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Metropolitan Musem of Art - New York

The Great Figure

Among the rain / and lights / I saw the figure 5 / on gold / on a red / firetruck / moving / tense / unheeded / to gong clangs / siren howls / and wheels rumbling / through the dark city.    - William Carlos Williams

Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Charles Demuth studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Not known for his modesty, he called a Stieglitz photograph of him "one of the most beautiful things that I have ever known in the world of art."  Still, Duchamp refered to him as "one of the few artists whom all other artists liked...a rare case indeed." 

He started visiting Paris in 1907.  There he visited Gertrude Stein's salon and associated with Hemingway and Picasso.

In 1921 he was diagnosed as diabetic.  Early treatment seemed to work, but he neglected his diet and medicine.  Demuth died of a hypoglycemic attack, leaving Georgia O'Keeffe to inherit his unsold paintings.

His more famous works included My Egypt and I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold.  The latter was a tribute to the American writer William Carlos Williams (notice several references to Williams in the painting).  He also produced "portraits" of O'Keeffe and Arthur Dove.

Demuth was a pioneer of cubism and precisionism in America.

A square with a smiley face is a cube with demuth (the mouth).