Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Answers.com

Armory Show

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Armory Show
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Britannica Concise Encyclopedia

Exhibition of painting and sculpture held in 1913 at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City. Conceived by its organizers, the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, as a selection of works exclusively by U.S. artists, it evolved into a comprehensive look at current European art movements, due in part to the advanced vision of association president Arthur B. Davies. Of the 1,300 works assembled, one-third were European, tracing the evolution of modern art from Francisco de Goya to Marcel Duchamp and Vasily Kandinsky, with works representative of Impressionism, Symbolism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism. Perhaps the most controversial work was Duchamp's nearly abstract Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912). The U.S. artists featured were mainly members of the Ash Can school and The Eight. The show exposed the American public for the first time to advanced European art; American art suffered by contrast. The exhibition traveled to Chicago and Boston, establishing itself as a decisive event in the development of U.S. art and art collecting.

For more information on Armory Show, visit Britannica.com.

Search unanswered questions...

Enter a question here...
Search: All sources Community Q&A Reference topics

US History Encyclopedia: Armory Show
Top
Home > Library > History, Politics & Society > US History Encyclopedia

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a group of artists formed a loosely affiliated school of thought that centered on creating works of art that presented a realistic portrayal of everyday life. Often called "The Eight," or the Ashcan School, the group (George Luks, William Glackens, John Sloan, Everett Shinn, Arthur B. Davies, Maurice Prendergast, Ernest Lawson, and George Bellows) painted with a journalistic approach, portraying the grit and seedy elements of society. Critics and academics were outraged by the Ashcan School and declared the work vulgar.

Despite the negative critical response, the Ashcan artists gained a following. They held their first public exhibition in 1908, followed by a second show two years later. The second exhibition caused such a sensation that riot police had to subdue the crowd. The notoriety only increased the group's popularity.

The Ashcan School reached its apex in February 1913 when, in conjunction with the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, it staged the Armory Show, by some accounts the most important exhibit ever held in the United States. More than 300 artists were represented with a collection of 1,600 paintings, sculpture, and decorative works. The Armory Show shocked the public by showcasing the outrageous styles adopted by The Eight and vanguard European artists—styles such as Symbolism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, and Futurism. European participants included Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Cezanne, and Henri Matisse, among others—many whose work was being seen for the first time in the United States. The groundbreaking show launched the term "modern art" and changed the course of American art.

Located in New York City, the Armory provided an enormous space to hold an art exhibition. Since it had no internal walls, organizers used screens covered in fireproof burlap to divide the giant space into eighteen octagonal rooms, each decorated with pine branches and live potted trees.

One of the most sensational pieces at the exhibit was Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase. Critics viewed it as the single representation of all that was wrong with avant-garde European art, particularly Cubism, Impressionism, and Futurism. Critics also denounced other French artists, particularly Matisse, for painting in a manner that seemed to defy common sense. Later, when the show traveled to Chicago, art students burned Matisse in effigy. Despite the critical turmoil, more than 500,000 people viewed the Armory Show in New York, Chicago, and Boston.

Bibliography

Braider, Donald. George Bellows and the Ashcan School of Painting. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971.

Hughes, Robert. American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America. New York: Knopf, 1997.

Mendelowitz, Daniel M. A History of American Art. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.

Perlman, Bennard B. Painters of the Ashcan School: The Immortal Eight. New York: Dover, 1988.

Shi, David E. Facing Facts: Realism in American Thought and Culture, 1850–1920. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

—Bob Batchelor

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Armory Show
Top
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Columbia Encyclopedia
Armory Show, international exhibition of modern art held in 1913 at the 69th-regiment armory in New York City. It was a sensational introduction of modern art into the United States. The estimated 1,600 works included paintings representing avant-garde movements in Europe. Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase was singled out by the hostile critics as emblematic of the so-called insanity and degeneracy of the new art. One of the most important exhibitions of art ever held in the United States, the Armory Show aroused the curiosity of the public and helped to change the direction of American painting.

Bibliography

See M. Brown, The Story of the Armory Show (1963, repr. 1988).

Wikipedia: Armory Show
Top
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Wikipedia
See also The Armory Show (art fair).


Armory Show poster. 1913.

Many exhibitions have been held in the vast spaces of U.S. National Guard armories, but the Armory Show refers to the International Exhibition of Modern Art that was organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors and opened in New York City's 69th Regiment Armory, on Lexington Avenue between 25th and 26th Streets, on February 17, 1913, ran to March 15, and became a legendary watershed date in the history of American art, introducing astonished New Yorkers, accustomed to realistic art, to modern art. The show served as a catalyst for American artists, who became more independent and created their own "artistic language".

Contents

History

"A Slight Attack of Third Dimentia Brought on by Excessive Study of the Much Talked of Cubist Pictures in the International Exhibition at New York," drawn by John French Sloan in April 1913.

The Armory Show, was the first exhibition mounted by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors and was run by their president, Arthur B. Davies, Walt Kuhn the secretary and Walter Pach. It displayed some 1,250 paintings, sculptures, and decorative works by over 300 avant-garde European and American artists. Impressionist, Fauvist, and Cubist works were represented.[1]

News reports and reviews were filled with accusations of quackery, insanity, immorality, and anarchy, as well as parodies, caricatures, doggerels and mock exhibitions. About the modern works, President Theodore Roosevelt declared, "That's not art!" The civil authorities did not, however, close down, or otherwise interfere with, the show.

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. An art critic for the New York Times wrote that the work resembled "an explosion in a shingle factory," and cartoonists satirized the piece.

However, 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.

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.

The exhibition went on to show in Chicago and Boston.

Partial list of the artists

Robert Ingersoll Aitken, Alexander Archipenko, George Grey Barnard, Chester Beach, Gifford Beal, George Bellows, Joseph Bernard, Guy Pène du Bois, Oscar Bluemner, Pierre Bonnard, Gutzon Borglum, Antoine Bourdelle, Constantin Brancusi, Georges Braque, Patrick Henry Bruce, Paul Burlin, Charles Camoin, Arthur Carles, Mary Cassatt, Paul Cézanne, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, Henri-Edmond Cross, Leon Dabo, Andrew Dasburg, Honoré Daumier, Stuart Davis, Arthur B. Davies, Edgar Degas, Eugène Delacroix, Robert Delaunay, Maurice Denis, André Derain, Marcel Duchamp, Raoul Dufy, Jacob Epstein, Roger de La Fresnaye, Othon Friesz, Paul Gauguin, William Glackens, Albert Gleizes, Vincent van Gogh, Marsden Hartley, Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, Edward Hopper, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, James Innes, Augustus John, Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Leon Kroll, Walt Kuhn, Gaston Lachaise, Marie Laurencin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Fernand Léger, Jonas Lie, George Luks, Aristide Maillol, Édouard Manet, Henri Manguin, John Marin, Albert Marquet, Henri Matisse, Alfred Henry Maurer, Claude Monet, Adolphe Monticelli, Edward Munch, Walter Pach, Jules Pascin, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, Maurice Prendergast, Odilon Redon, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Theodore Robinson, Georges Rouault, Henri Rousseau, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Georges Seurat, Charles Sheeler, Walter Sickert, Paul Signac, Alfred Sisley, John Sloan, Joseph Stella, John Henry Twachtman, Félix Vallotton, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Jacques Villon, Édouard Vuillard, Abraham Walkowitz, J. Alden Weir, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Jack B. Yeats, William Zorach, Amadeo de Souza Cardoso [2]

Legacy

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 New York City's 69th Regiment Armory, on Lexington Avenue between 25th and 26th Streets as an homage to the original and historical 1913 Armory show.[3][4]

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. The exhibition began as a historical homage to the original 1913 Armory Show. Starting with a small exhibition in 1994, by 2001, the "New" New York Armory Show, held in piers on the Hudson River, evolved into a "hugely entertaining" (New York Times) annual contemporary arts festival with a strong commercial bent. The 2008 and 2009 Armory Shows did not hold back on the more crude and vulgar works, which are not unknown for the show, which has been less tame in past years.

See also

References

  1. ^ 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.
  2. ^ 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
  3. ^ [1]Vehicle, online, retrieved September 25, 2008
  4. ^ [2] documents, history online, retrieved September 25, 2008

Sources

  • Sarah Douglas. "Pier Pressure." ARTINFO. March 26, 2008 Accessed on 15 April 2008 from http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/27204/pier-pressure/
  • Catalogue of International Exhibition of Modern Art, at the Armory of the Sixty-Ninth Infantry, Feb. 15 to Mar. 15, 1913. Association of American Painters and Sculptors, 1913.
  • The Story of the Armory Show. Walt Kuhn. New York, 1938.
  • The Story of the Armory Show. Milton W. Brown. 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.
  • Malloy, Nancy and Stover, Catherine. A Finding Aid to the Walter Pach Papers, 1883–1980, in the Archives of American Art. The Walter Pach Papers Online, Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

External links

1913 Armory Show

Armory shows after 1913

Coordinates: 40°44′28.44″N 73°59′00.54″W / 40.7412333°N 73.9834833°W / 40.7412333; -73.9834833


This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

Copyrights:

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
US History Encyclopedia. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Armory Show".  Read more