 |
| Charles Demuth, "I saw the figure 5 in gold", 1928 (via) |
The Great Figure
Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
fire truck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.
-- William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
In 1920, William Carlos Williams scribbled this poem on a sheet of paper while he was walking in Manhattan - when a phrase came to mind, he would write it down on anything to hand, and some of his poems were born on prescription blanks and others written in a few minutes between seeing patients in his medical practice. "The Great Figure" inspired his friend Charles Demuth to paint The Figure Five in Gold in 1928.
Later, Robert Indiana based a painting on Demuth's -
 |
| Robert Indiana, The Figure Five, 1963 (via) |
‘I saw the figure 5 in gold’ ... yes really, Demuth’s work was on show in the Ashmolean when I visited last month in the America’s Cool Modernism exhibition and there until 22 July. It was a very striking in work in an excellent exhibition - and definitely well worth a visit to Oxford if you haven’t already been.
ReplyDelete