One hundred years ago this month, a New York City artist named Arthur B. Davies crossed town and signed a contract with Colonel Louis D. Conley, commander of the 69th Regiment, National Guard, known as the “Fighting Irish.”
The colonel controlled the vast Armory building in mid-Manhattan, and with the deal, the greatest modern art exhibition in America was on its way. This was the International Exhibition of Modern Art, put on a year later (February 1913) by the short-lived Association of American Painters and Sculptors. Today we know it as the 1913 Armory Show, the launch of modern art in America.
The anniversary awaits us in early 2013, and the ways it will be celebrated, dissected, or capitalized upon remain to be seen. Looking back through all the mists of glory, however, it’s always worthwhile to consider the humble, happenstance, all-too-human origins of such events.
Several months before Davies made the down payment (from his own pocket), four other artists had been milling around one day in a gallery with no visitors. Clearly, they agreed, young artists in the U.S. needed a boost. They needed a “modern” artist association that would throw a big, big exhibit. This was the seed of the Armory show idea.
At the time, almost no modern art galleries held forth in New York City. The reigning group was the conservative National Academy of Design, and the only resistance to it was photographer Alfred Stieglitz’s obscure 291 Gallery and a group of talented and scrappy painters called “the Eight” or the “Ash Can School.” They were modern in their loose-style painting of every-day life and in holding left-wing social views.
The four artists who wanted to challenge the National Academy would soon find out how difficult it was to organize any group of artists. But their plan to challenge the National Academy earned immediate and favorable press coverage. Indeed, thereafter, newspaper coverage, and the controversy it thrives upon, is what propelled the Armory show into the history books.
As would be seen, a single painting at the Armory Show almost singlehandedly guaranteed a nation-wide press storm: that was the French artist Marcel Duchamp’s cubist-biomorphic painting, “Nude Descending a Staircase,” a title that was more important than even the image for publicity-making.
Before the fanfare that attended the Armory show’s three stops in New York City, Chicago, and Boston, the behind-the-scenes build-up was crucial. It was carried out by a small band of activists. Almost by default, the retiring Davies had become president of the new Association, and he worked closely with another artist, Walt Kuhn (among the originators of the idea) to open the exhibition to a tide of European art.
This is how it happened.
At first, the intention was to highlight American progressive art and sculpture, with as much European material as was conveniently available (perhaps among U.S. collectors). Then in fall of 1912 Davies saw a catalogue for a massive modern art exhibit in Cologne, Germany, the “Sonderbund Show” (the International Art Exhibition of the Federation of West German Art Lovers and Artists). It was probably the largest showcase of representative European modernism—post-Impressionists, fauves, cubists, expressionists—yet assembled on the continent.
At the time, Kuhn was off painting in Nova Scotia, but when Davies telegrammed him, he dropped everything to catch a steamer for Cologne. He arrived the last day of the Sonderbund, but this inaugurated a tour of Europe, from The Hague to Paris and London, to tap a rich sampling of European modernism. Before this, most American artists barely knew what variety was available. The European shopping tour was aided by American artist Walter Pach, who was living in Paris.
By January, the European art works were on steamships headed for New York City. When assembled, the Armory Show featured nearly 1,300 works by 300 artists. Just a third of the artists were European. However, the European art drew the most attention, especially the so-called “Cubist Room” (where Duchamp’s work hung) at the back of the partitions that divided up the Armory’s vast space.
What is more, the European art sold best. Of some 174 works sold, only about 50 were by Americans. In fact, these 1913 purchases of European art essentially began serious U.S. collecting of modern art, collections at the heart of today’s mainstay museums.
All told, however, the story for American artists was not that ennobling. As soon as the European art flooded in (based on the happy accident of the Davies-Kuhn trip to Europe), the American artists felt they were sidelined. After the show, the Association became fractious and closed down. Still, thanks to the Association, modern art had arrived and, in the eyes of the media and the wealthy art-collecting public, the National Academy no longer had a monopoly or preeminence. Among the progressives, meanwhile, the Armory diversified the American avant-garde, going beyond the Ash Can school by adding a heightened interest in European trends such as the fauves, cubism, and other self-proclaimed movements.
On that particular day in May 1912, Davies had handed Colonel Conley the down payment check for $1,500. At the time, the Association had no money. That Davies could make this financial commitment is the reason he became the captain of the entire enterprise. As a colleague said of Davies’ financial formula, “He knew a lot of rich old ladies.” Their money and interest primed the Armory revolution, and in many cases such ladies have ever since underwritten some of the greatest U.S. collections.
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