Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

The 1920s saw an unprecedented proliferation of advertisements, mass-market products, and commercial packaging. Convinced that these elements of popular culture were expressions of modern America, Davis used them as subject matter, replacing traditional still-life props with imagery derived from consumer goods: packages of brand-name cigarette paper and loose tobacco, Odol mouthwash, and Edison Mazda electric bulbs. By exploiting the conventions of both advertising graphics and vanguard European art to depict mass-produced items associated with America, Davis created art that conveyed a distinctly national and modern experience. He likened these paintings to the exuberant poetry of Walt Whitman: "I too feel the thing Whitman felt and I too will express it in pictures America the wonderful place we live in." Davis's still lifes of consumer products were prescient; not until the 1960s would other artists so enthusiastically embrace the imagery of popular culture.

Below is a selection of works from Product Still Lifes, 1921-25.