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File:ArmoryShow poster.jpg
Armory Show poster

The 1913 Armory Show, also known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art, was organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors. It was the first large exhibition of modern art in America, as well as one of the many exhibitions that have been held in the vast spaces of U.S. National Guard armories.

The three-city exhibition started in New York City's 69th Regiment Armory, on Lexington Avenue between 25th and 26th Streets, from February 17 until March 15, 1913.<ref name="Cotter"/> The exhibition went on to the Art Institute of Chicago and then to The Copley Society of Art in Boston,<ref name="aaa.si.edu">International Exhibition of Modern Art, catalogue cover, Copley Society of Boston, Copley Hall, Boston, Mass., 1913</ref> where, due to a lack of space, all the work by American artists was removed.<ref name="Brown, Milton W. 1963, pp. 185">Brown, Milton W. The Story of the Armory Show, Joseph H. Hirshhorn Foundation, New York, 1963, pp. 185–186</ref>

The show became an important event in the history of American art, introducing Americans, who were accustomed to realistic art, to the experimental styles of the European avant garde, including Fauvism and Cubism. The show served as a catalyst for American artists, who became more independent and created their own "artistic language".

"The origins of the show lie in the emergence of progressive groups and independent exhibitions in the early 20th century (with significant French precedents), which challenged the aesthetic ideals, exclusionary policies, and authority of the National Academy of Design, while expanding exhibition and sales opportunities, enhancing public knowledge, and enlarging audiences for contemporary art."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

HistoryEdit

File:Sloan cubism.jpg
A drawing by John French Sloan titled "A slight attack of third Template:As written brought on by excessive study of the much-talked of cubist pictures in the International Exhibition at New York.", April 1913
File:Walter Pach, circa 1909.jpg
Exhibition organizer Walter Pach, circa 1909
File:Arthur B. Davies, circa 1908.jpg
Exhibition organizer Arthur B. Davies, circa 1908

On December 14, 1911, an early meeting of what would become the Association of American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS) was organized at Madison Gallery in New York. Four artists met to discuss the contemporary art scene in the United States, and the possibilities of organizing exhibitions of progressive artworks by living American and foreign artists, favoring works ignored or rejected by current exhibitions. The meeting included Henry Fitch Taylor, Jerome Myers, Elmer Livingston MacRae and Walt Kuhn.<ref>1913 Armory Show, The Story in Primary Sources (Timeline)</ref>

In January 1912, Walt Kuhn, Walter Pach, and Arthur B. Davies joined with some two dozen of their colleagues to reinforce a professional coalition: AAPS. They intended the organization to "lead the public taste in art, rather than follow it".<ref name=AskArt>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Other founding AAPS members included D. Putnam Brinley, Gutzon Borglum, John Frederick Mowbray-Clarke, Leon Dabo, William J. Glackens, Ernest Lawson, Jonas Lie, George Luks, Karl Anderson, James E.Fraser, Allen Tucker, and J. Alden Weir.<ref name=AskArt /> AAPS was to be dedicated to creating new exhibition opportunities for young artists outside of the existing academic boundaries, as well as to providing educational art experiences for the American public.<ref name="Cotter">Template:Cite news</ref> Davies served as president of AAPS, with Kuhn acting as secretary.Template:Citation needed

The AAPS members spent more than a year planning their first project: the International Exhibition of Modern Art, a show of giant proportions, unlike any New York had seen. The 69th Regiment Armory was settled on as the main site for the exhibition in the spring of 1912, rented for a fee of $5,000, plus an additional $500 for additional personnel.<ref name=securingspace>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> It was confirmed that the show would later travel to Chicago and Boston.Template:Citation needed

Once the space had been secured, the most complicated planning task was selecting the art for the show, particularly after the decision was made to include a large proportion of vanguard European work, most of which had never been seen by an American audience.<ref name="Cotter" /> In September 1912, Kuhn left for an extended collecting tour through Europe, including stops at cities in England, Germany, the Netherlands, and France, visiting galleries, collections and studios and contracting for loans as he went.<ref name=kuhntravel>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> While in Paris Kuhn met up with Pach, who knew the art scene there intimately, and was friends with Marcel Duchamp and Henri Matisse; Davies joined them there in November 1912.<ref name="Cotter" /> Together they secured three paintings that would end up being among the Armory Show's most famous and polarizing: Matisse's Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra) and Madras Rouge (Red Madras Headdress), and Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2. Only after Davies and Kuhn returned to New York in December did they issue an invitation for American artists to participate.<ref name="Cotter" />

Pach was the only American artist to be closely affiliated with the Section d'Or group of artists, including Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Duchamp brothers Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Jacques Villon and others. Pach was responsible for securing loans from these painters for the Armory Show. Most of the artists in Paris who sent works to the Armory Show knew Pach personally and entrusted their works to him.<ref name="Pach">Laurette E. McCarthy, Walter Pach, Walter Pach (1883–1958), The Armory Show and the Untold Story of Modern Art in America, Penn State Press, 2011</ref> The Armory Show was the first, and ultimately the only exhibition mounted by the AAPS.

In 1913, the art collector and lawyer John Quinn fought to overturn censorship laws restricting modern art and literature from entering the United States. He convinced the United States Congress to overturn the 1909 Payne–Aldrich Tariff Act, which retained the duty on foreign works of art less than 20 years old, discouraging Americans from collecting modern European art. Quinn opened the Armory Show exhibition with the words:<templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />

... it was time the American people had an opportunity to see and judge for themselves concerning the work of the Europeans who are creating a new art.<ref>"Bloomsday: Court finds Ulysses obscene", New York Irish Arts, June 23, 2012.</ref>{{#if:|{{#if:|}}

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The Armory Show displayed some 1,300 paintings, sculptures, and decorative works by over 300 avant-garde European and American artists. Impressionist, Fauvist, and Cubist works were represented.<ref>McShea, Megan, A Finding Aid to the Walt Kuhn Family Papers and Armory Show Records, 1859–1978 (bulk 1900–1949), Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.</ref> The publicity that stormed the show had been well sought, with the publication of half-tone postcards of 57 works, including the Duchamp nude that would become its most infamous.<ref name="Andress"/> News reports and reviews were filled with accusations of quackery, insanity, immorality, and anarchy, as well as parodies, caricatures, doggerels, and mock exhibitions. Some responded with laughter, as the artist John French Sloan seemed to not take the exhibition seriously in his published cartoon, "A slight attack of third Template:As written brought on by excessive study of the much-talked of cubist pictures in the International Exhibition at New York".<ref>Blanke, David. The 1910s. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002. p. 275. Template:ISBN</ref> About the modern works, former President Theodore Roosevelt declared, "That's not art!"<ref>Theodore Roosevelt's review of the Armory Show for The Outlook, published on March 29, 1913, was entitled "A Layman's View of an Art Exhibition". See Edmund Morris, Colonel Roosevelt (Random House, New York, 2010; Template:ISBN), pages 267–272 and 660–663. According to Morris, Roosevelt's review looked with some favor upon the new American artists.</ref> The civil authorities did not, however, close down or otherwise interfere with the show.Template:Citation needed

Among the scandalously radical works of art, pride of place goes to Marcel Duchamp's cubist/futurist style Nude Descending a Staircase, painted the year before, in which he expressed motion with successive superimposed images, as in motion pictures. Julian Street, an art critic, wrote that the work resembled "an explosion in a shingle factory" (this quote is also attributed to Joel Spingarn<ref>Joel Spingarn, p. 110</ref>), and cartoonists satirized the piece. Gutzon Borglum, one of the early organizers of the show who for a variety of reasons withdrew both his organizational prowess and his work, labeled this piece A staircase descending a nude, while J. F. Griswold, a writer for the New York Evening Sun, entitled it The rude descending a staircase (Rush hour in the subway).<ref>Brown, Milton W., The Story of the Armory Show, Joseph H Hirshhorn Foundation, New York, 1963, p. 110</ref> The painting was purchased from the Armory Show by Frederic C. Torrey of San Francisco.<ref>xroads. Univ. of Virginia</ref>

The purchase of Paul Cézanne's Hill of the Poor (View of the Domaine Saint-Joseph) by the Metropolitan Museum of Art signaled an integration of modernism into the established New York museums, but among the younger artists represented, Cézanne was already an established master.Template:Citation needed

Duchamp's brother, who went by the "nom de guerre" Jacques Villon, also exhibited, sold all his Cubist drypoint etchings, and struck a sympathetic chord with New York collectors who supported him in the following decades.Template:Citation needed

The exhibition went on to show at the Art Institute of Chicago and then to The Copley Society of Art in Boston,<ref name="aaa.si.edu"/> where, due to a lack of space, all the work by American artists was removed.<ref name="Brown, Milton W. 1963, pp. 185"/>

While in Chicago, the exhibition created a scandal that reached the governor's office. Several articles in the press recounted the issue. In one newspaper the headline read: Cubist Art Will be Investigated; Illinois Legislative Investigators to Probe the Moral Tone of the Much Touted Art:

<templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />

Chicago, April 2: Charges that the international exhibition of cubist and futurist pictures, now being displayed here at the art institute, contains many indecent canvasses and sculptures will be investigated at once by the Illinois legislature white slave commission. A visit of an investigator to the show and his report on the pictures caused Lieutenant Governor Barratt O'Hara to order an immediate examination of the entire exhibition. Mr. O'Hara sent the investigator to look over the pictures after he had received many complaints of the character of the show. "We will not condemn the international exhibit without an impartial investigation," said the lieutenant governor today. "I have received many complaints, however, and we owe it to the public that the subject be looked into thoroughly." The investigator reported that a number of the pictures were "immoral and suggestive". Senators Woodward and Beall of the commission will visit the exhibition today.{{#if: Ottumwa Tri-Weekly Courier, Iowa, 3 April 1913<ref>Cubist Art Will be Investigated; Illinois legislative Investigators to Probe the Moral Tone of the Much Touted Art, Ottumwa Tri-Weekly Courier (Ottumwa, Iowa), 3 April 1913. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress</ref>|{{#if:|}}

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Floor planEdit

File:Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon in the garden of Villon's studio, Puteaux, France, c.1913.jpg
Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and Villon's dog Pipe in the garden of Villon's studio, Puteaux, France, Template:Circa. All three brothers were included in the exhibition.

The following shows the content of each gallery:<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • Gallery A: American Sculpture and Decorative Art
  • Gallery B: American Paintings and Sculpture
  • Gallery C, D, E, F: American Paintings
  • Gallery G: English, Irish and German Paintings and Drawings
  • Gallery H, I: French Painting and Sculpture
  • Gallery J: French Paintings, Water Colors and Drawings
  • Gallery K: French and American Water Colors, Drawings, etc.
  • Gallery L: American Water Colors, Drawings, etc.
  • Gallery M: American Paintings
  • Gallery N: American Paintings and Sculpture
  • Gallery O: French Paintings
  • Gallery P: French, English, Dutch and American Paintings
  • Gallery Q: French Paintings
  • Gallery R: French, English and Swiss Paintings

LegacyEdit

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The original exhibition was an overwhelming success. There have been several exhibitions that were celebrations of its legacy throughout the 20th century.<ref name="50th"/>

In 1944 the Cincinnati Art Museum mounted a smaller version, in 1958 Amherst College held an exhibition of 62 works, 41 of which were in the original show, and in 1963 the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York, organized the "1913 Armory Show 50th Anniversary Exhibition" sponsored by the Henry Street Settlement in New York, which included more than 300 works.<ref name="50th"/>

Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) was officially launched by the engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer and the artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman when they collaborated in 1966 and together organized 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering, a series of performance art presentations that united artists and engineers. Ten artists worked with more than 30 engineers to produce art performances incorporating new technology. The performances were held in the 69th Regiment Armory, as an homage to the original and historical 1913 Armory show.<ref>Vehicle, online. Retrieved September 25, 2008.</ref><ref>documents, history online. Retrieved September 25, 2008.</ref>

In February 2009, the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) presented its 21st annual Art Show to benefit the Henry Street Settlement, at the Seventh Regiment Armory, located between 66th and 67th Streets and Park and Lexington Avenues in New York City.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The exhibition began as a historical homage to the original 1913 Armory Show.Template:Citation needed

Starting with a small exhibition in 1994, by 2001 The Armory Show, now held at the Javits Center, evolved into a "hugely entertaining" (The New York Times) annual contemporary arts festival with a strong commercial bent.Template:Citation needed

Commemorating the centennialEdit

Many exhibitions in 2013 celebrated the 100th anniversary of the 1913 Armory Show, as well as a number of publications, virtual exhibitions, and programs. The first exhibition, "The New Spirit: American Art in the Armory Show, 1913," opened at the Montclair Art Museum on February 17, 2013, a hundred years to the day from the original.<ref name="Cotter" /> The second exhibition was organized by the New-York Historical Society and titled "The Armory Show at 100," taking place from October 18, 2013, through February 23, 2014.<ref name=NYHS>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, which lent dozens of historic documents to both the New York Historical Society and Montclair for the exhibitions, created an online timeline of events, 1913 Armory Show: the Story in Primary Sources, to showcase the records and documents created by the show's organizers.<ref name=armoryshow>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Showing contemporary work, a third exhibition, The Fountain Art Fair, was held at the 69th Regiment Armory itself during the 100th anniversary during March 8–10, 2013. The ethos of Fountain Art Fair was inspired by Duchamp's famous "Fountain" which was the symbol of the Fair.<ref name="Fountain Art Fair">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The Art Institute of Chicago, which was the only museum to host the 1913 Armory Show, presented works February 20 – May 12, 2013, the items drawn from the museum's modern collection that were displayed in the original 1913 exhibition.<ref name="The Art Institute of Chicago">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The DePaul Art Museum in Chicago, Illinois presented For and Against Modern Art: The Armory Show +100, from April 4 to June 16, 2013.<ref name="DePaul Art Museum">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The International Print Center in New York held an exhibition, "1913 Armory Show Revisited: the Artists and their Prints," of prints from the show or by artists whose work in other media was included.<ref name="Andress">Andress, Sarah. "1913 Armory Show Revisited: The Artists and their Prints," Art in Print Vol. 3 No. 2 (July–August 2013).</ref>

In addition, the Greenwich Historical Society presented The New Spirit and the Cos Cob Art Colony: Before and After the Armory Show, from October 9, 2013, through January 12, 2014. The show focused on the effects of the Armory Show on the Cos Cob Art Colony, and highlighted the involvement of artists such as Elmer Livingston MacRae and Henry Fitch Taylor in producing the show.<ref>Greenwich Historical Society</ref>

American filmmaker Michael Maglaras produced a documentary film about the Armory Show entitled, The Great Confusion: The 1913 Armory Show. The film premiered on September 26, 2013, at the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, Connecticut.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

List of artistsEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Below is a partial list of the artists in the show. These artists are all listed in the 50th anniversary catalog as having exhibited in the original 1913 Armory show.<ref name="50th">1913 Armory Show 50th Anniversary Exhibition 1963 copyright and organized by Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, copyright and sponsored by the Henry Street Settlement, New York City, Library of Congress card number 63-13993</ref> Template:Div col

List of women artistsEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Women artists in the Armory Show includes those from the United States and from Europe. Approximately a fifth of the artists showing at the armory were women, many of whom have since been neglected.<ref name=Dissertation>Template:Cite book</ref>

ImagesEdit

File:A list written by Pablo Picasso of European artists to be included in the 1913 Armory Show, 1912. Walt Kuhn family papers, and Armory Show records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.jpg
A list written in 1912 by Pablo Picasso of European artists he felt should be included in the 1913 Armory Show. This document dispels the assertion that an unbridgeable divide separated the Salon Cubists from the Gallery Cubists. Walt Kuhn family papers and Armory Show records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Selected painting and sculptureEdit

Special installationEdit

La Maison Cubiste (Cubist House)Edit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}}

File:Raymond Duchamp-Villon, 1912, Projet d'hôtel, Maquette de la façade de la Maison Cubiste, published in Les Peintres Cubistes, 1913.jpg
Raymond Duchamp-Villon, 1912, Study for La Maison Cubiste, Projet d'Hotel (Cubist House), plaster, H. 3 meters by W. 10 meters. Image published in Les Peintres Cubistes, by Guillaume Apollinaire, March 17, 1913.

At the 1912 Salon d'Automne an architectural installation was exhibited that quickly became known as Maison Cubiste (Cubist House), signed Raymond Duchamp-Villon and André Mare along with a group of collaborators. Metzinger and Gleizes in Du "Cubisme", written during the assemblage of the "Maison Cubiste", wrote about the autonomous nature of art, stressing the point that decorative considerations should not govern the spirit of art. Decorative work, to them, was the "antithesis of the picture". "The true picture" wrote Metzinger and Gleizes, "bears its raison d'être within itself. It can be moved from a church to a drawing-room, from a museum to a study. Essentially independent, necessarily complete, it need not immediately satisfy the mind: on the contrary, it should lead it, little by little, towards the fictitious depths in which the coordinative light resides. It does not harmonize with this or that ensemble; it harmonizes with things in general, with the universe: it is an organismTemplate:Nbsp...".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> "Mare's ensembles were accepted as frames for Cubist works because they allowed paintings and sculptures their independence", writes Christopher Green, "creating a play of contrasts, hence the involvement not only of Gleizes and Metzinger themselves, but of Marie Laurencin, the Duchamp brothers (Raymond Duchamp-Villon designed the facade) and Mare's old friends Léger and Roger La Fresnaye".<ref>Christopher Green, Art in France: 1900–1940, Chapter 8, Modern Spaces; Modern Objects; Modern People, 2000</ref> La Maison Cubiste was a fully furnished house, with a staircase, wrought iron banisters, a living room—the Salon Bourgeois, where paintings by Marcel Duchamp, Metzinger (Woman with a Fan), Gleizes, Laurencin and Léger were hung—and a bedroom. It was an example of L'art décoratif, a home within which Cubist art could be displayed in the comfort and style of modern, bourgeois life. Spectators at the Salon d'Automne passed through the full-scale 10-by-3-meter plaster model of the ground floor of the facade, designed by Duchamp-Villon.<ref>La Maison Cubiste, 1912 Template:Webarchive</ref> This architectural installation was subsequently exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show, New York, Chicago and Boston,<ref>Kubistische werken op de Armory Show</ref> listed in the catalogue of the New York exhibit as Raymond Duchamp-Villon, number 609, and entitled "Facade architectural, plaster" (Façade architecturale).<ref>Duchamp-Villon's Façade architecturale, 1913</ref><ref>"Catalogue of international exhibition of modern art: at the Armory of the Sixty-ninth Infantry, 1913, Duchamp-Villon, Raymond, Facade Architectural</ref>

SourcesEdit

  • Sarah Douglas. "Pier Pressure." March 26, 2008. Archived on April 11, 2008.
  • Catalogue of International Exhibition of Modern Art, at the Armory of the Sixty-Ninth Infantry, Feb 15 to March 15, 1913. Association of American Painters and Sculptors, 1913.
  • Walt Kuhn. The Story of the Armory Show. New York, 1938.
  • Milton W. Brown. The Story of the Armory Show. Joseph H. Hirshhorn Foundation, distributed by New York Graphic Society, 1963. [republished by Abbeville Press, 1988.]
  • 1913 Armory Show 50th Anniversary Exhibition. Text by Milton W. Brown. Utica: Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, 1963.
  • Walter Pach Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
  • Walt Kuhn, Kuhn Family Papers, and Armory Show Records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

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External linksEdit

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1913 Armory ShowEdit

Armory shows after 1913Edit

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