Study for History of Communications Mural

Stuart Davis

1892-1964

Born in Philadelphia, PA

1939

Ink on paper

14 15/16 x 34 inches

Purchase, Acquisition Fund

80.08.01

Davis created four murals in the 1930s. The largest and most complex of these murals was the Communications Mural, which was privately commissioned for the 1939 World's Fair. The mural was designed for the Communications Pavilion and was later destroyed when the fair was dismantled. The original measured 44 feet high and 136 feet long. Davis' concept involved painting with white luminescent lines on a black background. The study featured here illustrates the mural in reverse, with black lines on a white background.

Davis wrote over twenty pages of theoretical notations regarding the imagery of the mural. "My purpose is to make a work of Art, made of spatial elements associated with Communications [...] to be simple and easy to remember. Its tone-element is limited to white on black." According to his notations, the range of subjects organized across the mural included speech and language, writing and printing, drawing and painting, camera and motion picture, television and the telegraph, song and music, telephone and the radio, and the phonograph.

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