Questions to Consider [show/hide]
Title: Swing Landscape
Artist: Stuart Davis
- Describe the different shapes you see in this painting.
- Can you find any recognizable things in this painting?
- What do you think Davis is trying to depict in this painting?
- What is the most noticeable thing in the painting? How did Davis emphasize that area of the painting?
- How does Davis utilize the characteristic features of jazz and swing music?
- Find an example where Davis suggested a three-dimensional object by using relatively few colored forms.
- What do you feel when you look at this painting? What particular features provoke this feeling?
- What type of message might this painting suggest to people in a housing project? In a gallery? During the Depression?
- Discuss how advertising may have served as inspiration for this painting.
- Discuss whether this painting is simplifying or complicating the Gloucester waterfront’s landscape. Or both?
- How does this painting differ from what a person might see in a photograph of the Gloucester waterfront?
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