Artists Charles Demuth

Charles Demuth

American Watercolorist and Oil Painter

Movements and Styles: Early American Modernism, Precisionism, Impressionism

Born: November 8, 1883 - Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Died: October 23, 1935 - Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Table of contents

> Synopsis
> Key Ideas
> Most Important Art
> Biography
Influences and Connections
Resources

Quotes

"So few understand love and work; I think if a few do we may not have lived entirely without point."

Charles Demuth

"Perhaps I'll go to England. I must have a drink on some street corner of the world soon, or bust."

Charles Demuth

"I never knew Europe was so wonderful, and never knew really - not so surely - that New York, if not the country, has something not found here."

Charles Demuth

"There is a war against vice in Lancaster. I am going home to speak for vice."

Charles Demuth

"The last mad throb of red just as it turns green; the ultimate shriek of orange calling all the blues of heaven for relief and support... each color almost regains the fun it must have felt within itself on forming the first rainbow."

On the works of Georgia O'Keeffe

"He really enjoys things for what they are and doesn't find it necessary to call them, after he has enjoyed them, by some other name. I wish our country could act the same."

On D.H. Lawrence

"He was not effeminate, as has been sometimes suggested, but merely odd in his manner and movements and eccentric in his dress ... Demuth was a homosexual dandy, with a whinnying laugh and a high-pitched voice, black hair like patent leather that he slicked back after spitting on his hands, a reddish moustache, and a sweetly malicious wit."

Demuth Foundation scholar Bruce Kellner

"[I]t doesn't quite happen, but the idea being so grand - well, you are quite satisfied with what is there. Of course the pages which do 'happen' are quite like the watercolors when they 'happen,' in and beyond Time."

On Marcel Proust's fiction

"It takes time to tell all of what one knows of an intimate, and I have been happily that, in this case for a period of twenty-three years - and the purpose here has been only to outline some of the outstanding traits and tricks of one who liked to be admired, and certainly, himself, enjoyed and admired avidly; [Demuth] had a capacity for admiration as well as friendship, he believed in friends and was amply supplied with them, a nice old-fashioned quality that survives, regardless of the whims and trends of life."

Marsden Hartley, in eulogy

"Paintings must be looked at and looked at and looked at. No writing, no talking, no singing, no dancing will explain them."

Synopsis

A larger-than-life figure who is remembered nearly as often for his wit as he is for his paintings, the bold and insatiably curious Charles Demuth wasn't just a product of America's transformative early-20^th century; he was one of its archetypes. Demuth was a principal member of the Precisionist movement that emphasized sharp lines and clear geometric shapes. Challenging the boundaries of race, class, sexuality, and artistic tradition, he digested the shifting social landscape around him and left behind a memorable body of work that defies categorization.

Key Ideas

Demuth's brilliance is in the way he emphasized distinct colors and shapes out of elements that are more often relegated to the background, such as the factory smoke in Incense of a New Church (1921), or that may be considered too dull or commonplace to paint at all, such as typography in I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (1928). Some of these would go on to influence the design of movie and theater posters, book dust jackets, and other visual media for decades to come.

Like his friend and contemporary Georgia O'Keeffe, Demuth focused with intensity and precision on flowers and other vegetation. Unlike O'Keeffe, he stripped them down to precise geometric shapes and bold colors, imposing form and specificity on the chaos of the organic.

Demuth's cheeky and evocative (and private) paintings of early-20^th-century American gay subculture are among its few surviving visual records, and his jazz portraits celebrate the power and dynamism of the Harlem Renaissance.

Biography

Childhood

Charles Demuth was the only child of Ferdinand and Augusta Demuth, long-term residents of Lancaster. He grew up in a house next door to the family tobacco shop on East King Street, which his father's family had owned since 1770. When he was four years old Demuth injured his hip and was bedridden for several weeks. His mother gave him crayons and watercolors to keep him entertained, and this marked the beginning of his love for art. As art would become a major feature of his life, so too, unfortunately, would illness. His injury made it necessary for him to use a cane and he walked with a pronounced limp. Though he was close to both his parents, his physical frailty meant that he was particularly dependent on his mother. He became socially withdrawn at school, preferring to play with girls over boys, as his mother and aunt had warned him that rough play with other boys could cause his injury to worsen. Both his parents supported his interest in painting and drawing from an early age - his father was an amateur photographer himself.

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Charles Demuth Biography Continues

Influences and Connections

Influences on Artist

Artists, Friends, Movements

Influenced by Artist

Artists, Friends, Movements

Interactive chart with Charles Demuth's main influences, and the people and ideas that the artist influenced in turn.

View Influences Chart

Artists

	Paul Cézanne
	John Singer Sargent
	William Merritt Chase

Personal Contacts

	Alfred Stieglitz
	William Carlos Williams

Movements

	Cubism
	Futurism

Influences on Artist

Charles Demuth

Years Worked: 1905 - 1935

Influenced by Artist

Artists

	Georgia O'Keeffe
	John Marin
	Charles Sheeler
	Stuart Davis
	Gerald Murphy

Personal Contacts

	Charles Daniel
	Marsden Hartley

Movements

	Precisionism
	Early American Modernism

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Content compiled and written by Jen Glennon

Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors

" Artist Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Jen Glennon
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
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