March 1, 2013
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Published by The Bee Publishing Company, Newtown, Connecticut
D. Putnam Brinley, who took up the Modernist cause while in Paris,
returned to the United States to create notable works like “The Peony Garden,” circa 1912. It is similar to an Impressionist work, “but the vivid colors,
lack of atmospheric effect and thick, almost sculptural, brushwork show an
affinity with the post-Impressionist paintings of Vincent van Gogh,” says co-curator McCarthy. Virginia
Museum of Fine Arts
INDEXES ON
PAGES 66 & 67
The bold, colorful Fauve works of Henri Matisse, like “Nude in a Wood,”
1906, shocked visitors to the Armory Show and created a firestorm of derision. Nevertheless, the Frenchman’s vivid colors and expressive compositions deeply influenced numerous American painters. Brooklyn Museum
The New Spirit:
American Art In The Armory Show, 1913
BY STEPHEN MAY
MONTCLAIR, N.J. — The best-known and most influential
exhibition ever displayed in America, the International Exhibition of Modern Art — better known as the Armory Show
of 1913 — shook the nation’s art establishment to its core.
Presented at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington
Avenue at 25th Street in Manhattan, the display comprised more than 1,200 works by American and European artists and exposed 100,000 visitors, many for
the first time, to the avant-garde work of Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp and Henri
Matisse. It placed American art in a new perspective; it would never be the same again.
The idea for the show grew out of meetings among four artists — Walt Kuhn,
Elmer MacRae, Jerome Myers and
Henry Fitch Taylor — who established the Association of American Painters and Sculptors
with the mission of
exhibiting art of liv-
ing, progressive artists. Arthur B. Davies, who served as president, soon traveled to Europe with Kuhn to select works of foreign artists.
The centennial of their exhibition is being celebrated by several
shows, led by “The New Spirit: American Art in the Armory
Show, 1913,” on view at the Montclair Art Museum, through
June 16. Co-curated by Montclair’s chief curator Gail Stavitsky
and guest curator Laurette E. McCarthy, it is the first exhibition
to concentrate primarily on the significant role American artists
played in the planning, implementation and critical reception of
the show. As Montclair director Lora S. Urbanelli points out,
“Until now, public attention has focused almost exclusively on
the now famous European participants in the Armory Show, and
American art, which made up two-thirds of the exhibition, has
been relatively overlooked.”
Co-curator McCarthy says the exhibition “seeks to reexamine
and reevaluate many of the accepted ideas about the show in
light of new scholarship and recent discoveries, to dispel some of
the legends surrounding it and to develop a fuller and richer
understanding of this complex, fluid and important event in the
history of American and Modern art.”
Details of the original installation have been recreated in the
display, including burlap wall coverings, decorative pine trees
and yellow streamers overhead, forming a tentlike canopy for
the exhibition space.
Since the organizers of the Armory Show wanted to highlight
( continued on page 64 )
Another Rodin fan, Jo Davidson, was part of Modernist circles in Paris before the Armory Show,
in which he displayed this bronze, “Seated Female,” 1913. It was praised by critic Frank Jewett
Mather as an “adroit and charming sculpture.” The Angerman Collection
AT M O N T C L A I R A R T M U S E U M
64 — Antiques and The Arts Weekly — March 1, 2013
Deeply influenced by Cezanne, as well as his training as an architect, Oscar Bluemner
painted vivid landscapes with simplified, well-defined geometric shapes and bright
colors. “Hackensack River,” circa 1912, offers a precise view of structures in New Jersey. Naples Museum of Art
Chicago artist Manierre Dawson created the only abstract painting by an American in the Armory Show, untitled (Wharf Under
Mountain), 1913. “As the only abstraction by an American artist, it
was likely the most progressive native contribution to the exhibition,” says co-curator Gail Stavitsky. Norton Museum of Art
The New Spirit:
American Art In The Armory Show, 1913
( continued from page 1 )
Responding strongly to the avant-garde, especially
Cezanne and Matisse, during his third trip to
Europe, 1908–1910, Charles Sheeler incorporated
thick slashes of bright color and large elemental
shapes into his paintings. In “Chrysanthemums,”
1912, “The strong, striking, and expressive colors
and the concern for structural form…reveal the
influence of European Modernism,” McCarthy says.
Whitney Museum of American Art
vanguard European work, a key figure was critic and
painter Walter Pach, who lived in France and worked
closely with Davies to assemble a strong European
display. Of interest is Pach’s painting in the show,
“The Wall of the City,” based on visits to Italy, which
“combines the intense hues of post-Impressionism
with the structural geometric forms of Cezanne’s
paintings to create his powerful vision of the wall
hugging the hillside of Arezzo,” in McCarthy’s words.
Among the leading foreign artists represented were
Old Masters like Daumier, Corot, Delacroix, Goya
and Ingres, followed by more recent artists, such as
Cezanne, Gauguin, van Gogh, Manet, Matisse,
Monet, Picasso and Rodin.
Challenging the conservative standards long promoted by such institutions as the National Academy
of Design, these European Modernists startled visitors with their nonrepresentational colors, bold
brushstrokes, dark outlines and fragmented forms.
Critics and the press zeroed in on these avant-garde
works, blasting them as shocking images by wild men
bereft of talent and taste
The popular sensations, caricatured across the
country, were Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase,” a complex of flashing shapes and lines (likened
by one wag to “an explosion in a shingle factory”),
several vivid paintings by Matisse and Brancusi’s
“Mademoiselle Pogany,” her features emerging from
her smooth, white, egg-shaped head (described by one
critic as “a kid’s glass marble placed on a cracker”).
Conservative painter and critic Kenyon Cox decried
the loss of respect for tradition and discipline, calling
Matisse’s drawings the scrawls of a nasty boy. Another critic described Matisse’s work as “monstrous
things…fantastic in drawing, crude in color, absurd
A stalwart of the Cos Cob art colony, Elmer MacRae played a key role as
treasurer of the Armory Show organizing committee and contributed a
characteristically Impressionist work, “Fairy Stories (Fairy Tales),” 1912.
Measuring 283/8 by 361/8 inches, it is in the collection of the Parrish Art
Museum.
and unintelligible.” In Chicago, art students burned
copies of Matisse paintings and a mock trial was conducted, finding the artist guilty of “artistic murder”
and “general aesthetic aberration.”
Traditionalist critic Royal Cortissoz concluded that
Cezanne was an ignoramus, van Gogh a crazy incompetent and Picasso an upstart self-promoter. America’s leading Impressionist, Childe Hassam, viewing
the new trends from Europe with alarm, said, “This is
the age of quacks and quackery, and New York City is
their objective point.”
Other observers adopted a more nuanced tone,
applauding the relative sanity of the American works
compared to the European “freak canvases” that gave
American art “an enviable general air of conservative
worth and good old-fashioned charm.” One critic
hailed the show as providing “shocks to our aesthetic
sense” that “will clear away some of the cobwebs….”
Several writers averred that the Americans held
their own amid the European art.
Some 230 of the works on view were sold. Americans
of all social classes thronged the show in New York
City and in subsequent showings in Chicago and
Boston.
The American section included a few older painters
— Hassam, Alfred Pinkham Ryder, J. Alden Weir and
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, a number of The
Eight, such older Modernists as Oscar Bluemner and
Alfred Maurer, and a group of progressive younger
men, including Patrick Henry Bruce, Arthur B. Carles,
Stuart Davis, Marsden Hartley, Edward Hopper,
John Marin and Charles Sheeler. Women artists,
notably Katherine S. Dreier, Ethel Myers, Agnes Pelton and Marguerite Zorach, constituted 20 percent of
the nearly 200 American artists in the show.
While the work of the Americans was hardly shocking, much of it reflected post-Impressionist, Fauvist
Painted when he was 29, Edward Hopper’s “Sailing,” 1911, featured the boldly simplified style that became his hallmark. It was the first painting he ever
sold. Carnegie Museum of Art
March 1, 2013 — Antiques and The Arts Weekly — 65
Marsden Hartley’s immersion in European Modernism and his admiration for Cezanne infuse
his richly painted “Still Life No. 1,” 1912. He,
along with other American artists, was exposed
to the avant-garde at the famous salons of
Gertrude Stein and her brother in Paris. Columbus Museum of Art
Robert Henri, the charismatic leader of the Ashcan School, earned praise for his vigorously
painted “The Spanish Gypsy,” 1912. One critic
wrote that it “glows with smoldering color.” Metropolitan Museum of Art
and Cubist influences transplanted to American subjects. As co-curator Stavitsky puts it, revisiting the
Armory Show puts to rest the “myth” that American
art “was a relative monolith of conservatism. In fact,
American art on view was vastly diverse — in media,
style, gender and age. The untold story of the Armory
Show is that it in fact displayed the dynamism and
diversity of American visual art.”
The Eight were represented by works ranging from
William Glackens’s depiction of his family to Robert
Henri’s expansively painted “The Spanish Gypsy” to
John Sloan’s depictions of working-class girls drying
their hair on a tenement roof and the male milieu of
McSorley’s Bar, as well as a series of graphic etchings
of contemporary life.
To be sure, a number of the American works were of
a conventional, often Impressionist nature: D. Putnam Brinley’s flower-strewn “The Peony Garden,”
Dreier’s “The Blue Bowl,” Hopper’s “Sailing,” Jonas
Lie’s “The Black Teapot” and MacRae’s “Fairy Stories.”
American Modernists, who had adapted European
avant-garde ideas to American scenes, were well represented by a diverse group. German-born Bluemner’s
architectural training and affinity for Cezanne influenced the precise lines and pure colors of “Hackensack River.” Bruce’s still lifes reflected the influence
of Cezanne and presaged the geometric forms to
come.
Carles’s boldly painted church offered few hints of
the colorful abstractions that lay ahead. Nor did
Davis’s sketchily painted watercolor, “Romance/The
Doctor” suggest the bold abstractions that defined his
later career.
A sleeper standout was Edward Middleton Manigault’s Expressionist painting of ghostly figures in a
Symbolist landscape. Sheeler’s lush, Cezannesque
“Chrysanthemums” augured well for a distinguished
career.
An artist little known today, Manierre Dawson,
stood out for his forcefully delineated abstract composition of a wharf under a mountain, “the only
abstraction by an American artist,” says Stavitsky.
Also in the vanguard of the avant-garde were Marin’s
staccato, dynamic watercolors of churches and skyscrapers that reflected the energy and movement of
early Twentieth Century Manhattan.
The most important Modernist of them all, Marsden
Hartley, was represented by several richly painted
still lifes and a series of drawings that suggested the
strong and expressive work that lay ahead.
Since venues for American sculptors to display and
sell their works prior to the Armory Show were limited, their presence in the exhibition was vital for that
medium. Although the American work was not as
radical as Brancusi and other Europeans, “it was not
at all academic or traditional,” observes McCarthy.
Among the highlights were Rodinesque pieces by
Chester Beach and Jo Davidson and figure studies by
Ashcan School pioneers Abastenia St Leger Eberle
and Myers.
All in all, curators Stavitsky and McCarthy make a
good case for the vitality and quality of the American
works that for so long have been overshadowed by
the hoopla over the European avant-garde art at the
Armory Show. It was indeed a landmark in the development of American art, but many of the nation’s
finest artists were already “keenly aware of European Modernism and adapted its technique to their
art” 100 years ago, concludes McCarthy.
An interesting complementary exhibition, “Modernizing America: Artists of the Armory Show,” is on
view at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington,
N.Y., through April 14. Drawn from the museum’s
permanent collection, it features works created
before, during and after the 1913 extravaganza by
William Glackens’s monumental “Family Group,” 1910–1911, displays
his conversion to the high-keyed palette of Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
Measuring nearly 6 by 7 feet, it was described by one observer as “a
scream of color.” National Gallery of Art
Kathleen McEnery reflected her exposure to Modernism during her two years in Paris in “Going to
the Bath,” circa 1905–1913, with its flattened forms,
strong lines and bold palette. As McCarthy
observes, “This vision of two large, full-length
female nudes placed in a shallow space, with one
boldly confronting the viewer, must have been
seen as quite daring for the time.” Smithsonian
American Art Museum
artists who participated in the show. Included are
examples by older artists of The Ten and the Ashcan
School; painters like Hartley, Marin, Maurer and
Prendergast, who were already steeped in European
Modernism, and younger artists who were greatly
influenced by the European works at the exhibition,
such as Davis, Sheeler and Joseph Stella. As the
Heckscher organizers observe, “While the impact of
the Armory Show varied, one thing was certain: as a
reporter from The Globe declared, ‘American art will
never be the same again.’”
The Heckscher is also exhibiting “Mirrored Images:
Realism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries”
that explores realist movements from the French
Barbizon group through the Hudson River School
and the Ashcan School leading up to the Armory
Show.
The Montclair is also be exhibiting “Oscar Bluemner’s
America: Picturing Patterson, New Jersey” through
June 16.
The 160-page Montclair exhibition catalog is lavishly illustrated and contains insightful essays by cocurators Stavitsky and McCarthy. Distributed by
Penn State University Press for Montclair, it sells for
$29.95, hardcover. The museum is at 3 South Mountain Avenue. For information, or 973-746-5555
www.montclairartmuseum.org.
At 19, one of the youngest participating artists, Stuart Davis reflected his
training under Robert Henri in this 1912 watercolor, “Romance/The Doctor.”
After seeing the art of Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso at the Armory Show, he
abandoned Realism for a Modernist manner of simplified, flat, overlapping
forms. Collection of Earl Davis