journal

WINTER 2011

THE ARMORY SHOW OF 1913

Fifty women participated in the Armory Show of 1913. These portraits, self-portraits and photographs are a representative collection of those artists. (top to bottom, left to right) May Wilson Preston, Mary Cassatt, Mary Foote, Marguerite Zorach, Margaret Huntington, Edith Haworth, Katherine Sophie Dreier, Enkd Yandell, Anne Goldthwaite, Bessie Potter Vonnoh, Abastenia St. Leger Eberle, Ethel Myers, Grace Mott Johnson, Gwen John, Marie Laurencin.

The legendary International Exhibition of Modern Art, also known as The Armory Show of 1913, introduced United States art patrons to Modern Art. From February 17 - March 15, the 69th Regiment Armory in New York featured 1250 avant-garde artworks, representing over 300 European and American artists.

The goal of the exhibition was to question the boundaries of art as an institution. Critics and news sources of the day viewed the pieces as nothing less than scandalous. Perhaps the single most controversial piece was Marcel Duchamp's Nude descending a staircase, No 2, which one New York Times' art critic termed -- an explosion in a shingle factory.

REDON AND THE ARMORY SHOW

Thirty-eight of Redon's paintings and lithographs were featured in galleries J and K of the exhibition, making his work one of the centerpieces of the event. He met with significant critical and financial success, most notably due to the purchases of Lillie P. Bliss. Bliss was an American art patron who inherited a sizeable fortune following the death of her father in 1912. She was instrumental in organizing the Armory Show of 1913 and was one of the earliest collectors of modern paintings. Redon artwork that she purchased during the exhibition included Silence (1911).

Silence. Odilon Redon. 1911. Museum of Modern Art, Lillie P. Bliss Collection, New York.