Spring

In Spring Charles Demuth depicted the sample cards used to advertise new spring fabrics. Pablo Picasso was the first to create such painted collages—a practice called Synthetic Cubism. Although Demuth saw examples of the style in both New York and Paris, he only experimented with it once, in this work. Here his subject allowed him to construct the ideal modernist painting by using overlapping planes that remain faithful to the canvas’s inherent flatness. However, the sample cards also connect his picture to everyday concerns. By titling his painting Spring, Demuth wryly highlighted the new reality of American life, in which the changing of seasons was heralded not by nature but by commerce.