No one knows exactly when or where jazz arrived. In the 1900s, this style of music wasn’t called jazz.
Jazz was probably called barrelhouse or ragtime when Stuart Davis and his friends explored the African American bars of Newark, New Jersey, looking for the softly progressive scene. There were no jazz records in 1907, so how did a group of high school students discover this music?
“We were hip to the jive,” said Davis.
And there you have him. The distinctly American timbre of jazz shaped his lexicon and his art. And why shouldn’t it? The musicians Davis admired didn’t play solely for money. They also played for the pure fun of it.
Stuart Davis took his fun seriously
Davis quit high school in 1909 to study with Robert Henri, a trailblazing art instructor who encouraged his students to choose subjects that reflected their own less genteel experiences in New York City.
Several years later, Davis became one of the youngest artists featured in the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art, popularly known as the Armory Show. He submitted five canvases, each one showcasing the “urban realism” style central to the American Ashcan School.
The Armory Show was the greatest shock to me. Today it’s difficult to visualize the impact of this gigantic exhibition. Only isolated examples of European modernism had been seen before in America.
I responded immediately to Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Matisse. I didn’t wonder, “What in the hell is this?” I thought, “That’s it!” I resolved to become a modern artist. Eventually, I could paint a green tree red without batting an eye.
Stuart Davis, Archives of American Art interview, 1962
Following the Armory Show, Davis swiftly pivoted from urban realism to modernism. However, wealthy American art collectors did not pivot with him. When the stock market crashed in 1929, he was nearly penniless.
The Works Project Administration (WPA)
Help arrived in the form of a New Deal initiative known as the WPA Federal Art Project. This government program hired Davis to create murals for radio station WNYC and Radio City Music Hall.
Davis’s Mural for Studio B, WNYC is a vibrant mix of flattened shapes that may or may not depict a music note, a saxophone, a clarinet, a radio antenna, and ether waves. Everything is drawn imaginatively, rather than realistically, to create a certain vibe.
A wall mural is seen over and over again. If it simply tells a story, such as who discovered the radio wave, then once learned, the spectator loses interest and has no reason to look at the mural again.
Stuart Davis, in his working notes for the Studio B mural, 1939
For his Radio City Music Hall mural, Davis created a tour de force of hyper-masculinity called Men Without Women. He hated the title and had misgivings about the location. Still, it was an opportunity to display his work in public, even if it was in the men’s smoking lounge.
(R) Stuart Davis, Colors of Spring in the Harbor (1939)
Once his government funding ended in 1939, Davis was free to choose his own subjects again. He immediately set out to “capture the beauty to be found in the everyday things in our environment.”
By “our environment” he meant the charming Massachusetts coastline where he grew up, not the rat-infested apartment near Seventh Avenue and 13th Street where he was struggling with alcohol addiction.
In jazz, Davis finds his muse
At this critical moment in his life and career, Davis turned to jazz for inspiration. He worked on The Mellow Pad, the pictorial equivalent of rhythm and syncopation, for six years.
I was learning things and doing things I hadn’t done before. I don’t like to use the word trouble, but if you want to be factual I did have a little trouble with it. The important thing is that I kept at it until all the trouble disappeared.
Stuart Davis, Archives of American Art interview, 1962
The Mellow Pad is a masterful orchestration of vibrant colors and sharp lines. In jazz terms, the high-key colors are his tone (the sound of his artistic voice) and the two-dimensional shapes are his harmonic structure (his unique compositional signature).
Historians typically interpret the title The Mellow Pad to mean a laid-back location. Davis shrugged off the idea and rightly so.
The word pad has a sordid past
The word pad first emerged in 17th-century Britain as slang for a criminal hideout. It maintained its shady reputation for centuries until the 1960s, when hippies rehabilitated the term to describe a chill environment free of illicit associations.
I believe Davis used the word “pad” the same way musicians do. A pad is a harmonic background consisting of sustained notes or chord progressions that bind instruments together and enrich the texture of a song.
When I digitally remove the background (the pad) from Davis’s painting, the remaining elements become discordant. They clash. They really do need something to hold them together. With the right pad, the lines and loops in the foreground appear to improvise and groove.
(right) A page from Davis’s working notes
Based on my own experience, I know it’s difficult to find the right pad for a melody. Likewise, Davis struggled with it. He dubbed the upper left corner of his canvas “Hell’s Corner” because he reworked it so many times.
Despite the challenges, Stuart Davis succeeded in creating an all-over painting style that feels fresh and alive. Today, he is recognized as one of the most innovative American modernists of his generation.
What does The Mellow Pad sound like?
Can a jazz band really transform the colors, lines, and layers of a Stuart Davis painting into live music? Here’s a rare opportunity to find out.
Click on this photo to hear Wynton Marsalis and The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra perform their uptown version of Stuart Davis for the Masses: The Mellow Pad. (Sound up)
Postscript: If you happen to be in Austin…
See “Art in Every Corner: The Works Progress Administration (1935-43)” at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, now thru September 27, 2026. Explore the daily lives of struggling Americans through prints, drawings, and paintings created by WPA artists during the Great Depression.