Art Theory Text with Scale 1949

Curator: Here we have Stuart Davis’s “Art Theory Text with Scale,” dimensions roughly 11 by 8 1/2 inches. Editor: My first impression is that it’s a charming jumble—words wrestling with form. There’s something almost playful about the way the text dominates, yet the small sketch holds its own. Curator: Absolutely. Davis was deeply invested in the process of perception. You can see it here as text is layered to explore the ideas behind the image itself. He is deconstructing both the making and viewing of art. Editor: I'm fascinated by the symbolic weight of that little sketch. It’s almost like a modernist still life distilled to its barest bones, a chair and a simple lamp stand in for notions of domesticity, perhaps even the artist’s studio. Curator: Davis was very interested in elevating commonplace subjects to fine art. The scale of the drawing is as important as the materials used; it's not grand, but accessible. Editor: It makes you wonder about his working process. Was he writing first, then illustrating? Or was it a more fluid, back-and-forth exchange between word and image? Curator: It's a glimpse into the mind of an artist grappling with his own theories, which gives it a real human element. Editor: Indeed. For me, it's a small window into the symbols that Davis found personally meaningful, a key to unlocking his visual language.