Avatar, c. 1908-1909

Avatar is an ambitious example of Arthur B. Davies lyrical, mysterious works wherein elegant figures move across an Arcadian landscape. As an avid collector, reader, and traveler, Davies’s inspirations were wide in scope. They ranged from ancient Greece and the Renaissance, to Symbolist painters such as Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon, to Celtic lore, Romantic poetry, opera, and modern dance.  While the subjects of his works are not always identifiable, the viewer is expected to appreciate the references to an idyllic, ancient time and revel in the beauty and rhythmic movements of the predominantly female forms. The exact meaning of Avatar is hard to pin down.  Hindu in origin, an avatar is the bodily manifestation of a divine being.  There appear to be two realms of existence in the picture – the mass of darker figures in front of the stream, versus the ethereal beings in the middle and background. Yet, the definition of an avatar does not suffice to explain all the activity going on in the picture.  Avatar has also been linked to a passage from James Frazer’s Golden Bough (1890), which takes place in the glade of the goddess Diana.  By referencing myths, Davies and other Symbolist painters were able to loosely explore topical themes such as the nature of existence, sexuality, dreams, and aggression.

Even without a definitive idea of what the subject is, Avatar encompasses many of Davies’s key interests at the beginning of the twentieth-century. For example, Davies was extremely fascinated by dance.  He admired Isadora Duncan and he surrounded himself with dancers, including his common-law wife Edna Potter. Potter started modeling for Davies in 1902.  Soon after, they began living together and Potter became his muse (although Davies was still married to Dr. Virginia Merriweather, who lived with their children on their farm in upstate New York). From this point on, Edna’s slender form dominates his oeuvre. She taught him about movement, rhythm, and sensuality. Consequently, across his work and visible in abundance in Avatar, Davies arranged groups of, now, predominantly nude figures in active, graceful, and languorous poses.

In contrast to the otherworldly figures, the heaving mass of bodies in the foreground are palpably earthbound.  As they push into each other, their movement thrusts towards the middle of the canvas but hugs the frontal picture plane, reminiscent of ancient friezes and Renaissance battle scenes. Perhaps, as scholars have suggested, they represent the fight between good and evil forces.  Regardless, they evoke one of Davies main working theories, i.e. what he called “continuous composition.” In his quest to capture movement, Davies painted figures in a row of sequential poses (much like early photographers, cartoonists and flip-book artists) where all the action is in one frame.  Posing one figure (or several figures) again and again, Davies aligns himself with avant-garde masters such as Marcel Duchamp (Nude Descending a Staircase). Yet, even as he grappled with modern ideas, Davies created works in his highly personal, classically inspired, romantic language.

Note: Avatar was exhibited at the Macbeth Gallery in 1909, Davies’s first major one-man show in New York, where Lillie P. Bliss probably purchased it. Indeed, from 1907, Davies was acting as an art advisor to Bliss and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller.  Both women were important originators and founders of the Museum of Modern Art. Bliss, ultimately, became one of Davies’s best collectors and closest friends.  At Bliss’s memorial exhibition, held at MOMA in 1931, twenty-seven of Davies’s paintings were displayed.

Davies depicted a similar skirmish in the drypoint etching, Ebb and Flow (1917).