''I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold,'' also known as ''The Figure 5 in Gold'', is a 1928 painting by American artist
Charles Demuth
Charles Henry Buckius Demuth (November 8, 1883 – October 23, 1935) was an American painter who specialized in watercolors and turned to oils late in his career, developing a style of painting known as Precisionism.
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. It has been described as influenced by
Futurism
Futurism ( it, Futurismo, link=no) was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects suc ...
and
Cubism
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
.
Inspiration
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism.
In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician practicing both pedia ...
claims that the inspiration for the 32-word poem "The Great Figure" (1920) came from seeing a fire engine pass him by, sounding gong clangs and siren howls as it receded in the night. He said he was so struck by the sight that he took paper and pencil out of his pocket and wrote the poem, standing there on the sidewalk. Two lines: "I saw the figure 5/in gold" were taken by Demuth for his painting's title. The upper right corner has an arc, implying a fragment of a large number five, repeated three times in progressively smaller, complete number fives to create an impression of the fire engine moving away from the viewer. The fire engine itself is reduced to an abstracted form composed of red rectangles, but there is a hint of a ladder on the right side and an axle across the bottom. Above the truck are globular streetlamps flanked by sidewalks and buildings in blacks and grays. Demuth conveyed his friendship with Williams by incorporating fragments of his name: "Bill" across the top, and "CARLO" (the "O" cut off and the "S" missing entirely) in yellow dots as in an illuminated theater sign. Across the bottom the painter has placed his own initials "C.D." and also the poet's "W.C.W." in the same size and color.Charles Demuth, I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold Kuykendall, Lara. Khan Academy
Style
Demuth was known as a painter in the
Precisionist
Precisionism was a modernist art movement that emerged in the United States after World War I. Influenced by Cubism, Purism, and Futurism, Precisionist artists reduced subjects to their essential geometric shapes, eliminated detail, and often ...
style, incorporating clean lines and geometry into images. Art historian H.W. Janson mentions Demuth's interactions with Cubist painters in New York, and the connections between Futurism and Precisionism styles. This particular work was part of a series of five abstract, poster-style portraits Demuth painted between 1924 and 1929 in homage to his personal artist and writer friends: William Carlos Williams,
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) was an American modernist artist. She was known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O'Keeffe has been called the "Mother of Ame ...
,
Arthur Dove
Arthur Garfield Dove (August 2, 1880 – November 23, 1946) was an American artist. An early American modernist, he is often considered the first American abstract painter.. Dove used a wide range of media, sometimes in unconventional combinati ...
John Marin
John Marin (December 23, 1870 – October 2, 1953) was an early American modernist artist. He is known for his abstract landscapes and watercolors.
Biography
Marin was born in Rutherford, New Jersey. His mother died nine days after his birth ...
. He and Williams had become friends when they were both living in the same boarding house in Philadelphia while Demuth was studying at the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
and Williams was attending the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. As with ''I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold'', each painting incorporated the artist's name. This portrait series is often described as also including writers Marsden Hartley, Gertrude Stein, Eugene O'Neill and Wallace Stevens, but those four were never completed. The Yale University Art Gallery has the preliminary sketch, in watercolor and graphite, for the
Marsden Hartley
Marsden Hartley (January 4, 1877 – September 2, 1943) was an American Modernist painter, poet, and essayist. Hartley developed his painting abilities by observing Cubist artists in Paris and Berlin.
Early life and education
Hartley was born ...
portrait.
Reception and legacy
The painting was first exhibited at Intimate Gallery, New York as "Charles Demuth: Five Paintings," April 29 – May 18, 1929. It is in the permanent collection of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
, New York, United States of America (MMA). It is described as a combination of oil paint, graphite, ink, and gold leaf on paperboard. Dimensions . Demuth died in 1935, at the age of 51 years. He bequeathed the painting to
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) was an American modernist artist. She was known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O'Keeffe has been called the "Mother of Ame ...
. She donated it to the MMA in 1948 as part of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection."I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold" Metropolitan Museum of Art (US). The painting has never been sold.
Roberta Smith
Roberta Smith (born 1948) is co-chief art critic of ''The New York Times'' and a lecturer on contemporary art. She is the first woman to hold that position.
Early life
Born in 1948 in New York City and raised in Lawrence, Kansas. Smith studied a ...
described the work in ''The New York Times'': "Demuth's famous visionary accounting of Williams, ''I Saw the Figure Five in Gold'', sa painting whose title and medallion-like arrangement of angled forms were both inspired by a verse the poet wrote after watching a fire engine streak past him on a rainy Manhattan street while waiting for Marsden Hartley, whose studio he was visiting, to answer his door." Describing its importance,
Robert Indiana
Robert Indiana (born Robert Clark; September 13, 1928 – May 19, 2018) was an American artist associated with the pop art movement.
His iconic image LOVE was first created in 1964 in the form of a card which he sent to several friends and acq ...
, a popular and famous artist from the 1960s onward, painted ''The Figure Five'' in 1963. It incorporated the three yellow/gold, size-diminishing number fives from Charles Demuth's painting superimposed over a red star.
Demuth's painting is used as the cover picture of the novel '' Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture'' (1992). The painting is included in a book ''100 Best Paintings in New York'' (2008).
In March 2013, the US Postal Service issued a pane of 12 first-class postage stamps portraying modern art, one of which was Demuth's painting. The timing was 100 years after the
Armory Show
The 1913 Armory Show, also known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art, was a show organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors in 1913. It was the first large exhibition of modern art in America, as well as one of ...
, New York, 1913, which had given many Americans their first look at modern art. The stamp set was titled Modern Art in America 1913–1931 Stamps.Modern Art in America 1913–1931 Stamps United States Postal Service Announcement 13–15 (2013).