Americans in Paris

by Elizabeth Hutton Turner

During the 1920s, when cultural exchange across the Atlantic suddenly became heady and reciprocal, Americans traveling to Paris found their americanisme embraced. The French avant-garde, fueled by tempos and freedoms, loved jazz and the visual elegance of Machine Age aesthetics. The American fascination with technology, which electrified their work, gave new charge to European art. Paris welcomed Gerald Murphy, whose billboard-sized cubist icon dominated the 1924 Salon des Independants and launched a brief but brilliant career; Stuart Davis, who explored the continuity between cubist painting, lithography, and jazz at the atelier Desjobert; Man Ray, who abandoned oils to begin "painting with light" in his movies and rayographs; and Alexander Calder whose wire circuses and portraits inspired critics to acknowledge art's inherent playfulness. Americans in Paris documents the work and influence of these four notables of the avant-garde, who startle and delight us even today.