Art Theory Text with Types A and B Configuration Diagrams 1943

Curator: Stuart Davis, born in 1892, left us this intriguing piece, "Art Theory Text with Types A and B Configuration Diagrams." It's undated, but seems to come from 1943 according to what is written on the top of the paper. What's your initial take on it? Editor: It feels like peering into a very private, possibly mad, scientist's notebook. All those scrawled annotations and odd little boxes... it's strangely compelling. I wonder, what do those diagrams even represent? Curator: They appear to be Davis's way of dissecting and reassembling visual space—thinking about how shapes interact and create a kind of structure within his paintings. He's reducing visual relationships to these basic A and B "types." Editor: Hmm, so it's like he's trying to codify his intuition, to find the underlying grammar of his art. Is it successful? I'm not sure, but I love the attempt. It’s so raw and vulnerable. Curator: Precisely. It reveals the artist's mind at work, grappling with fundamental questions about form and composition, and maybe its very incompleteness is the point. Editor: Right, maybe it's a beautiful failure. This little text makes me want to dive into his paintings now, to see if I can spot those A and B "types" lurking in the background.