The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Still Life with Flowers, Stuart Davis, 1930
Davis, who spent time in Paris in the 1920s, perfected a whimsical synthesis of Matisse and Picasso. From Matisse he learned the power of big, flat fields of pure color. From Picasso he took a language of disjointed and daring form. He used these to produce work full of jaunty commercial and pop culture references. This picture was influenced by his love of jazz — that yellow shape at left is a piano seen from above and the trumpeting white "flower" at center seems to double as the speaker horn of a gramophone.

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