Emma Lu Davis

Davis was born in Indianapolis on November 26, 1905.{{cite web |website=AskArt.com |title=Emma Lu Davis |url=http://www.askart.com/artist/Emma_Lu_Davis/104209/Emma_Lu_Davis.aspx}} After graduating from Vassar College in 1927,{{cite book |last1=Goode |first1=James M. |title=The Outdoor Sculpture of Washington, D.C.: A Comprehensive Historical Guide |publisher=Smithsonian Institution Press |date=1974 |isbn=9780874741384 |page=554 |url=https://archive.org/details/outdoorsculpture0000good|url-access=registration }} she studied for three years at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.{{cite book |last1=Miller |first1=Dorothy Canning |authorlink=Dorothy Canning Miller |title=Americans 1942: 18 Artists from 9 States |publisher=Museum of Modern Art |location=New York |date=1942 |chapter=Emma Lu Davis |pages=43–50, 124–125}}

After leaving school, Davis spent three years as a freelancer working on a variety of commissions. In 1933 she spent six months studying modern techniques and design under Buckminster Fuller at the Dymaxion factory in Bridgeport, Connecticut. At the factory, she wrote later that she learned "the principles of good workmanship. I think there are a great many 'artists' but awfully few real craftsmen. Use of tools and neat, fast, strong construction are not taught much in art schools." It was there that she learned how to work with wood, and began experimenting with abstract forms. Her figurative sculptures from the 1930s reflect her interest in the naive art of various folk cultures;{{cite book |last1=Fort |first1=Ilene Susan|display-authors=etal|title=The Figure in American Sculpture: A Question of Modernity |publisher=University of Washington Press |date=1995 |isbn=9780295974378 |page=188 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dAhQAAAAMAAJ}} for example, "Grotesque Bull" (shown), a terra cotta sculpture which was included in Dorothy Miller's "Americans 1942" exhibition at MoMA.

File:Grotesque_Bull_by_Emma_Lu_Davis,_1934.jpg

File:Art at the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, Washington, D.C LCCN2013634381.tif]]

File:Art at the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, Washington, D.C LCCN2013634374.tif

In spring 1935 Davis traveled to Russia to learn how Russian artists were organized and how socialized patronage affected their work. She concluded that Soviet artists failed to innovate because "the cheap academic traditions have been continued under the name of 'socialist realism'—that is, all the facts and none of the meaning of the subject."

From 1938 to 1941 Davis was the artist in residence at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. She described this period as "the most profitable and enjoyable three years of my life." In 1939 she was commissioned by the federal Treasury Section of Fine Arts to paint a mural, Missouri Livestock, for the post office in La Plata, Missouri.{{cite web |website=The Living New Deal |title=Post Office Mural - La Plata, MO |url=https://livingnewdeal.org/projects/post-office-mural-la-plata-mo/}} Two years later she collaborated with Henry Kreis on a series of low-relief granite sculptures depicting the benefits of social security for the overdoor panels of the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building in Washington, D.C.{{cite book |last1=Scott |first1=Pamela |display-authors=etal |title=Buildings of the District of Columbia |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=1993 |isbn=9780195061468 |page=[https://archive.org/details/buildingsofdistr0000scot/page/235 235] |url=https://archive.org/details/buildingsofdistr0000scot/page/235 }}

After practicing as a commercial artist for thirty years, Davis decided to retrain as an archaeologist. She completed her Ph.D. at UCLA in 1965, writing a dissertation titled Anasazi Mobility and Mesa Verde Migrations (1964). She worked Science Direction at the San Diego Museum of Man, while continuing her desert studies, focusing on the southern California region of China Lake. Prior to her retirement, she established the Great Basin Foundation, which conducted paleo-environmental research. According to Joseph L. Chartkoff, Davis was "one of the most important figures in bringing scientific rigor and credibility to Paleoindian archaeology in California."{{cite book |last1=Chartkoff |first1=Joseph L. |editor-last1=Gibbon |editor-first1=Guy |editor-last2=Ames |editor-first2=Kenneth M. |title=Archaeology of Prehistoric Native America: An Encyclopedia |publisher=Taylor & Francis |date=1998 |isbn=9780815307259 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/archaeologyofpre0000unse/page/198 198–199] |chapter=Davis, Emma Lou (1905-1988) |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_0u2y_SVnmoC&pg=PA198 |url=https://archive.org/details/archaeologyofpre0000unse/page/198 }}

Davis died in San Diego on October 19, 1988. Her artwork is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and other public and private collections.

• Solo exhibition at the Peiping Institute of Fine Arts, Beiping, China, 1937
• Boyer Galleries, New York, 1937
• Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1938 and 1939
• 1939 New York World's Fair
• Americans 1942: 18 Artists from 9 States, Museum of Modern Art, 1942
• Recent Acquisitions: The Work of Young Americans, Museum of Modern Art, 1943{{cite web |website=MoMA |title=Emma Lu Davis |url=https://www.moma.org/artists/1405?locale=zh}}
• The Permanent Collection—Women Artists, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1970{{cite news |newspaper=The New York Times |title=Art: Women at the Whitney |date=December 19, 1970 |last1=Glueck |first1=Grace |authorlink=Grace Glueck |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/12/19/archives/art-women-at-the-whitney.html}}
• Painting and Sculpture Changes 2011, Museum of Modern Art, 2011

• {{cite journal |title=The Mono Craters Petroglyphs, California |journal=American Antiquity |volume=27 |issue=2 |date=1961 |pages=236–239 |jstor=277842|last1=Davis |first1=Emma Lou |doi=10.2307/277842 |s2cid=163849702 }}
• {{cite journal |title=The Desert Culture of the Western Great Basin: A Lifeway of Seasonal Transhumance |journal=American Antiquity |volume=29 |issue=2 |date=1963 |pages=202–212 |jstor=278490|last1=Davis |first1=Emma Lou |doi=10.2307/278490 |s2cid=162252113 }}
• {{cite journal |title=Current Ethnic Processes Taking Place in Northern Yakutia |journal=Arctic Anthropology |volume=1 |issue=2 |date=1963 |pages=86–92 |jstor=40315563|last1=Gurvich |first1=I. S. |last2=Davis |first2=Emma Lou }}
• {{cite journal |title=Art is Here to Stay |journal=Science |volume=148 |issue=3673 |date=1965 |page=1042 |jstor=1716838|last1=Davis |first1=Emma Lou |doi=10.1126/science.148.3673.1042-a |pmid=17820105 |bibcode=1965Sci...148.1042D }}
• {{cite journal |title=Giant Ground Figures of the Prehistoric Deserts |journal=Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society |volume=109 |issue=1 |date=1965 |pages=8–21 |jstor=985774|last1=Davis |first1=Emma Lou |last2=Winslow |first2=Sylvia }}
• {{cite journal |title=Small Pressures and Cultural Drift as Explanations for Abandonment of the San Juan Area, New Mexico and Arizona |journal=American Antiquity |volume=30 |issue=3 |date=1965 |pages=353–355 |jstor=278819|last1=Davis |first1=Emma Lou |doi=10.2307/278819 |s2cid=163820209 }}
• {{cite journal |title=Man and Water at Pleistocene Lake Mohave |journal=American Antiquity |volume=32 |issue=3 |date=1967 |pages=345–353 |jstor=2694663|last1=Davis |first1=Emma Lou |doi=10.2307/2694663 |s2cid=162906057 }}
• {{cite journal |title=The 'Exposed Archaeology' of China Lake, California |journal=American Antiquity |volume=40 |issue=1 |date=1975 |pages=39–53 |jstor=279267|last1=Davis |first1=Emma Lou |doi=10.2307/279267 |s2cid=161920401 }}

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• {{cite book |last1=Blackburn |first1=Thomas C. |title=Woman, Poet, Scientist: Essays in New World Anthropology Honoring Dr. Emma Lou Davis |publisher=Ballena Press |location=Los Altos, CA |date=1985 |isbn=9780879191061 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mnkhAAAAMAAJ}}

• [https://www.moma.org/wp/inside_out/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Davis-142_1942_CR.sm_1.jpg?_ga=2.36586848.1960425773.1502992490-2070900357.1502992490 Photo: Emma Lu Davis. Chinese Red Army Soldier. 1936. Walnut. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.]
• [http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-288sE4fFvdQ/VX4LI4Vd81I/AAAAAAAAMmA/ZnsbV2G2rYU/s1600/20150524_130537.jpg Photo: Emma Lu Davis. Cock. 1932. Painted wood with copper on wood base. Whitney Museum of American Art.]
• [https://livingnewdeal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/IMG_7464_34481.jpg Photo: Emma Lu Davis. Family Group. Granite. Department of Health and Human Services, formerly Social Security Building. 1939.]
• [https://livingnewdeal.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/4190-MissouriLivestock.0_archive.jpg Photo: Emma Lu Davis. Missouri Livestock. 1939. Post office, La Plata, MO.]

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Category:1905 births

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Category:20th-century American anthropologists