Arthur Bowen Davies

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Arthur Bowen Davies : biography

September 26, 1863 – October 24, 1928

Davies was quietly but remarkably generous in his support of fellow artists. He was a mentor to the gifted but deeply troubled sculptor John Flannagan, whom he rescued from dire poverty and near-starvation.Perlman, p. 314. He helped finance Marsden Hartley’s 1912 trip to Europe, which resulted in a major phase of Hartley’s career. He recommended to his own dealer financially-strapped artists whose talent he believed in, like Rockwell Kent.Kimberly Orcutt, "The Problem of Arthur B. Davies" in Elizabeth Kennedy (ed.), The Eight and American Modernisms, p. 27.

Yet Davies made enemies as well. His role in organizing the Armory Show, a massive display of modern art which proved somewhat threatening to American realists like Robert Henri, the leader of The Eight, showed a forceful side to his character that many in the art world had never seen. With fellow artists Walt Kuhn and Walter Pach, he devoted himself with great zeal to the project of scouring Europe for the best examples of Cubism, Fauvism, and Futurism and publicizing the exhibition in New York and later in Chicago and Boston. Those who did not fully support the venture or expressed any reservations, like his old colleague Henri, were treated with contempt. Davies knew in which direction the tide of art history was flowing and displayed little tolerance for those who could not keep pace.Perlman, p. 222.

In an official statement for a pamphlet that was sold at the Chicago venue of the Armory Show and later reprinted in The Outlook magazine, Davies wrote: "In getting together the works of the European Moderns, the Society [i.e., the organizing body for the Armory Show, the Association of American Painters and Sculptors] has embarked on no propaganda. It proposes to enter on no controversy with any institution…..Of course, controversies will arise, but they will not be the result of any stand taken by the Association as such."For & Against: Views on the Infamous 1913 Armory Show, Tucson: HolArt Books, 2009, pp. 1-2. With these masterfully disingenuous words, Davies pretended that the men who had brought some of the most radical contemporary art to the United States were merely offering Americans an opportunity for a dispassionate viewing experience. In reality, Davies, Kuhn, and Pach knew that their bold project was likely to alter, decisively and permanently, the cultural landscape of America.

Style

Arthur B. Davies is an anomaly in American art history, an artist whose own lyrical work could be described as restrained and conservative but whose tastes were as advanced and open to experimentation as those of anyone of his time. (His personal art collection at the time of his death included works by Alfred Maurer, Marsden Hartley, and Joseph Stella as well as major European modernists like Cézanne and Brancusi.Orcutt, p. 27.) As art historian Milton Brown wrote of Davies’ early period, "A product of the Tonalist school and Whistler, he had developed a unique decorative style. He was completely eclectic," with influences that ranged from Hellenistic Greek art to Sandro Botticelli, the German painter Arnold Böcklin, and the English Pre-Raphaelites.Brown, p. 61. A painter of dream-like maidens and "frieze-like idylls,"Hughes, p. 354. he was most often compared to the French artist Puvis de Chavannes. His involvement with the Armory Show and prolonged exposure to European Modernism, however, changed his outlook utterly. As art historian Sam Hunter wrote, "[One] could scarcely have guessed that the bold colors of Matisse and the radical simplifications of the Cubists would engage Davies’ sympathies," but so they did.Hunter, p. 64. His subsequent work attempted to merge stronger color and a Cubist sense of structure and Cubist forms with his on-going preoccupation with the female body, delicate movement, and an essentially romantic outlook (e.g., Day of Good Fortune, in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art.) "Mr. Davies takes his Cubism lightly," a sympathetic critic wrote in 1913,Rich, p. 40. acknowledging a view, held then and now, that Davies’ Cubist-inspired paintings have an elegant appeal but are not in the more rigorous or authentic spirit of Cubism as practiced by Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris.