Cubism in America: Modernist explorations and domestic concerns

American artists started to become aware and knowledgeable of cubism around 1910 through the galleries of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and Alfred Stieglitz, exhibitions like the Armory Show, private collections like Leo and Gertrude Stein and Arthur Jerome Eddy, and publications like The Rise of Cubism and Camera Work. Some of the best and earliest American cubists were Max Weber, Marsden Hartley, Lyonel Feininger, Charles Demuth, H. Lyman Säyen, Stuart Davis and Charles Sheeler. American cubists were very interested in the so-called “salon cubists” or “Puteaux cubists”, such as Fernand Léger and Albert Gleizes. Weber and Hartley developed personally distinctive styles that combine aspects of expressionism and cubism for social observation and personal revelation. American cubism developed two interconnected stylistic tendencies that are particularly American: billboard cubism and precisionism. They are characterized by sharp contours, flattened, emphatically geometric and abruptly juxtaposed forms, smooth and bright surfaces, clear mechanical and industrial references, and references to advertising, packaging, logos and labels. This extremely American sensibility is seen in the work of Davis, Demuth and Sheeler.