1913 ARMORY SHOW 50TH ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION Modernism AVANT GARDE

Description: 1913 Armory Show 50th Anniversary Exhibition, 1963. Organized by Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute. Sponsored by the Henry Street Settlement, New York. 1st Edition published in 1963. On Feb. 17, 1913, an art exhibition opened in New York City that shocked the country, changed our perception of beauty and had a profound effect on artists and collectors.The International Exhibition of Modern Art — which came to be known, simply, as the Armory Show — marked the dawn of Modernism in America. It was the first time the phrase "avant-garde" was used to describe painting and sculpture.On the evening of the show's opening, 4,000 guests milled around the makeshift galleries in the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue.Two-thirds of the paintings on view were by American artists. But it was the Europeans — Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp — that caused a sensation.American audiences were used to seeing Rembrandts and Titians in their galleries — "a very realistic type of art," says Marilyn Kushner, the co-curator of an exhibition called "The Armory Show at 100" that opens in October at the New York Historical Society."If you saw a female nude, in art, in sculpture or painting, it was very classical," Kushner adds. "And it was the idea of this perfect, classical beauty."Kushner says it was jarring for audiences in 1913 to encounter works such as Matisse's Blue Nude for the first time. "You know, she's a nude. You can tell she's a nude. But she's in all of these colors that you never imagined you would see on a woman before," she says. "She looks very primitive, almost childlike."Viewers were shocked, Kushner says, "because they'd never seen anything like this before. And they didn't know how to relate to it."Critics reviled the experimental art as "insane" and an affront to their sensibilities. But the media attention drew crowds, and collectors took notice.Matisse's Blue Nude wound up at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Leah Dickerman, a curator at New York's Museum of Modern Art, explains The Red Studio, another Matisse from the show."You see pictures piled up in the background, a bureau with another work leaning against it," Dickerman says. "But the walls of the studio, the floors of the studio, the table — anything that's not art, and not his composed still life, is done in a bright brick red."It's an extraordinary painting. The red jumps, and yet, within that background, are all these brightly colored paintings and sculptural figures that are an inventory of things that Matisse made."Dickerman says the works in the show had a profound effect on American artists. But almost as remarkable was the exhibition itself. It was organized by a group of two dozen young artists who called themselves "The Association of American Painters and Sculptors." They raised money, generated publicity, transported the art, rented the Armory and staged the exhibition — all without public funding.Historian Valerie Paley calls that revolution a countercultural moment that questioned the 19th-century vision of the world: "I think art historians are fond of thinking that it created a revolution." (NPR)Condition: Sound binding. X-Library with usual stamps and markings. The DJ has been glued to the book. DJ has light edge wear and toning. Text is clean and tight. 11" x 8" with 212 pages.

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End Time: 2025-02-08T20:23:12.000Z

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