A Royal Disaster: Cortissoz Critiques the Armory Show

Abstract: In February and March 1913, thousands of New Yorkers poured into the 69th Regiment Armory for an "International Exhibition of Modern Art." By the time the so-called Armory Show had completed its tour of the U.S., a half million people had seen the exhibit--one of the most influential in American art history. Up to that time, the nation's galleries, patrons, and schools of art were firmly in conservative hands and favored staid, traditional European art. The self-consciously "modern" Armory show challenged the artistic establishment. Two-thirds of the 1,600 works were by Americans, and the Europeans whose works were exhibited--Picasso, Matisse, Seurat, Van Gogh, Gaughin, and Duchamp among them--were far from the conservatives that Americans were used to. Of course, not everyone accepted the new direction. In this Century magazine article entitled "The Post-Impressionist Illusion," the influential art critic Royal Cortissoz equated the (allegedly negative) influence of modernism on American art with that of immigrants on American society.

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