Day 336 - Charles Demuth 5









 April 4, 2023

Gallery 902  largely centers on oil paintings, most of them executed in the 1920s and 1930s, that reflect the theme of urban America. Four large works by Florine Stettheimer line one wall and, through cartoon-like, fanciful images, depict key aspects of New York City (or at least the New York City of its prosperous residents): Fifth Avenue, Wall Street, museums, and the theater district. Reginald Marsh used a more realistic style in showing men lining the Bowery. There's also a 1930 Hopper painting of an eating place with a sign in the window advertising tables for ladies. The placard explains that such establishments provided safe havens for women; a few decades earlier, women eating alone were viewed as prostitutes.

The painting that initially perplexed me the most is Charles Demuth's 1928 work entitled "I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold"; never have I been so glad to read the Met's explanation. I learn that Demuth created this picture, which measures about 36 inches high and 28 inches wide,  to honor his friend, the poet and physician William CarlosWilliams. The picture takes its imagery from a Williams poem called "The Great  Figure," which evokes the sights and sounds of a red fire truck, emblazoned with the number 5 in gold,  rumbling through a rainy city. The palette of grays broken by red and gold certainly suggests an urban setting;  the diagonals in the foreground remind me of a trolley or perhaps an el train track.  Aside from the number 5 itself, the contrast between the diagonals that recede into the distance and the curved lines of the numeral are, for me,  the most striking aspect of the picture. 

The gallery also contains a large glass case with household objects largely created by European designers. I imagine the curators couldn't figure out where else to put them, but their location in a gallery of American paintings feels rather incongruous.Nonetheless, I really like the glass stacking containers created by Wilhelm Wagenfeld around 1938. Wikipedia tells me that he was a student at the Bauhaus.  Unlike many other Bauhaus designers, he didn't emigrate (he wasn't Jewish), but neither did he join the Nazi party. He believed that household objects should be "cheap enough for the worker and good enough for the rich," and the containers' clean lines and proportions that make them stackable really appeal to me.  But if only they were made of plastic - I'm afraid one would tumble out of my refrigerator and shatter.

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