Walt Kuhn traveled through Europe between September and November 1912 in pursuit of works for the International Exhibition of Modern Art. The red dots indicate the places Kuhn visited.
Arthur B. Davies, his colleague from Association of American Painters and Sculptors, helped to plan the itinerary. In Paris, Kuhn met with Walter Pach who acted as the AAPS agent in Europe. Davies joined them in Paris, and traveled to London with Kuhn. Kuhn and Davies then returned to the United States on November 30, 1912.
Kuhn described his travels—via ships, trains, and automobiles—in extensive, vivid correspondence with Vera, his wife. In letters and postcards, he shared details about fellow passengers, accommodations, cafés, meals, and transportation. He also chronicled interactions with artists, gallerists, critics, and dealers. He wrote nearly daily notes in which he confided both exhilaration and exhaustion.
Walt Kuhn's correspondence with his wife Vera Spier Kuhn offers insight into the challenges of making a major tour for the exhibition. Kuhn wrote a lengthy letter to Vera from Berlin. In it, he wrote of his travels and accommodations in Cologne, The Hague, and Berlin. In comic, poetic and occasionally problematic terms, he discussed the people and places he visited. He also explained his efforts to secure works to exhibit, in particular his search for works by Van Gogh and Cézanne.
He explained that he was too tired from his efforts for the exhibition to make any sketches. He clarified:
Being on a trip of this sort is so different from any I've ever tackled. I can't forget it isn't my money, and that I will have to produce its' value. However, as soon as I get through with the stars, Van G[ogh] + Cezanne, I'll feel as though there is something coming to me and when I get to Munich I'll take a day or two off. Being spruced up all the time spoils things too. Lately I've shaved every day. I almost feel like a traveling salesman.
On April 19, 1912 Walt Kuhn, on behalf of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS), entered into negotiations with Col. Louis D. Conley to lease space within the 69th Regiment Armory for $5,000, plus a $500 fee for additional personnel. On May 6, Col. Conley issued the formal agreement to lease the facility for one month, from February 15 to March 15, 1913. The lease ensured that AAPS pay a fee to provide for extra janitors to clean and assistants to guard the Armory's facilities. Col. Conley declined a request to provide extra time in the Armory to install and remove the show without further compensation. He also denied a request for extra storage space in the basement because of the need to store 16 army wagons during the exhibition.
On March 3, 1913, Col. Conley wrote to obtain 200 passes to the exhibition for use by officers and non-commissioned officers.
Walter Pach's ledger for March 4–6, 1913 contains an entry for the sale of the show's perhaps most celebrated piece: Marcel Duchamp's "Nu descendant un escalier / Nude figure descending a staircase." Frederick C. Torrey, a dealer from the San Franscisco-based interior design firm Vickery, Atkins & Torrey, bought the painting for $324.00.
These same pages also allow us to glimpse the formation of venerable American art collections and institutions. Over this three day period, Pach registered sales to several prominent art patrons and collectors. For example, on March 4 and March 5, he noted, Sold to Miss Bliss. Lillie P. Bliss bought 20 pieces of art during the Armory Show, including works by Cézanne, Denis, Gaugin, Redon, Renoir, and Vuillard. Through her acquisitions, she developed a major art collection, one that formed the core of Museum of Modern Art, (MoMA). On March 5, Pach entered H.C. Frick's purchase of his painting, Flowers. Henry Clay Frick, an industrialist and art patron, later donated his mansion and art to establish the Frick Collection. And, on March 6, Pach logged Dr. A.C. Barnes's acquisition of Maurice de Vlaminck's oil painting, Les Figures. Alfred Barnes established the Barnes Foundation, an educational art institution, a decade later.
Another notable entry on this register is the sale of six Wilhelm Lehmbruck drawings and one Edouard Vuilllard lithograph to Mrs. C. S. Davidge on March 5. These brief lines belie her intimate involvement with exhibition. As proprietor of the Madison Gallery at 305 Madison Avenue, the address marked in the ledger, Clara S. Davidge exhibited the work of several of the founding members of Association of American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS); Jerome Myers, Elmer MacRae, and Walt Kuhn's showed their work in December 1911. There, they met with Henry Fitch Taylor, the gallery manager, and convened AAPS's first official meetings. In preparation for the International Exhibition of Modern Art, Davidge solicited $3,500 from donors. And, she married Taylor on March 20, 1913; the couple "honeymooned" in Boston while they installed the show at Copley Hall.
On Saturday evening March 8th, 1913, the Association for American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS) hosted a beefsteak dinner at Healy's to celebrate the Armory Show. The all–male, all–you–can–eat–and–drink banquet included AAPS leaders and members, journalists and critics, and artists. Diners donned aprons, supped on trays of meat, and imbibed pitchers of beer. In a forthcoming Archives of American Art Journal, Darcy Tell examines this ritual in an aptly, succinctly titled essay, "Meat and Beer."
In addition to toasts and speeches, organizers read aloud imaginary telegrams, seven of which were preserved in Walt Kuhn's scrapbooks. The terse notices playfully mocked prominent people in art and political circles including the poet Gertrude Stein, the mayor of New York, artists Constanin Brancusi and George Luks, and British critic Roger Fry.
Paris, March 8th/13
To: Assn. Am. Painters & Sculptors
New York City, N.Y.
There is that exhibition. there can be no place found flowers and camenbert. when the paint is within. Alfie Maurer cut on the bias there is that room where is breathing when there is no grass answer backwards. that is what joy.
–Gertrude Stein
New York March 8/13
To Toast Master
Press Dinner, Healys'
Regret cannot be with you tonight. have not been able to get around since I got through hanging my own pictures at the exhibition.
–George Luks
New York, March 8, 1913
Arthur B. Davies
Assoc. American Painters & Sculptors, Inc.
We are in receipt of your order for a copy of Hirge Harrisons’ book on "how to use oil colors" the same will be forwarded to you by express in a few days.
–Half a day page & company.
New York, March 8th, 1913
Fredk. James Gregg American Painters & Sculptors, Inc.
State conditions under which your services may be secured as press agent for the ensuing theatrical season. answer at my expense.
–Anna Held
P.S. Am confident that you can produce something better than the milk bath stuff.
–A.H.
London, Eng. March 8th/13
To Assn. Am. Painters & Sculptors New York, N.Y.
Have not seen your exhibition but am sure it does not amount to much.
–Roger Fry.
California, Mar. 8th/13
To: Assn. Am. Painters & Sculptors New York
Reserve for us replica of Brancusi's Madame Pogany as nest egg for our hatchery, answer at once.
–California Consolidated Ostrich Farms Co.
Mayors Office, City Hall
New York, Mar. 8th/13
To: Assn. Am. Painters Sculptors New York.
Regret cannot be with you tonight, anyhow cannot see what connection this has with the police.
–Wm. J. Gaynor, Mayor.
On March 20 1913, Clara Sydney Potter Davidge and Henry Fitch Taylor married at the Church of the Ascension in New York City. Rev. Dr. Percy Stickney Grant performed the ceremony.
This article made its way into Walt Kuhn's scrapbooks of press clippings because the bride and groom were intimately connected with the 1913 Armory Show.
Both were active boosters and participants. She raised $3,500 from donors to defray expenses, including $1,000 for decorations from Gertrude Whitney Vanderbilt. And, she purchased a few drawings and lithographs on March 6. He was a founding member of Association of American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS). And, he exhibited three oil paintings in the show.
They also lived and worked in close proximity to each other. For many years, her home was on Washington Square South where she entertained artists and others. His studio was across the square in Washington Mews. And, both orbited Madison Gallery, a site for American artists. She founded and owned it; he managed it.
It was there at 305 Madison, after a solo show of Walt Kuhn's paintings in December 1911, that AAPS convened their first meetings and planned what became the International Exhibition of Modern Art.
The couple reportedly spent their honeymoon preparing the exhibition for its Boston venue at the Copley Society.
The newly rediscovered Hagelstein Brothers photograph of "The Cubist Room" at the Armory Show (figure 1) provides clues as to what inspired the final floor plan of galleries at the 69th Regiment Armory, as well as evidence of Walter Pach’s hand in designing the installation.
In the fall of 1912, Arthur B. Davies sent Walt Kuhn a letter that contained a drawing of a preliminary floor plan for the New York venue of the show (figure 2) that was composed of traditional rectangular or square rooms.
How then did the installation become the honeycomb–shaped design of polygonal galleries, shown in a blueprint (figure 3) and in the catalogue of the New York venue (figure 4)?
In the fall of 1912, the Cubist group of artists that included Raymond Duchamp–Villon, Jacques Villon, Marcel Duchamp, Albert Gleizes, Alexander Archipenko, and others held an exhibition called La Salon de "La Section d'Or" at the Galerie de la Boëtie in Paris (figure 5). Several works from this exhibition were chosen by Pach for the Armory Show including Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 (figure 1).
Simultaneous to La Section d'Or was the 1912 Salon d'Automne in which La Maison Cubiste was displayed. The architectural façade was designed in a Cubist style by Duchamp–Villon. Visitors walked through the façade into rooms designed by André Mare. These rooms included Cubist paintings. Also Gleizes's Man on a Balcony and Archipenko's Family Life, which can be seen in "The Cubist Room" at the Armory Show (see figure 1).
Enter Walter Pach—he saw both Parisian exhibitions, knew all the artists involved, and selected all of the works seen in figure 1, including a plaster maquette of the façade of La Maison Cubiste by Duchamp–Villon (figure 6), as well as the paintings and sculptures that were shown at La Section d'Or and the 1912 Salon d'Automne.
I believe that "The Cubist Room" at the Armory Show was a deliberate conflation of these Parisian exhibitions put together by Pach; no one else could have designed this installation.
Pach also wrote a pamphlet for the Armory Show, "A Sculptor’s Architecture" in which he discussed Raymond Duchamp–Villon's La Maison Cubiste as exemplary of a new architectural style for the modern era.
I would suggest that change in the floor plan from traditional rectilinear rooms as proposed by Davies to the polygonal galleries was Pach's idea and reflects his understanding of Duchamp–Villon's vision of Cubist architecture.
Furthermore, I believe that the refracted shapes of the polygonal spaces could be read as a modernist floor plan and installation design that, together with the architectural façade, paintings, and sculptures in "The Cubist Room" in particular (figure 1), formed an ensemble showing how Cubist architecture, interior design, and art could be replicated in anyone's home.
Guest blogger Laurette E. McCarthy is an independent scholar and curator. She is an authority on Walter Pach and a leading Armory Show scholar.
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This post originally appeared on the Archives of American Art Blog.
One of my most significant and exciting recent "rediscoveries" is a Vincent van Gogh painting that none of us recognized—not even the current owners—as having been in the 1913 Armory Show. Quite a find!
In the Armory Show scrapbooks in the Walt Kuhn papers and Armory Show records held by the Archives of American Art, there is a 1913 newspaper article from The Christian Science Monitor that reproduces the work with the title The Laborers. Another article from the time, also in the Armory Show scrapbooks, shows the work with the title Landscape.
Noted art critic Frank Jewett Mather Jr. reproduced the painting in his essay, "Newest Tendencies in Art," The Independent (March 6, 1913) with the title The Potato Diggers. Yet no work by Vincent van Gogh titled The Laborers or The Potato Diggers is listed in any of the Armory Show catalogues. And so here was another Armory Show mystery to be solved.
My research led me to the Foundation E. G. Bührle Collection in Zurich, Switzerland, where the work is now located and has for its current title Two Peasant Women Digging in a Snow–Covered Field at Sunset (The Weeders). I corresponded with Lukas Gloor of the museum who had no idea the painting had been in the 1913 Armory Show—he was thrilled to find this out!
According to the museum's website, the painting was owned by Bernhard Koehler of Berlin by 1912 but the exhibition history for this work does not include the Armory Show. It does, however, include the Sonderbund exhibition held in Cologne in the fall of 1912 to which Koehler lent the painting. We know Walt Kuhn visited the Sonderbund show and we know that it served as a model for the Armory Show. Furthermore, Kuhn even marked this painting in his copy of the Sonderbund catalogue, number 41, now in the Armory Show Records in the Archives's collections.
Its title in the Sonderbund catalogue was Kartoffelernte, or The Potato Diggers—as it appeared in Mather's article. In another article, written for the March 13, 1913 issue of The Nationmagazine, Mather complained, "The Armory Exhibition shifts bewilderingly day by day through changes of hanging and admission of new pictures. This keeps the interest up, but adds to the difficulties of a critic." That practice continues to bewilder and plague scholars of the Armory Show to this day and is one reason why we can keep making these new "rediscoveries" and why we will probably never know the exact number of works in the original 1913 Armory Show.
Guest blogger Laurette E. McCarthy is an independent scholar and curator. She is an authority on Walter Pach and a leading Armory Show scholar.
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Walt Kuhn's scrapbooks contain hundreds of clippings that preserve the reactions of professional journalists, critics, and cartoonists. Several particularly vivid examples are featured on our interactive timeline. And, Hrag Vartanian's recent post about Armory Show comics on the art blog Hyperallergic included more than a dozen playful and pointed caricatures. His entry reminded us of the many parodies that were published as "Letters to the Editor" in the Evening Sun in March 1913.
Consider "Bird Descending Tree, Both Nude," an entry from "M.E.S.R." in which the author lampooned both Marcel Duchamp's painting and Gertrude Stein's writing. M.E.S.R. claimed to have been inspired by an industrious woodpecker. He offered a "cubic, post–impressionistic, futuristic, paranoic drawing of the bird at work."
"Maltisse" of Philadelphia offered a laconic line drawing of a hunter and his dog. He insisted, "This is real art—a single line against a background of nothing."
Read the materials for yourself. Which cartoons are your favorites? Email your responses to quinnk at si.edu and we may highlight your comments here in the future.
Artist Walter Pach and other AAPS organizers lived with the modern art of the Armory Show well after the exhibition closed in 1913.
When art dealer Francis M. Naumann donated an additional set of Walter Pach's papers to the Archives in 2012, archivists processed another trove of items related to his leadership in and close association with the Armory Show of 1913. Included among the riches was this evocative portrait of Pach made by German photographer Hansel Mieth in the 1930s. At the center, the mustachioed Pach appears at the threshold of the room, amid racks of dozens of stretched canvases and frames. At the right, a glass bottle (perhaps of turpentine?) and two wooden boxes sit atop a table, next to risers. Their presence suggests that this room doubled as the artist’s studio as well as storage space.
According to Laurette McCarthy, Walter Pach's biographer, the setting is likely the rowhouse in Greenwich Village where he made his home from the late 1930s until his death in 1958. Pach lived in an apartment at 3 Washington Square North among other artists including upstairs neighbors, painters Edward and Josephine Hopper.
This photograph features several pieces of art that beg for our attention. Both Marcel Duchamp's painting Nu(esquisse) and Constantin Brancusi's plaster sculpture The Kiss are recognizable reminders of items that Pach and AAPS included in the Armory Show.
McCarthy explained how Pach wound up with these pieces after the exhibition in a recent email exchange:
The Marcel Duchamp painting in the photograph was in the Armory Show as "Nu (esquisse)" and was purchased from the show by Manierre Dawson. [Dawson described his excitement at meeting Pach at the Art Institute of Chicago and acquiring the Duchamp in his diary, featured on the timeline on 25 March and 4 April]. Pach bought it from Dawson in 1922, then sold it to Peggy Guggenheim in 1942—now in her museum in Venice under the title "Sad Young Man on a Train."
The Brancusi sculpture is indeed the original plaster of "The Kiss" that was in the Armory Show. Pach kept it after the show closed to make casts of it for collectors like John Quinn. Then Brancusi gave it to Pach as a wedding present in 1914. Pach kept it until 1949 at which point he sold it, along with other works from his collection, at Sotheby Parke–Bernet. Blanchette Rockefeller bought it and she in turn sold it at Christie’s in NY in 1994 for a whopping $882,500.00! I tried tracking it down, but as yet to no avail—another Armory Show mystery to be solved!
This portrait remains a riddle, inviting viewers to analyze and identify the elements. I have quizzed colleagues at the Archives about what they see in it. Several noted Pach's parted lips and wondered whether and what he was saying as the picture was made. I think that he looks a bit melancholy. I imagine his nostalgia for a time when New York buzzed about sensational modern art.
What do you see when you look at Walter Pach in his studio in the 1930s?
As materials in Walt Kuhn's scrapbooks reveal, newspaper advertisements linked modern art and consumer culture. This entry chronicles a special fashion show held at a department store in New York City to coincide with the Armory Show in March 1913.
On Thursday, March 13, Wanamaker Stores ran full page ads in The Evening Mail to promote an upcoming event to be held in their store on Broadway between East 9th and 10th Streets. The copy used both the language and logo of the Armory Show.
The advertisement insisted:
It is the popular idea that women wear the gowns and artists put them on canvas; but the opposite is the fact. The gowns are inspired by the paintings.
Wanamaker promoted the latest couture from France and invited shoppers to visit their auditorium to behold (and buy) for themselves. To emphasize the relationship between clothing and art, stylists posed models inside picture frames. Fashion designers included Callot Soeurs, Jacques Doucet, Jeanne Lanvin, Jeanne Paquin, and Paul Poiret. (Many of these designs were featured in this charming animated gif made by our colleagues at Smithsonian Libraries in honor of Fashion Week 2013.)
The author traced the source of the designers's creativity to "the Post–Impressionist Exhibition recently held in the Paris and that at the Grafton Galleries in London" organized by Roger Fry. Recall from the Armory Show timeline, that artists Walter Pach, Walt Kuhn, and Arthur B. Davies traveled to Europe and visited the same very shows to identify art to be included and introduced to U.S. audiences.
Read for yourself about the relationship between fashion and art in spring 1913.
Whoever keeps step with the swing of the world to-day cannot but be aware that something unusual is happening. Those who have gone to the International Exhibition of Modern Art, within the last month, have seen the new movement in painting and sculpture.
Those who have studied the writings of the Italian Modernists have felt the new impulse to literature.
Those who know the work of the French decorators, like Martine, have seen the change in furnishings and architecture.
Call it Cubism or Post Impressionism or Futurism or any name you will, the thing exists in every realm that art can touch. In some cases it is striving for a newer and simpler way to express feeling; in others, it is an attempt to express the idea of power and motion; in every case, it is the effort after freedom from conventional ideals and conventional methods. Casting away so many rules results in a naive primitive sort of art that is closely allied to the Japanese. It has been ridiculed; it has been misinterpreted and misunderstood. It has irritated, puzzled, and disturbed. The old discussions that arose when Cezanne's pictures were rejected by the Paris Salons have recommenced. But Cezanne is accepted as a standard today, and the men of the new school are in the position their master held when he first began to paint.
At last the modern spirit is developing in the realm of women's dress. It would be strange, indeed, if this were the only field of art left untouched by the new ideals.
The Paris couturiers have been working hand in hand with the artists of the new schools and have embodied in the Spring Fashions the best of the new principles.
Several other clippings in the scrapbooks suggest the immediate impact that modern art had on women's fashion. Have a look for yourself.
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