Stuart Davis’s Theory and Practice of ‘Color-Space’: Resisting the Irresistible Attraction of Line

Abstract

Stuart Davis’s paintings include both lines and colour planes. Lines define these colour planes, enclose colours, and in them originates the experience produced by the work. But colour, especially in Davis’s serial works (Little Giant Still Life series, Letter and His Ecol series, Gloucester Harbour series), becomes autonomous in redefining the painting. It opposes stability and introduces movement and time in the work. Through colour, the work becomes process. Colour is difference, it is fragmentation, deviation from the original design, whereas line unifies a series, brings individual works together, creates continuity. The difference brought about by colour gives fluidity to meaning, the work escapes the fixedness of words, titles, and even the artist’s theory, while raising questions about difference, repetition, and continuity.