Standard Brand, 1961

  • Stuart Davis, American, 1894-1964

Oil on canvas

  • Unframed: 60 × 46 inches (152.4 × 116.8 cm)
  • 67 5/8 × 53 3/4 × 2 5/8 inches (171.8 × 136.5 × 6.7 cm)

Founders Society Purchase, General Membership Fund

63.156

America's turn to an urban realism in the paintings of the Ash Can School, and European artists' experiments with form from cubism to purism, determined where Stuart Davis was to find his subjects and in what idiom he would portray them. Davis's forms jostle for attention like flashing neon signs, reflecting America's fast beat and hard sell.

Signed, upper right: Stuart.

the artist

(Downtown Galleries, New York, New York, USA)

1963-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)

Stuart Davis: Exhibition Of Recent Paintings, 1958-1962. Exh. cat., Downtown Gallery. New York, 1962, no. 7, cover ill. Judd, Donald. " Stuart Davis." Arts Magazine 36, no. 10 (September 1962): 44. Twenty-Eighth Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Paintings. Exh. cat., The Corcoran Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1963, no. 32. Review Of The Season, 1962-1963: Paintings, Drawings, Prints, Sculpture: First Annual Retrospective Exhibition. Exh. cat., Parke-Benet Galleries. New York, 1963, no. 62. 67th Annual American Exhibition: Directions in Contemporary Painting and Sculpture. Exh. cat., Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, 1964, no. 17 (ill.). Bulletin of the DIA 43, no. 2 (Spring 1964): 31. The Institute Collects. Exh. cat., the Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, 1965, p. 4 (ill.), 14. "Stuart Davis, Abstract Painter, Dead at 69: Forerunner of Pop Art Depicted Jazzy, Billboard America." New York Times, June 26, 1964, sec.1, p. 26 (ill.). Arnason, H. H. Stuart Davis Memorial Exhibition, 1894-1964. Washington, D.C., 1965, p. 47, 49, no. 120. Moses, Paul. "Stuart Davis Show: Art with a Wallop." Chicago Daily News, August 21, 1965, sec. panorama, cover ill. Treasures from the Detroit Institute of Arts, 3rd ed. Detroit, 1966, p. 289 (ill.). Arnason, H.H. History of Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture. New York, 1968, p. 427. Detroit Institute of Arts Handbook. Detroit, 1971, p. 179 (ill.). Heritage and Horizon: American Painting, 1776-1976. Exh. cat., Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Buffalo, 1976, no. 48 (ill.). Kachur, Lewis. Stuart Davis: An American in Paris. New York, 1987, p. 10. Wilkin, Karen. Stuart Davis. New York, 1987, p. 223 (ill.), pl. 230. Sims, Lowery Stokes. Stuart Davis, American Painter. New York, 1991, pp. 84, 85, 88-89, 92, 94, 298, 302 (ill), 304, 308, cat no. 163. Wilkin, Karen and Lewis Kachur. The Drawings of Stuart Davis: The Amazing Continuity. New York, 1992, p. 41. Wilson, William. Stuart Davis's Abstract Argot. San Francisco, 1993, pl. 54. Boyajian, Ani and Mark Rutkoski. Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonne, vol. 3. New Haven, 2007, pp. 451-453 (ill.), no. 1726.

Stuart Davis, Standard Brand, 1961, oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, General Membership Fund, 63.156.