PAINTING FOR PRESERVES

LONG the main clients of modern architects, U.S. corporations are slowly becoming major patrons of modern art. One of the most successful examples of art for industry--result of the joint efforts of artist, architect and industrialist--is a vibrant, 8-ft. by 17-ft. mural unveiled this week in the lobby of H. J. Heinz Co.'s new $4,500,000 Research Center in Pittsburgh. From the start,recalls Gordon Bunshaft, design partner of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the lobby was planned for a specific kind of painting: "Brick going in on two sides, Mies van der Rohe chairs in black, a white wall with a bright, vertical mural on it."

Going through a list of about 15 modern painters, Heinz President Jack Heinz, 49, and Bunshaft soon chose Stuart Davis, 63 (TIME, March 15, 1954). Explains Heinz's Heinz: "After all, it doesn't take long to think of Stuart Davis. He's the dean." Painter Davis created his own design, evolved an ingenious rig that allowed him to swing the huge canvas over a wooden roller like a rug hung up on a clothesline. He worked six months from his first sketch to the completed work, produced the largest single canvas he has ever done.

The mural, in ultramarine blue, cadmium red, titanium white and mars black, could be read as a simplification of the industrial process, with diced slices at the top working down through a pinball-machine principle to end in packaged products at the bottom. In fact, says Davis, the work is pure composition. The title Composition Concreete refers to "concrete music"--sounds recorded on tape, which is cut and spliced in patterns to make a composition. This emphasis is not surprising from Stuart Davis, who says that jazz is his greatest inspiration.

While he disdained use of pickle green, Davis did put Heinz's "57" into his work, in disguise. In the lower left portion there is a scrambled 1957, thus: 1922. This, says Davis, represents "the year it was painted, the year the building went up, and 57 Varieties." In place against its white plastic panel background, the mural is what Architect Bunshaft calls "a real head-snapper." Says pleased Preserver Heinz: "Exactly what we wanted. It gives vitality to the whole room."

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