Born Today in 1883: American Artist Charles Demuth

Nosegay (1925)

Charles Demuth on born today, November 8, in 1883. He was an artist who worked in watercolors in his early career, but turned to oils late in his career.  He developed a style of painting known as Precisionism.

"Search the history of American art," wrote Ken Johnson in The New York Times, "and you will discover few watercolors more beautiful than those of Charles Demuth. Combining exacting botanical observation and loosely Cubist abstraction, his watercolors of flowers, fruit and vegetables have a magical liveliness and an almost shocking sensuousness."

Demuth was a lifelong resident of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The home he shared with his mother is now the Demuth Museum, which showcases his work. He studied at Drexel University and at Philadelphia's Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He later studied at Académie Colarossi and Académie Julian in Paris, where he became a part of the avant garde art scene. The Parisian artistic community was accepting of Demuth's homosexuality.

Demuth either suffered an injury when he was four years old, or may have had polio or tuberculosis of the hip, leaving him with a marked limp and required him to use a cane. He later developed diabetes and was one of the first people in the United States to receive insulin.

From 1909 and onward, Demuth maintained a romantic relationship with Robert Evans Locher, an Art Deco interior decorator and stage designer.

While he was in Paris he met Marsden Hartley by walking up to a table of American artists and asking if he could join them. He had a great sense of humor, rich in double entendres, and they asked him to be a regular member of their group. Through Hartley he met Alfred Stieglitz and became a member of the Stieglitz group. In 1926, he had a one-man show at the Anderson Galleries and another at Intimate Gallery, the New York gallery run by Stieglitz. Demuth was introduced to modernism during trips to Europe between 1907 and 1921. On frequent trips to New York, he encountered avant-garde styles and ideas, most notably Cubism, the influence of which which is reflected in many of his works.

His most famous painting, The Figure Five in Gold, was inspired by his friend William Carlos Williams's poem "The Great Figure". Roberta Smith described the work in The New York Times: "Demuth's famous visionary accounting of Williams, I Saw the Figure Five in Gold, [is] a painting whose title and medallion-like arrangement of angled forms were both inspired by a verse the poet wrote after watching a fire engine streak past him on a rainy Manhattan street while waiting for Marsden Hartley, whose studio he was visiting, to answer his door." Describing its importance, Judith H. Dobrzynski in The Wall Street Journal wrote: "It's the best work in a genre Demuth created, the "poster portrait." It's a witty homage to his close friend, the poet William Carlos Williams, and a transliteration into paint of his poem, "The Great Figure." It's a decidedly American work made at a time when U.S. artists were just moving beyond European influences. It's a reference to the intertwined relationships among the arts in the 1920s, a moment of cross-pollination that led to American Modernism. And it anticipates pop art."

Demuth, along with Georgia O'Keeffe and Charles Sheeler, was a major contributor to the Precisionist art movement, which began to evolve in America around 1915. Demuth's works often depicted a specific range of forms in a quasi-Cubist, sharply defined manner, a characteristic of Precisionism. Frequently occurring scenes within both Demuth's works are urban and rural landscapes, often consisting of industrial features such as bridges, smoke stacks, and skyscrapers.

Charles used the Lafayette Baths as his favorite haunt. His 1918 homoerotic self-portrait set in a Turkish bathhouse was likely set there.

Demuth spent most of his life in frail health. By 1920, the effects of diabetes had begun to severely drain Demuth of artistic energy. He died at his residence in Lancaster at the age 51 of complications from diabetes. 

Self-Portrait (1907)

Turkish Bath with Self-Portrait (1918)
 

Incense of a New Church (1921)

The painting below, "Distinguished Air" (1930) received a homophobic reaction. Interpreting Robert McAlmon's story of the same title, the painting portrays a situation at an exhibition opening in which a male couple admire Constantin Brancusi's notoriously phallic sculpture (right) while a straight male gallery-goer admires the crotch of one of the gay men.