I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold
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About I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold
Flash. Ring. Rush.
A fire engine has raced through the rain, but Charles Demuth does not show us the whole truck. He gives us what the moment felt like: a golden 5 growing larger, red circles blinking like lamps, hard lines slicing through darkness, and scraps of words flying past.
The picture began with a poem by Demuth’s friend William Carlos Williams. Williams had seen a red fire truck marked with the number 5 speeding through a wet city. Demuth turned that memory into a portrait of his friend without painting his face.
“BILL” hides inside the design, and “CARLO” echoes part of Williams’s name. The repeated 5s seem to travel from far away to right in front of us.
The engine is already gone. Its number, light, and noise are still moving through the picture.
Artwork details
- Artist
- Charles Demuth
- Date
- 1928
- Medium
- Oil, graphite, ink, and gold leaf on paperboard
- Dimensions
- 90.2 × 76.2 cm
- Collection
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Accession number
- 49.59.1
Sources & rights
Charles Demuth, I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold, 1928. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 49.59.1. Image via Wikimedia Commons (The Met Open Access donation), CC0.
