At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism
May 7, 2022–Feb 26, 2023
E.E. Cummings
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Born 1894 in Cambridge, MA
Died 1962 in North Conway, NH
Although best known as a poet, E.E. Cummings was committed to painting and poetry equally, calling them his “twin obsessions.” Moving to New York in 1917 after graduating from Harvard University, he set out to establish himself as a modernist in both fields. He began publishing line drawings and caricatures in the influential literary magazine The Dial and independently studying the latest trends in painting. Inspired by the 1916 Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters and by the theories of Morgan Russell and Stanton MacDonald-Wright regarding the parallels between color and music, Cummings began using spiraling color planes to create visual equivalents of sound. These works, which he called his Sound and Noise paintings, were favorably received and were included in exhibitions at the Society of Independent Artists. In 1921, he left New York for a three-year sojourn in Paris. Shortly after returning in December 1924 and painting Noise Number 13, he adopted a more representational style. Cummings continued painting and writing for the remainder of his life, but his post-1925 work was rarely exhibited and his poetry came to overshadow his visual art, which was seen merely as a footnote to his writing career.
Noise Number 13, 1925
E.E. Cummings, Noise Number 13, 1925. Oil on canvas, overall: 59 5/8 × 42 3/4 in. (151.4 × 108.6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee 93.98
Artists
- Richmond Barthé
- Ben Benn
- Albert Bloch
- Oscar Bluemner
- Patrick Henry Bruce
- Charles Burchfield
- Arthur B. Carles
- John Covert
- E.E. Cummings
- Imogen Cunningham
- James Daugherty
- Arthur B. Davies
- Stuart Davis
- Manierre Dawson
- Charles Demuth
- Isami Doi
- Aaron Douglas
- Arthur Dove
- Charles Duncan
- Yun Gee
- Marsden Hartley
- Rebecca Salsbury James
- Loïs Mailou Jones
- Taizo Kato
- Gaston Lachaise
- Blanche Lazzell
- Stanton Macdonald-Wright
- Man Ray
- John Marin
- Elie Nadelman
- Louise Nevelson
- Carl Newman
- Isamu Noguchi
- Chiura Obata
- Georgia O'Keeffe
- Walter Pach
- Agnes Pelton
- Nancy Elizabeth Prophet
- Henry Lyman Sayen
- Charles G. Shaw
- Harry Shigeta
- Henrietta Shore
- Pamela Colman Smith
- Joseph Stella
- Florine Stettheimer
- John Storrs
- Henry Fitch Taylor
- Helen Torr
- Jay Van Everen
- Adele Watson
- Max Weber
- Edith Clifford Williams
- Marguerite Zorach
- William Zorach