On the evening of the last day of the New York leg of the exhibition, March 15, 1913,
at 10pm, after four raucous weeks, there were still throngs of visitors inside the 69th
Regiment Armory on 25th Street and Lexington Avenue. The guards were encouraging
visitors to leave, as the art had to be packed for transit; the show was due to open
in Chicago in only a week. Boston would be the last leg of the three city tour, but
due to limited space, only a selection of European works (and no American works)
would be shown.
This exhibition was the first of its kind in America, prompting a dramatic shift in the
way art was subsequently shown, discussed, marketed, sold and created, forevermore.
The modern age was upon the industrialized countries of the world, and the new
forms in painting, sculpting, writing, music and society echoed this shift to modernity
and the sea change that accompanied it.
It is impossible to truly gauge the success of the AAPS’s International Exhibition of
Modern Art. Approximately 80,000 visited the Amory Show in New York alone. Over
the course of the three cities, 174 works of art were sold, out of the approximately
1,300 that were shown, 123 were by foreign artists and 51 by American artists with
an additional 90 prints also selling, probably Ambroise Vollard’s last minute shipment
of lithographs (the prints were not actually on display).
There were countless connections made at the exhibitions that greatly affected
America’s art collections. Most importantly, perhaps for New York, was the relationship
between Arthur B. Davies and Lillie P. Bliss, whose collection, kick-started by the
Armory Show, became the nucleus of the Museum of Modern Art. Like many beginning
collectors testing the waters, Bliss purchased 20 prints by various artists at the show.
John Quinn, the most successful buyer at the show, acquired many paintings as well
as Vollard lithographs, even following the show to Chicago to continue purchasing.
Arthur J. Eddy, the Chicago lawyer who was largely responsible for the Armory Show
traveling to his home city, was not to be outdone by Quinn. He purchased 18 paintings
and seven lithographs, most of which were later donated to the Art Institute of
Chicago. Cézanne’s
Colline des Pauvres
was the most expensive work sold, and it
entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as the first Cézanne acquired
by an American public collection, for $6,700 (around $158,000 today).
Many younger collectors, essentially the first generation of American collectors of
Modernism, also visited and acquired works which would later become part of public
collections throughout the country: Dr. Albert C. Barnes (Barnes Foundation); Walter
C. Arensberg visited and purchased only a Vuillard lithograph, but later acquired
Duchamp’s
The Nude Descending a Staircase II
, which he donated to the Philadelphia
Museum of Art; A. E. Gallatin collected Ashcan works and would later found the
Gallery of Living Art, now also in the Philadelphia Museum of Art collection; Stephen
C. Clark, whose collection was donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
and to the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; Edward W. Root donated to the
Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, NY, which would be the basis for their 50
year anniversary exhibition; and Hamilton Easter Field donated to the Portland
Museum of Art. Katherine Sophie Dreier made several minor purchases however, soon
after the Armory Show, she met Marcel Duchamp and formed the Société Anonyme,
the precursor to the current Museum of Modern Art, New York.
After Redon, the Villon/Duchamp brothers proved the most successful artists in the
exhibition, unexpectedly triumphant despite their relative obscurity in America up
until the show. Their place in modern art would be further secured in just a few years
with Duchamp’s
Fountain
, the urinal he famously signed “R. Mutt” and submitted to
the exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in Paris, 1917.
Fountain
was
rejected by the committee but was photographed at Steiglitz’s gallery, and it remains
one of the most influential and enduring works of the 20th century, a status wholly
unachievable without the Armory Show and its legacy.
