Charles Demuth, The Cabaret

Charles Demuth, The Cabaret, 1917. Collection: Karen and Kevin Kennedy.
Charles Demuth, The Cabaret, 1917. Collection: Karen and Kevin Kennedy.

Charles Demuth was an American born artist from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He specialized in watercolors but transitioned to oil paints when creating architectural works later in his career. After studying at Drexel and The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, he travelled to Paris and met a group of American painters. There he became a member of the Stieglitz “circle of artists” and received encouragement and analysis of his work. On later trips to Europe and New York, Demuth discovered avant garde styles, as well as cubism, which played a major role in the pieces he made.  Furthermore, these influences helped him develop the style known as “Precisionism”. To elaborate, Precisionism is a cubist form of painting where an object is represented but there is a lot of focus on the form and shape of the object. Similarly, The Encyclopedia Britannica defines “Precisionism” as a “smooth, sharply defined painting style… origins in cubism, futurism and orphism.”3

Demuth attended The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied under Thomas Anshutz as well as William Merritt Chase (who taught Georgia O’Keeffe). At the academy he was encouraged to paint in a traditional European style however he slowly moved away from the illustrator type painting (around 1913) and began painting calming watercolor masterpieces of flowers, circuses and cafe scenes. 

Georgia O’Keefe similarly focused on the flower and other forms of vegetation in her artworks. She became best known for her paintings of those enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers and New Mexico landscapes. Her works were all based on personal style, design and the interpretation of subjects. However, she had a reputation for portraying a woman’s sexuality in many of her paintings. Experts indicated that many of Demuth’s watercolors paralleled these ideas of sexuality because of the depictions of the evolving gay scenes in New York City and Paris. His watercolor painting entitled the “Turkish Bath and Self-Portrait” from 1918 depicts himself at a bath in New York City engaged in conversation with two men. In the upper right hand corner of the painting, there is a couple engaged in an intimate act. Although the image was not published until after his death, it served as an influence on later artists including Warhol.7

Demuth developed his new artistic style through his love of his hometown, Lancaster. His style of geometric watercolors portrayed both the new and old architecture found in the industrializing city. Examples included warehouses, factories, old homes and row houses. His piece “The Egypt” from 1917 is a prime example of his famous watercolor and Precisionist style. The painting, which is currently housed at the Whitney Museum of American Art, is of a warehouse with a single smoke stack on the right side painted in greys, dark greens, browns, and yellow browns. Although there is a single smoke stack on the right side of the central building, the painting is fairly symmetrical. On the bottom right and left corners of the painting there are red buildings that peek out from off the canvas. Another aspect of symmetry are the four evenly placed vents located on the roof of the warehouse. In the top left hand corner of the piece, the viewer sees a white light, perhaps the sun, that spreads across the canvas. The rays move from the top left to the bottom right and brighten the overlapping buildings and ground. His watercolor compositions gave a “grandeur” to buildings which were unnoticed by the passerby. These masterpieces focused on the chaos of the organic, and were a transition period leading to the creation of his most famous works, the poster portraits. 

At the height of his career, Demuth created homages to other influential painters and writers of the time. These were not portraits of the figures but were paintings of referential objects and performances (poster portraits)9. His most famous piece is “I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold” from 1928. It currently hangs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The oil painting mixes pop art, fine art and commercial art in warm reds, yellows, and browns. 

Although Demuth was most famous for the poster portraits and precisionist watercolor artworks created later in his life, his piece “Baron Wilkins’ Little Savoy” (also known as “The Cabaret”) from 1917 is especially beautiful. The watercolor painting on graphite depicts the African American jazz club- The Barron Wilkins Exclusive Club- located in Harlem and represents his love of jazz. Two sailors dressed in form fitting bright blue uniforms dance with young women in the foreground of the painting, and a group of four onlookers watch from a table in the bottom right hand corner of the painting. In the back of the scene, a band dressed in black tie is playing music. The drums, a guitar and a conductor can be seen as well. The use of primary colors in the piece is especially interesting because each of the three colors are evenly distributed throughout the watercolor. To elaborate, the sailors are dressed in bright blue uniforms on the left side, the man sitting at the far right in the foreground is dressed in blue and in the center of the background a group of people are also dressed in blue. Yellow and red are used in a similar fashion around the painting. Additionally, there is a lot of movement in the piece. There are multiple things occurring at once in the painting, giving the appearance of chaos. The two couples are dancing, the table of onlookers are chatting, the band is playing in the background and another table is filled in the back. Although the scene appears disorderly, the colorful and congested nature of the painting illustrate the liveliness as well as the excitement of the club. 

Another interesting detail is that Demuth chose to paint The Baron Wilkins’ Club, rather than any other jazz club in New York City. The club was an important participant in the Harlem Renaissance and one of the first places where black musicians were introduced to an affluent white audience. The intriguing component of the painting is the woman seated at the table in the bottom right hand corner. She is African American and is seated with a group of white men and women, which would be considered very abnormal for the time since there was still racial injustice all over the United States. Perhaps Demuth wanted to show what America could be like. To show that people of different races could join together and have a shared love of Jazz music without any difficulty.

 Additionally, Demuth focuses primarily on sailors in the painting. They are very clearly distinguished because they are wearing bright blue, and there are so many of them included in the artwork. Two are located in the foreground and a table of men, assumed to be sailors are placed in the background. In the 50s and 60s there existed many “gay ghettos” on cruise liners which led to the association of gay men with sailors7. Although the “ghettos” developed after the creation of the painting, perhaps Demuth was attempting to alleviate some homophobia by incorporating so many sailors, who had the stereortype of being gay, into his artworks.

References

  1. @HeyRyaaaan, Williams Forrest: “The Demuth Museum: About the Artist.” The Demuth Museum: About the Artist. Accessed September 30, 2019. http://www.demuth.org/about-demuth.html.
  2. A Kinship in Art: Charles Demuth and Georgia O’Keeffe; essay by Anne M. Lampe. Accessed September 30, 2019. http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/9aa/9aa396.htm.
  3. Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Precisionism.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Accessed September 30, 2019. https://www.britannica.com/art/Precisionism.
  4. “Charles Demuth Paintings, Bio, Ideas.” The Art Story. Accessed September 30, 2019. https://www.theartstory.org/artist/demuth-charles/.
  5. Conley, Greg. “Charles Demuth (1883-1935).” WatercolorPainting.com, August 3, 2016. https://watercolorpainting.com/charles-demuth/.
  6. Demuth, Charles. “The Cabaret by CharlesDemuth.” The cabaret by Charles Demuth on artnet. Antiquorum. Accessed September 30, 2019. http://www.artnet.com/artists/charles-demuth/the-cabaret-uz8LZFgh9TMRsBqwen1EGw2.
  7. Hoke, Casey. “Charles Demuth (1883-1935).” Queer Art History, August 18, 2017. http://www.queerarthistory.com/uncategorized/charles-demuth-1883-1935/.
  8. Murse, Tom, Tom Murse, The Caucus, and LNP Media. “The Life and Art of Charles Demuth, Precisionist Painter.” ThoughtCo. Accessed September 30, 2019. https://www.thoughtco.com/charles-demuth-biography-4164360.
  9. Poster Portrait: O’Keefe – Charles Demuth – The Athenaeum. Accessed September 30, 2019. http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/detail.php?ID=103180.
  10. “Poster Portrait: O’Keefe by Charles Demuth.” Curiator. Accessed September 30, 2019. https://curiator.com/art/charles-demuth/poster-portrait-okeefe.
  11. Riddell, ByRachel. “How Andy Warhol Revolutionized Art & Sexuality.” Affinity Magazine, September 13, 2016. http://affinitymagazine.us/2016/09/12/how-andy-warhol-revolutionized-art-sexuality/.
  12. Smith, Roberta. “Precisionism And a Few Of Its Friends.” The New York Times. The New York Times, December 11, 1994. https://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/11/arts/art-view-precisionism-and-a-few-of-its-friends.html.