The All-Americcm

In both his life and his art, Stuart Davis is as American as bourbon on the rocks. A dumpy, bejowled man who talks with down-to-earth honesty in a good-natured nasal growl, Davis likes television, football, prizefighting, hot jazz and Manhattan skyscrapers. The bold and violent abstractions he paints echo the clash and clatter of 20th century American life, and they have earned him the acclaim of a satisfying number of fellow Americans. Last week, within four days after a new exhibition of his paintings went on view in Manhattan's Downtown Gallery, four had been sold at prices ranging from $3,500 to $6,500.

One top-priced canvas was an eye-straining melange of stridently colored geometrical shapes called Something on the 8 Ball, bought by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Another jazzy abstraction, Tournos, was sold to Utica's Mun-son-Williams-Proctor Institute. One reason for the high cost of Davis' paintings is the sparseness of his output. Says he: "I work murderously slow." He averages about three major paintings a year, has taken as long as six years to complete a large canvas.

Davis has been working murderously slow on abstractions ever since 1928. Now, at 59, he feels that his work is more concentrated in design and color than ever before. "I've learned to eliminate irrelevancies," he says. The most concentrated painting in Davis' current show is Midi. The brilliant fuchsia background contrasts so sharply with the blue, orange, white and green of the geometric patterns that the spectator can look at the picture for only a few seconds without getting eye jitters. Davis smilingly admits: "It does kinda jump."

Midi, like all of Davis' titles, is an arbitrary one, although the luminous colors of the painting do suggest something of the brightness of the sunny southern part of France. Most of his titles, such as Rapt at Rappaport's, are as abstract as the paintings, in most of which the only recognizable objects are a few scattered words. Davis puts in words because he feels they are part of the U.S. landscape. "Everywhere you look," he says, "you see words." Two that reoccur in his paintings are "any" and "it." Davis favors such words because they are "usable without any specific meaning."

Artist Davis lives and works in a Manhattan studio, where he puts in long hours at his easel. He likes to paint with the television set turned on, but with the sound off. "I don't have to look at it. It's like having a window onto the street in your room." Davis, who used to play a hot piano himself ("I discovered I could paint better"), admits that his feeling for sharp rhythms and raucous tones is carried over into his clean-cut, hotly colored abstractions. Unlike some of his contemporaries, he finds the atmosphere of 20th century America a stimulant rather than a strain. Says he: "I am an American, born in Philadelphia of American stock. I studied art in America. I paint what I see in America."

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