Lucky Strike
In the 1920s, Stuart Davis painted still lifes featuring tables and objects that have been classified as Cubist-Realist due to their clear abstraction. Many of these works depict tobacco products, as Davis himself was a smoker. In contrast to his earlier strictly realistic paintings, Lucky Strike, an abstract still-life featuring the eponymous brand of cigarettes, retains identifiable patterns, textures, and lettering, but detaches them from their original packaging. On the canvas, the features of the package are rearranged seemingly at random, highlighting the challenges of translating a three-dimensional object onto a flat surface. The collage-like composition and color palette are reminiscent of the Synthetic Cubist paintings of Picasso, Braque, and Gris.
Davis's incorporation of modern art principles followed his exposure to the 1913 Armory Show, which he described as "the greatest shock" he had experienced and the single greatest influence on his work. However, it took several years before his art evolved into the heavily abstract, brightly colored compositions for which he is best known.
Lucky Strike demonstrates Davis's ability to apply European modern painting techniques to an American subject, offering a distinctly Americanized Cubist style. Like his contemporaries Demuth and Murphy, Davis created modern masterpieces that draw attention to American consumerism. In this case, he chose to paint a newly mass-produced product - cigarettes - which by 1930 had replaced loose leaf tobacco and rolling papers. His use of a well-known brand as a subject for art foreshadows the Pop art movement of the 1960s.
