1913-14

Artist: Joseph Stella, American, b. Italy, 1877 - 1946

1941.689

This painting is both the first of Stella's major works that explore the modern urban and industrial American landscape and the first painting he executed in a Futurist style. The Italian-born Stella painted Battle of Lights upon returning to New York after spending a few years in Paris, where he had seen modern works by the Fauves, Cubists, and Futurists. He contributed a few pictures to the now-famous 1913 Armory Show and wrote, "Soon after the show I got very busy in painting my very first American subject." In the painting, swirls of color and form incorporate the hallmarks of the amusement park-the Ferris wheel, the roller coaster, the electric lights, and the masses of spectators and performers-into the composition. Stella described his whirling vision of Coney Island as the: most intense dynamic arabesque that I could imagine in order to convey in a hectic mood the surging crowd and the revolving machines generating...violent, dangerous pleasures. I used the intact purity of the vermilion to accentuate the carnal frenzy of the new bacchanal and all the acidity of the lemon yellow for the dazzling lights storming all around.