The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States
Location History:
Created in the United States in 1928, the painting remained with Charles Demuth during his lifetime. After his death in 1935, it passed to Georgia O’Keeffe. O’Keeffe subsequently donated it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection; the work entered the Met’s collection in 1949. It has remained in the museum’s collection since then.
Charles Demuth's I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (1928) is one of the most famous examples of American Precisionism. At first glance the work looks like an abstract geometric construction overlaid on a city street scene and a commercial poster. The enormous gold '5' dominates the composition; corresponding smaller repetitions of the number 5 hover beneath it, while subtle planes of black, grey and muted yellow fill the background, and fragments of words like 'BILL' and 'CARLOS' are woven into the crowded composition.
These letters do not merely serve as a decorative motif, however; they anchor the painting as a symbolic portrait of the poet William Carlos Williams.
On viewing the work, the words 'BILL' and 'CARLOS' seem to name the poet; the initialled 'C.D' and 'W.C.W' pay tribute to Demuth himself and Williams respectively. The work was inspired by Williams's poem The Great Figure, in which the brief appearance of a red fire truck numbered 5 punctuates a rain-soaked night-time journey through the illuminated city. Demuth captures this chant-like mobilization of sounds and visual cues in a series of dynamic visual rhythms and diagonals, recalling elements of French Cubism and Italian Futurism while forging an entirely American visual lexicon. The particular presence of 'BILL' and 'CARLOS' specifically identify the work with Williams, while the dramatic contrast of the brilliantly golden number 5 against its dark geometrical backdrop recalls the extraordinary monumentality of the image.
Demuth is not attempting to create a literal portrait of Williams per se; instead, he creates a portrait of his subject through associations of memory, language and experience.
The diagram of gestures between music and painting is carefully articulated: a mundane number on a city fire-truck has become monumentally symbolic, while the space on the page between poetry and painting has been concretely rendered into a precisely rhythmic visual device.
Charles Demuth's 'I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold', represents his style of painting known as 'Precisionism', on the outside, but in its stylistic elements on the inside, it is French as well as Italian. Inspired from William Carlos Williams' 'The Great Figure', the painting creates an unusual portrait of the artist. With the words 'Bill' and 'Carlos', Demuth creates a portrait not of accuracy, but of memory; with associations he made with Williams. With its French Cubism and Italian Futurism, and its firetruck and rain memory images, 'I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold', is thus, a portrait that very much stands out.
