In 1921 Charles Demuth returned to his native Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and began painting its industrial landscape. This starkly rectilinear composition depicts a building head-on. In choosing a flat subject that mimics the surface of the canvas, Demuth embraced the modernist ideal of unifying form and content. A member of the Dadaist circle in New York, Demuth also added a touch of characteristic Dada irreverence to his picture, painting a calendar onto the building’s windows to highlight the inherent repetition and boredom of modern business. At his death, Demuth bequeathed Business to his long-time friend and supporter Georgia O’Keeffe.
Date
Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.
S. Lane Faison, Jr., “Fact and Art in Charles Demuth,” Magazine of Art, 43, no. 4 (April 1950): 128.
Emily Farnham, “Charles Demuth: His Life, Psychology and Works” (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1959), vol. 2, 568–69, no. 400.
Alvord L. Eiseman, “A Study of the Development of an Artist: Charles Demuth” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1975), vol. 2, 357–58, ill. no. 213.
Alvord L. Eiseman, Charles Demuth (New York: Watson–Guptill Publications, 1982), 17, 21, 25.
Richard Guy Wilson, Dianne H. Pilgrim, and Dickran Tashjian, The Machine Age in America, 1918–1941, exh. cat. (Brooklyn Museum, 1986), 234.
Betsy Fahlman, “Charles Demuth’s Paintings of Lancaster Architecture: New Discoveries and Observations,” Arts Magazine 61, 7 (March 1987), 24, 28–29, fig. 21.
Karen Lucic, Charles Sheeler and the Cult of the Machine (London: Reaktion Books, 1991), 72, fig. 28.
James M. Dennis, Renegade Regionalists: The Modern Independence of Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), 208, 210 (ill.).
Celeste Connor, Democratic Visions: Art and Theory of the Stieglitz Circle, 1924–1934 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 145–48, fig. 32.
Judith A. Barter et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of CHicago, From World War I to 1955, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009), no. 33.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings Showing the Later Tendencies in Art, Apr. 16–May 15, 1921, cat. 96.
New York, Steinway Hall, 119 W. 57th St., Machine–Age Exposition, May 16–28, 1927, cat. 347.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, History of an American: Alfred Stieglitz, 291 and After, July 1–Nov. 1, 1944, cat. 287.
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Alfred Stieglitz: His Collection, June 10–Aug. 31, 1947, cat. 19.
Art Institute of Chicago, Alfred Stieglitz: His Photographs and Collection, Feb. 2–29, 1948, no cat.
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Charles Demuth, Mar. 7–June 11, 1950, cat. 112; Detroit Institute of Arts, Oct. 1–29, 1950, Coral Gables, FL, University of Miami, Nov. 20–Dec. 12, 1950, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Dec. 28, 1950–Jan. 18, 1951, Williamstown, MA, Williams College, Feb. 3–24, 1950, Newark, DE, University of Delaware, Mar. 10–31, 1951, Oberlin College, OH, Apr. 14–May 5, 1951, Buffalo, Albright Art Gallery, May 19–June 9, 1951 (New York only).
Art Galleries, University of California, Santa Barbara, Charles Demuth: The Mechanical Encrusted on the Living, Oct. 5–Nov. 14, 1971, cat. 80; University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, Nov. 22, 1971–Jan. 3, 1972, Washington, DC, Phillips Collection, Jan. 19–Feb. 29, 1972, Utica, NY, Munson–Williams–Proctor Institute, Mar. 19–Apr. 16, 1972.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Modern: Charles Demuth of Lancaster, July 16–Sept. 11, 1983, cat. 20; Lancaster, PA, Heritage Center of Lancaster County, Oct. 1–Nov. 13, 1983; Pittsburgh, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Nov. 23, 1983–Jan. 22, 1984.
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Charles Demuth, Oct. 15, 1987–Jan. 17, 1988, cat. 70; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Feb. 25–Apr. 24, 1988, Columbus Museum of Art, OH, May 8–July 10, 1988; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Aug. 7–Oct. 2, 1988.
Berlin, Martin–Gropius–Bau, American Art in the 20th Century: Painting and Sculpture 1913–1993, May 8–July 25, 1993, cat. 44; London, Royal Academy of Arts and the Saatchi Gallery, Sept. 16–Dec. 12, 1993.
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Dada: 1915–1923, Nov. 20, 1996–Mar. 2, 1997.
Paris, Musée d’Orsay, Alfred Stieglitz and His Circle: Modernity in New York (1905–1930), Oct. 18, 2004–Jan. 16, 2005; Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Feb. 10–May 17, 2005 (Paris only).
Lille, France, Lille Métropole musée d’art moderne, d’art contemporain et d’art brut, The Magical City, Sept. 19, 2012–Jan. 13, 2013.
Shanghai Museum, Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945, Sept. 28, 2018–Jan. 6, 2019, cat. 50.
The artist; bequeathed to Georgia O’Keeffe, Abiquiu, N.M., and New York, N.Y., 1935; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.
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