Armory Show. An exhibition (officially entitled the International Exhibition of Modern Art) held in New York, 17 February–15 March 1913, at the Armory of the National Guard's Sixty-Ninth Regiment, Lexington Avenue, Manhattan. It was a daring presentation of new and still controversial art on a mammoth scale (about 1,300 works by about 300 artists) and is regarded as the most important exhibition ever held in the country and one of the milestones in 20th-century American culture. The initiative for it came from a group of artists, several of them from the circle of Robert Henri, who in 1911 formed an organization called the Association of American Painters and Sculptors to find exhibition space for young artists. The breadth of vision with which the show was conceived was primarily due to the Association's president, Arthur B. Davies, whose enthusiasm for presenting a comprehensive picture of current European movements largely overshadowed the original idea of an exhibition of American art. Davies was influenced in this direction by the great international Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne in 1912. Walt Kuhn saw this exhibition and he was later joined in Europe by Davies; together they were mainly responsible for borrowing works from artists and dealers—‘Davies quiet, reflective, decisive, and Kuhn enthusiastic, adventurous and eager’ ( Ian Dunlop, The Shock of the New, 1972). John Quinn was their legal adviser.

The Armory Show was in effect two exhibitions in one. The American portion presented a cross-section of contemporary art from the USA, heavily weighted in favour of younger and more radical artists. The foreign section, which was the core of the exhibition and became the main centre of controversy, traced the evolution of modern art, showing work by Goya, Delacroix, Courbet, and the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, as well as leading contemporary artists including Kandinsky, Matisse, and Picasso. French artists were best represented, and there was comparatively little German art. From New York a reduced version of the exhibition went to Chicago (Art Institute, 24 March–16 April) and Boston (Copley Hall, 28 April–19 May). More than a quarter of a million visitors paid to see it, and its impact was enormous on a public that generally knew little of Post-Impressionism, let alone Fauvism, Cubism, or abstract art (the Metropolitan Museum, New York, bought a Cézanne at the Show and this was the first picture by the artist to enter an American public collection). Though there was a good deal of ridicule and indignation (directed particularly at Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase), there were also many favourable reviews and the show stirred up public interest in art and created a climate more favourable to experimentation. It had a profound effect on many American artists, for example Stuart Davis, who regarded it as the turning-point of his career. Several important patrons and collectors made their first tentative purchases of modern art at the show, notably Lillie P. Bliss and Katherine Dreier, and some artists could count the exhibition a notable financial success ( Jacques Villon, for example, sold all nine of his pictures that were included). It has therefore become commonplace to speak of the Armory Show as the real beginning of an interest in progressive art in the USA, and it is an indication of the significance attached to the event that the Royal Academy's major survey exhibition entitled ‘American Art in the 20th Century’ (1993) took 1913, rather than 1900, as its starting-point.

ARMORY SHOW

ARMORY SHOW. 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

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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.

BobBatchelor

See alsoArt .

Armory Show. The International Exhibition of Modern Art, initially intended to boost new American art and challenge conservative critics and curators, opened in mid‐February 1913 at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City and continued to mid‐March. It then moved in abbreviated form to Chicago and Boston. The sponsoring organization, the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, led by artists Arthur B. Davies, Walt Kuhn, and Walter Pach, took their chief inspiration from the Cologne Sonderbund Show (1912) and the Orphist circle around the Duchamp family in Paris. Exposing large numbers of untutored Americans to the Cubist work of Pablo Picasso, the Fauvist work of Henri Matisse, and other unconventional paintings and sculptures, the show excited hostile criticism and parody as it won unprecedented publicity for modernism in art (one critic compared Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 to “an explosion in a shingle factory”). Some found it morally and politically threatening. Although it included some 1,600 works, the show omitted much that was happening on the contemporary art scene, especially in Germany and Italy, and presented a seriously skewed notion of the new artistic movements then maturing. Few noticed the American works at all. A triumph of promotion rather than taste, the Armory Show intimidated mature realistic painters and convinced many younger artists that to succeed they had to study in Paris. It had a more beneficent impact in drawing such major French artists as Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia to visit New York for extended periods, during which they exercised great influence on such opinion leaders as the photographer Alfred Stieglitz and the painter and art patron Katherine Dreier.
See also Modernist Culture; Painting: To 1945; Progressive Era.

Bibliography

Milton W. Brown , The Story of the Armory Show, 1963.
Robert M. Crunden , American Salons: Encounters with European Modernism, 1885–1917, 1993.

Robert M. Crunden

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).

Armory Show, name given to the International Exhibition of painting and sculpture (1913) held at the Armory of the 69th Regiment in New York City. It was organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, of which Arthur Davies was president, and was largely aided by the progressive group known as “The Eight.” It introduced Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, and Expressionism to the American public, and provided a great stimulus for American painting and sculpture, and art criticism.