If it were 1913, we’d all be in a bit of an uproar at the moment. This week in 1913, Marcel Duchamp displayed his now-famous “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2” at the First International Exhibition of Modern Art in New York City. We know this show, now a tradition, affectionately as “The Armory Show.” The American public was scandalized by the Cubist and Futurist-influenced piece. The art critic Julian Street went so far as to dub the painting “an explosion in a shingle factor.” Scandalous or not, Duchamp was in good company. Other artists exhibiting included Kandinsky, Picasso, Brancusi, Sloan, Matisse, Munch, Redon, Cezanne, van Gogh, Prendergast and more. Kandinsky, Picasso and Duchamp were being shown in the United States for the first time. The show, organized over the course of a year by artists and critics, aimed to showcase the new era of thought and energy emerging within the art world. Though some patrons were hesitant at first, The Armory Show and its works - those loved and hated- sparked conversation all over the country and marked a change in American thinking about art.
As we look ahead to The Armory Show 2010, which will be held March 4- 7, I can’t help but be grateful for that first show nearly one hundred years ago. We live in a world where, on a whim and at the click of a mouse, we can travel to nearly any museum or stand in nearly any gallery in the world and see what’s new. And yet artists and patrons alike make the pilgrimage year after year to New York to see, to be seen and to see what everyone will be talking about tomorrow. The conversation that began on February 15, 1913 continues generations later.Speaking of which, does anyone out there have an extra ticket?
Library Assistant Sara Mason
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