Art Theory Text with Sketch 1947

Curator: This is “Art Theory Text with Sketch” by Stuart Davis, created around October 29, 1947. It’s currently housed at the Harvard Art Museums. Editor: It's got this immediate feeling of a spontaneous thought captured, almost like a page torn from a sketchbook. You see the density of the writing against this lightly drawn sketch. Curator: Davis was deeply engaged with modernism and the role of abstract art in society. This piece offers insight into his artistic philosophy, a sort of manifesto scrawled on paper. Editor: Exactly! The material here—paper, ink—isn’t precious; it’s workaday. His labor is evident in the quick sketch and the densely packed text. He’s literally building his theory through the act of writing and drawing. Curator: He’s wrestling with how to translate subjective experience – what he terms "Subject-Sogre" – into dimensional color space, pushing against representational constraints. Editor: And you see that "PAD" on the sketch, almost like he's branding his own process. It’s all about the production of meaning, less about the final object. Curator: Absolutely, seeing this piece enriches our understanding of Davis's overall practice, how deeply considered and intellectualized his paintings truly were. Editor: It makes you think about how artists use these humble materials to explore grand ideas, transforming the mundane into something conceptually rich.