Egg Beater No. 4

A seminal contribution to the history of Modern Art, Stuart Davis’s Egg Beater series is a testament to his mastery of line and color, as well as a reflection of the artist’s definitive shift toward abstraction. For a year, Davis exclusively observed an electric fan, rubber glove, and egg beater that he nailed to a table. While the subject matter is clearly defined, Davis’s simplified, fragmented rendering of recognizable objects elevates the subject of still life into a modern masterwork deeply rooted in his idiosyncratic conception of abstraction. Of this series, the artist said: “In my 'Eggbeater' pictures, which had a still life as subject matter, I equated all the forms and spaces of the subject in terms of flat, geometric shapes. I drew these planes in perspective, and the result was what I would call a 'space-object.'” (S. Davis, “How to Construct a Modern Easel Painting,” lecture given at the New School for Social Research, New York, 17 December 1941) Belonging to the culmination of this formative series, the present work is a masterful example of Davis’ development of abstract thought and skill as a draftsman.

The Egg Beater series is comprised of four oil paintings, each with a full-scale preparatory drawing and gouache version, such as the present work. All four Egg Beater oils reside in institutional collections: Egg Beater No. 1 is in the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Egg Beater No. 2 is in the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas; Egg Beater No. 3 is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Egg Beater No. 4 is in the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. As was Davis’s belief, the careful constructions in his Egg Beater series, first established in his drawings, gain a new vibrancy with the addition of color. The parallels between the present work and the drawing Study for Egg Beater No. 4 (lot 35), for example, demonstrate this close relationship. The outlines in both works are nearly identical; it is the addition of color that further articulates space and delineates form. 

The egg beater itself first appeared in Davis’s work while he painted Santa Fe landscapes in 1923. From then on, ordinary household objects feature widely in his work. While the Egg Beater works were created before Davis’s travels to Paris and direct exposure to French Modernism, influences from Synthetic Cubism of the 1920s are evident. Fragmented geometries are placed within a confined spatial plane, a convention that appears to draw inspiration from Picasso’s work and remained prominent throughout his oeuvre. “Throughout the many shifts in emphasis in his career, Davis's visual language remained one of clean-edged shapes, broad planes of clear, unmodulated color, and shallow, stagelike space–characteristics first posited unequivocally in the Egg Beaters” (K. Wilkin, “Egg Beaters and Their Kin,” A. Boyajian, M. Rutkowski, eds., Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonné, vol. II, New Haven, Connecticut, 2007, p. 68). Indeed, the abstract, pure style of the series informed Davis’s work throughout his career. The artist himself said: “You might say that everything I have done since has been based on the eggbeater idea.” (E.C. Goossen, Stuart Davis, New York, 1959, p. 21)

Credited with establishing the artist as a leading figure of the American avant-garde, Davis’s Egg Beater series is undoubtedly among his most important work, as his subsequent abstractions were rooted in the artistic perspectives established in his work on the series. Egg Beater No. 4 is not only a transcendent, complex work of modernism in its own right, but also a stunning insight into Davis’ meticulous working process and the intricate mind that defined his storied career.