Wild Beasts of the Art World- Happy 100th Birthday: Looking back at the 1913 Armory Show

With the help of the New York Times recent article, The 1913 Armory Show,  travel back to 1913. 

"You are in New York City, not yet the world cultural capital. It’s a seething, manic place, with a powerful but provincial population. Wall Street is challenging London’s dominance of the international stock market, and finishing touches are being put on the highest high-rise on the planet, the Woolworth Building, in Lower Manhattan. 

But beneath the cheers and the whir of machines, there is another sound: shouting, as 10,000 women demanding the vote march down Fifth Avenue, and a mass protest by striking mill workers fills Madison Square Garden to the explosion point. At one time, a New Yorker rattled by noise and change could seek solace in art, in the visual smoothness and moral sureties of, say, Gilded Age painting, with its lush landscapes, classical tableaus and teatime interiors. Now, suddenly, that option was being all but closed.

Duchamp "Nude descending a staircase".
Painted 100 years ago, yet ahead of its
time by 100 years or more.

On Feb. 17, 1913, an act of cultural sabotage called the International Exhibition of Modern Art, or the Armory Show, hit the 69th Regiment Armory on East 26th Street, lodging there for nearly a month. Installed in a sequence of temporary rooms, the show revealed horror after grating horror in the form of up-to-the-minute European paintings and sculptures by the likes of Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp and Henri Matisse.... 
New York had never seen anything like it."

Matisse's "Blue Nude" startling& stunning as it was in 1913

 

  

The New York Historical Society's exhibit The Armory Show at 100 runs October 11, 2013 - February 23, 2014.  For what you can expect to see, take a look at NewYorkled.com and to set the context to travel back in time, read this fine piece by the New Criterion The Armory Show at 100.