Society of Independent Artists

Society of Independent Artists. An association formed in New York in December 1916 as a successor to the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, which had been dissolved—its task accomplished—after mounting the Armory Show in 1913. The aim of the Society of Independent Artists was to give progressive artists an opportunity to show their work by holding annual exhibitions in rivalry with the National Academy of Design, which was regarded as a bastion of conservatism. These exhibitions were organized on the model of the French Salon des Indépendants, without jury or prizes, giving anyone the right to show their work on payment of a modest fee. The first exhibition, held at the Grand Central Palace in New York in April 1917, was the largest, featuring about 2,500 works by about 1,200 artists (mainly Americans, but including leading Europeans such as Brancusi and Picasso). It was known as ‘The Big Show’ and was probably the largest art exhibition held in the USA up to that time. The exhibits were arranged alphabetically to preclude the kind of judgements associated with a hanging committee. However, the exhibition is remembered mainly because of a work that was not shown, for Marcel Duchamp (one of the Society's officials) resigned after his ready-made in the form of a urinal was rejected. Although much recondite aesthetic theory has been read into this gesture, it is likely that the main purpose was to demonstrate the incongruity of a society with the professed purpose of allowing anyone to exhibit anything. The first President of the Society was William Glackens; he was followed by John Sloan, who held the post from 1918 until his death in 1951. Annual exhibitions continued to be held until 1944, but they soon declined in terms of quantity and quality; the 1919 exhibition had only about a third of the number of works of the inaugural show.