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Three Acrobats
Object Details
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Date
1916
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Medium
Watercolor and graphite on paper
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Dimensions
12 15/16 x 7 7/8 in.
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Credit Line
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
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Accession Number
1983.127
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Copyright
Public domain
Object Description
In Three Acrobats, two circus performers swing from trapeze bars while a third hangs between them, held at the wrists by his partner. Demuth focuses on the forms of their bodies, obscuring their faces or leaving them undefined. His thin pencil underdrawing traces well-defined muscles, while vivid washes of pink, red, and tan convey the vigor of bodies in motion.
This painting is one of several circus and vaudeville scenes that Demuth completed between 1915 and 1919. Depicting dangerous and difficult stunts, these works were a balancing act for the artist as well. Throughout his career, Demuth explored various approaches toward the theme of same-sex desire in his art, but he risked arrest, blackmail, and violence if his sexual orientation became known to authorities. If he wanted to express such themes in art intended for public view, he needed to do so indirectly, filtering depictions of male sensuality through socially accepted subject matter such as the circus.
—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)
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Revealed Treasures: Drawings from the Permanent CollectionOctober 21, 2001–February 10, 2002
This exhibition of drawings spanning the 19th and 20th centuries represents the evolution of the medium from preliminary outlines for other artistic media to a modern means of self-expression in its own right.
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The Allure of Paper: Drawings and Watercolors from the CollectionJuly 9–October 9, 2011
This special exhibition showcases one-of-a-kind works on paper never before exhibited together, chronicling the sweeping changes that occurred in American art over the course of nearly 200 years from portraiture and history painting to modernism and abstraction.
Additional details
Location: Off view
See more by Charles Demuth
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