Personal Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Stuart Davis
American; 20th-century
Champaign, IL: Krannert Art Museum
76%
General Studies. Oil on canvas. 1962
The second best thing Davis has done here is pull off the colors. I tend to think of his color combinations as brash but fundamentally a bit safer than this — that mustard should have little business cozying up to red and green like it does. But there are a few features of the painting that make it work: the blocks of white and black serve a neutralizing function; the yellow (except for that deft oval alongside its white counterpart at top left) is external to the main action, which means it's not competing; the whole scene is bounded by that red outer band, yoking edge to center while further undermining what might've been the yellow's awkward dominance. Of course, the painting's not just colors, but colors as shapes — and the shapes are a perfect balance of geometric (the triangles and various quadrilaterals) and inexplicable (his reversed signature in green and its rhymes in black and red). This balance is the best thing Davis has done with the painting. Different sorts of shape succeed at mutually coaxing out latent qualities in their cohabitants: seeing those ovals alongside (but not crowded by) the squiggles emphasizes the irregularity of the ovals' edges; a squiggle placed atop a box has order imposed onto it. (2025)