cityscapes, incorporates the barrage of signs, words, and lettering that constantly confront urban inhabitants. Along with “Front,” for Front Street, the artist included a bell—the symbol of the telephone company—and the word “Smith,” which may derive from a campaign poster for Alfred E. Smith, the popular governor of New York State who was seeking his party’s nomination in the 1932 presidential race.

Not on view

Date
1931

Classification
Paintings

Medium
Oil on canvas

Dimensions
Overall: 26 1/8 × 42 1/8in. (66.4 × 107 cm)

Accession number
41.3

Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase

Rights and reproductions
© Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

API
artworks/1607

Audio

Stuart Davis, House and Street, 1931

In Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

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Stuart Davis, House and Street, 1931

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Barbara Haskell: Stuart Davis in House and Street is presenting two simultaneous views of the same scene, the intersection between Front Street and Coenties Slip.
Mark Joshua Epstein: Stuart Davis gives us two distinct zones in this painting, but he’s really careful to put them inside these very obvious borders. We get the black border, and then outside of the black border, the red border with the blue on the left side. To me, that’s his way of saying, “This is the city. We encounter these things together all of the time. And I as an artist want to contain them all in one picture plane.” So on the left we have something that’s right in front of us, something we would walk by on the street, a fire escape that we can see right up close, and on the right side we have something else in the distance that’s a little more elusive. We don’t exactly know what’s around that curve, or what’s in that gridded building in the back.
Barbara Haskell: In this piece, Davis is presenting his idea that the experience of modernity has to do with simultaneity. And that we're bombarded by images and see multiple images all of the time. Davis returned from Paris in 1929 and was originally horrified by the enormity of New York. He said, "How can anyone make art in the face of this enormous city?" And then as he become more acclimated, he came to see that that, in fact, was the quality of modernity, that speed and simultaneity that were exactly what characterized modern urban life. He embraced that notion.
Stuart Davis, House and Street, 1931

In Stuart Davis: In Full Swing (Kids)

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Stuart Davis, House and Street, 1931

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Narrator: Stuart Davis split this painting of lower Manhattan right down the middle. Why do you think he might have done that?
Let’s start with the left-hand frame. What kinds of lines do you notice? The ladders of the fire escape are a little skewed, but mostly Davis has given us straight horizontals and verticals—so the whole thing is pretty flat and two-dimensional. Everything is just right there on the surface.
What’s different on the right? For one thing, there are a lot more curves and diagonals. These lines create a feeling of movement. Take a look at the form that arcs across the center of the composition. When Davis painted House and Street, everyone would have recognized it as an elevated train—like the High Line near the Whitney.
Put together, the images give us two ways of taking in the energy of the modern city. On the left, Davis gives us a busy scene in a single glance. On the right, he paints a city that’s full of action, motion, and change—even when there are no people in the picture.