The Public Theater Posters^301
Paul DavisThe revolution was already in full swing when, in
the late 1950 s, Paul Davis (b. 1938 ) entered the
fray. Some renegade illustrators and art directors
had already begun to revolt against the saccharine
realism and sentimental concepts in most Ameri-
can magazines and advertising. Although Davis
was not among this first wave, he was swept up by
it. By the early 1960 s he had developed a distinct
visual style—a unique confluence of primitive and
folk arts—that brought a fresh, American look to
illustration. In a relatively short time he was
among the most prolific of the new illustrators,
and his style had a staggering impact on the field.
Davis developed an interest in American
primitive painting and folk art as well as in the
hand-lettered wooden signs that defined
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American
commerce. “An artist of the caliber of [the
nineteenth-century Pennsylvania primitive]
Horace Pippin, whom I still think is one of the
most undervalued American painters, was making
honest observations of American life,” he said
about the search for a native culture. “The 1950 s
were a particularly nationalistic time, especially in the arts. People were
talking about what is American. Europe was still the acknowledged leader
in the arts, and many people did not believe that Americans even had a
culture.” In 1959 Jasper Johns showed his flag paintings for the first time.
They were unmistakably American. Davis remembered going to the
Whitney Museum biennial exhibitions where Larry Rivers and Robert
Rauschenberg were shocking people with their new American visions.
One of Davis’s many stylistic evolutions occurred between the late
1960 s and early 1970 s with a cover for the left-wing arts and politics journal
Evergreen. He rendered a religious depiction of Cuban revolutionary
Ernesto “Che” Guevara, whose exploits in South America had become
mythologized by the American New Left. In this image Davis eschewed
the Early American conceit for a synthesis of Italian religious art and