Response to Structure – Through the Sketchbook

Docks, gas pumps, buildings and boats are a source of information that provide the structure to abstract paintings by the artist. One page shows evidence of the artist thinking about the possible abstraction on location.

In 1942 Stuart Davis remarks in his notebook: “I can work from Nature, from old sketches and paintings of my own, from photographs, and from other works of art. In each case the process consists of transposition of the forms of the subject into a coherent, objective color-space continuum, which evokes a direct sensate response to structure.” – Stuart Davis.

Pencil. Pencil on tracing paper, mounted with tape on paper. Ink and traces of pencil on paper.

Artist: Stuart Davis.

Stuart Davis: Sketchbooks. Taplinger Publishing Company (March 1987)

New York 1926: Facsimile of a sketchbook. Estate of Stuart Davis (1991).

What has the sketchbook been in the past and what can it be today? Together this website demonstrates how sketchbooks cross disciplines, skills, cultures, gender, and class etc., to gain a better understanding.

The sketchbooks appear here not necessarily for the 'name' of the artist, but for the different thinking and seeing through the sketchbook.