Color Diagram 1954

Editor: Here we have Stuart Davis' "Color Diagram". It's undated, but it lives here at Harvard Art Museums. It feels almost like a secret code. What symbolic layers can you unpack here? Curator: Notice the inscription, "A color is drawing, drawing is subject." Davis seems to be collapsing hierarchies. Do you see the emotional implications of equating color and drawing in this way, almost like an alchemical formula? Editor: I see that, it reminds me that artists can use any medium to represent their vision. Curator: Precisely! And the sequence, black to white, blue, red, green—what cycles of transformation might that suggest to you? It is almost ritualistic! Editor: The cyclical nature is intriguing. It underscores how artistic expression is ongoing, a process rather than a fixed entity. Curator: Exactly! It's about continuous visual language, always in flux. Editor: I’ve never thought of visual language this way before. Thanks for sharing your perspective.