Charles Demuth made Business in 1921, using oil and graphite on canvas. The painting belongs to the Art Institute of Chicago. Its subject draws on the industrial buildings of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where Demuth lived. A factory facade is presented almost head-on, allowing the window grid and structural divisions to organize the entire surface.
Numbers and the names of weekdays turn the windows into parts of a calendar. Red wall sections, pale supports, and dark panes are divided by sharply angled shadows. These overlapping systems make the building readable as both architecture and a pattern. The regular window spacing is interrupted just enough to keep the composition from feeling mechanically repetitive.
The museum suggests that the calendar can be read as a comment on the routines of industrial work, rather than an uncomplicated celebration of progress. That interpretation adds a human dimension to the precise geometry. The painting shows how lettering and everyday structures can carry meaning while remaining integral to an economical arrangement of planes.
Crawford From the Bridge 1942
