Williams’ work is often the product of the painters’ eyes and the painters’ methods．With a close study of the culture of Williams’ time，his own experience，and his early poetry，a useful sense of the visual arts background to Williams’ early poetry is gained by starting with his earliest poetry and his important early relationships with his mother，who had great artistic talents and once studied art in Paris，his brother Edgar，Ezra Pound，and some painters of his time．

2.1 Williams’ Contact with the Visual Arts

The central importance of the visual in Williams’ poetry is strikingly emphasized in a short article he wrote for The Columbia Review in 1937．He wrote，“Think of the poem as an object，an apple that is red and good to eatT‒‒or a plum that is blue and souro‒‒or better yet，a machine for making bolts．” In 1929，to the question“What is your strongest characteristic？”posed by the editors of The Little Review，Williams replied：“My sight．I like most my ability to be drunk with a sudden realization of value in things others never notice．”With Williams’ emphasis on sight came，not surprisingly，an abiding，life-long interest in the visual arts．

On February 17，1913，the Armory Show opened in New York．In this huge exhibition，the revolutionary European movements in the visual arts，such as Impressionism，Fauvism，Cubism，and Futurism，were introduced to the general American public for the first time，side by side with a comprehensive show of progressive American art．The exhibition was an object of derision and amusement to the vast majority of visitors and critics alike，but it deeply impressed a number of artists and critics，who were increasingly dissatisfied with the triteness and utter conventionality of the established artistic forms．Their main reaction was one of fascination and excitement：The revolutionary European art threw the provincial and conventional character of most of their own products into sharp relief and created in turn an intense hope for an American art of equal temerityf‒‒for an art that would neither ignore what had happened outside America nor withdraw from the crass contemporary world of materialism and science into the creation of spurious idylls based on an anemic idealism．Williams’ own comments on the Armory Show reveal his feeling of hope for an imminent fundamental change：

There was at that time a great surge of interest in the arts generally before the First World War．New York was seething with it．Painting took the lead．We were tinder for Cézanne．I had long been deep in love with the painted canvas through Charles Demuth but that was just the beginning…Then the Armory Show burst upon us，the whole Parisian galaxy，Cézanne at the head，and we were exalted by it．（Au 57）

Beside the show，actually in several ways Williams was deeply influenced by visual arts．Introduced into the world of art through his mother’s still lives，he had shown a keen interest in painting from the beginning．His early friendship with Demuth，whom he met in 1905 in Philadelphia，was the first of several intimate relationships with painters．