The Chicago Armory Show

I

Much has been written regarding the International Exhibition of Modern Art that opened at the New York Armory in February 1913 and came to the Art Institute of Chicago one month later. I was absolutely certain the Art Institute would stage an exhibition in 2013 to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the show. Being disappointed in that regard, I traveled twice to New York to see the retrospective at the New-York Historical Society and devoured the 512-page compendium that accompanied this monumental exhibit. Being no stranger to serious art history research, I delved deeply into my archives at the Illinois Historical Art Project, the Ryerson Library at the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Chicago Public Library to give you this account. What you will read is the product of research where almost all of the information has been footnoted to its original source, the type of research that continues to wake me up in the morning.

“BEDLAM IN ART” ran Harriet Monroe’s headline in the Chicago Tribune.[1] The date was Thursday, February 16, 1913. Little did the Chicago populace comprehend what was about to shake the foundations of everything they knew about art. “Bedlam in Art,” to be sure. The word bedlam has been a part of the vernacular for so long that its real impact has been lost. That impact, however, would have been understood in 1913. Bedlam was the colloquial name, derived from Bethlem, for the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem in London, England. Founded as a priory in 1247, it was later converted into an insane asylum, and the word bedlam took on a new meaning. Miss Monroe knew exactly what she was saying when she used the word: Insanity! Madness!

Harriet Monroe, a long-time Chicago resident, world traveler, and one of three accomplished sisters,[2] was a literary force in Chicago, both as a Tribune art critic and as the founder of Poetry magazine. She had convinced the Tribune to pay her expenses to New York for the opening of the International Exhibition of Modern Art, otherwise known as the Armory Show for being housed in the 69th Regiment Armory. By Miss Monroe’s own account some twenty-five years later, the Armory Show was the “most interesting incident of [her] journalistic career.”[3] The passing of years before writing these words had tempered her initial shock, something she mused about in her autobiography, at the age of seventy-five, stating that the critics had all agreed it was “the most important event ever held in New York” and that she had had a “grand time” with the critics, artists, patrons, and visitors to the show.[4]

Monroe had at first expressed alarm, astonishment, and dismay. Later, as the days and weeks of evaluation and reevaluation wore on, she reconsidered her initial reaction and found the exhibition truly revolutionary. Kudos to Miss Monroe for being open minded enough to allow her opinions to evolve, and publicly so. Let us join Miss Monroe and “Bedlam in Art” and see the show through her eyes and those of her fellow art critics.

The American Association of Painters and Sculptors, known as AAPS, was founded in New York City in early 1912. In the fall of that year, two of its officers, president Arthur Bowen Davies (18xx – 19xx) and executive secretary Walt Kuhn (18xx – 19xx), were in Europe gathering works for the Armory Show by artists whom others in Europe considered the most avant of the avant-garde. The show was being held under the auspices of AAPS, whose mission it was to break free from the strict juries that at the time had little appreciation for the modern in art. Davies explained, “The time has arrived for giving the public here the opportunity to see for themselves the results of new influences at work in other countries in an art way.”[5] The implication was that if you didn’t see this art as symbolic of everything important, then, of course, you were obtuse. (Three years earlier the Art Institute had purchased Davies’s Maya, Mirror of Illusions, a work that is a mystical representation of several female nude figures—classically rendered and modern in thinking and execution, but certainly not “bedlamic.” Monroe called Davies “one of the most original and imaginative of American painters.”[6])

Davies’s compatriot, Walt Kuhn, has often been given credit for assembling the majority of works from Europe. However, it was Walter Pach (1883-1958), the European representative of AAPS, who was responsible for corralling the large body of artists residing in Paris and who, therefore, may be considered the author of the coming uproar. Kuhn wasn’t even clear on the meaning of all the modern art. He readily admitted to his wife that he “was learning.” Of the Cubists, he said that they “are intensely interesting.... I sum them up mostly as literary and lacking in that passion or sex...which is absolutely necessary for me.”[7] (He even went so far as to call them “freaks.”[8]) The “passion” he spoke of was found in London, where he had discovered the organizers of a Post-Impressionist exhibit were taking in fifty pounds sterling a day just from admission fees, telling his wife, “Can’t you see what will happen in New York?...they only charge a shilling a head. Our average admission will be double that.”[9]

The show in New York was laid out to trace the origins of modern art. Davies thought who else to begin that journey than the enigmatic Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867)—enigmatic because he was quoted as saying, “I am a conservator of good doctrine, and not an innovator.”[10] History stole the identity of Mr. Ingres, and as far back as the turn of the last century, some thirty-three years after his death, and much against his wishes, critics considered his work to be the precursor of modern art. As one critic put it, “Poor old Ingres, how he must feel to be placed in the company of Matisse and Picasso!”[11]

The exhibition chronology moved from Ingres to the Post-Impressionists. Works by Impressionists Monet, Renoir, and Degas comprised only thirteen of the approximately thirteen hundred on display. The three leading Post-Impressionists—Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin—were identified by newspaper critics as the originators of modern art. Miss Monroe delightfully, and disdainfully, called them “The three dead painters,” under the sub-headline “Dead Trio Claimed as Founders.”[12] What a sad lot this trio: the “shabby French vagabond who was neglected while he lived”; the “half insane Flemish recluse and suicide”; and the “disreputable world wanderer.”[13] Monroe reported “these three dead masters—the sage, the rebel, and the barbarian”—would each be accorded their own gallery space in the armory from among the twenty-seven galleries that were created and demarcated using fabric curtains. Matisse and Odilon Redon were also to be given their own galleries.

The English artist and art critic Roger Fry had coined the term “Post-Impressionist.” Named curator of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1904,[14] he organized exhibits of the “new” new art at Grafton Galleries in London in 1910 and again in 1912. While Post-Impressionism had jolted London as unwelcome art, it created an outright sensation in New York where some 87,000 people turned out to see what almost everyone regarded as “pranks.”

There was plenty of advance notice that something astonishing was about to sweep over the city of Chicago come the March 24 opening. Monroe’s headline from New York, appearing in the Chicago Tribune on February 17, read “Art Show Opens to Freaks: American Exhibition in New York Teems with the Bizarre.” It didn’t take her long to deride Matisse, saying that he “throws figures and furniture on his canvas with precisely the prodigal impartiality and the reckless drawing of a child.”[15] Nor would it be long before Art Institute students would ridicule Matisse by calling him “Henry Hairmattress.”[16] Monroe also offered her readers this tasty morsel: “It is fortunate that Chicago is to see [only] part of the exhibition.”[17] Actually, Chicago played host to about half the number of works shown in New York. The historical section of the show—those works that were not Post-Impressionist—didn’t travel here.[18] As a result, Chicago had the pleasure of being exposed solely to the most radical of the radical artworks.

News of the show in New York quickly began to appear in Chicago newspapers. On February 19, the Chicago Tribune column A Line o’ Type or Two, featured an appraisal of the show in verse only two days after bedlam had rained down upon New York. It began with the Latin phrase “Spina etiam grata est ex qua spectatur rosa.” (Even the thorn bush is pleasant if it contains a rose.) Part of the verse read as follows:

How blest am I who’ve lived to see

Art from her ancient bonds set free,

Like ladye fair in castle shackled

Until some knight the dragon tackled.

The painter used to learn to draw

That he might paint the things he saw,

But now the canvas he reveals

Is meant to show us how he feels.

And if the curious things on view

Afford the layman any clew,

They raise the interesting question,

Can what he feels be indigestion?[19]

The next day Tribune readers were greeted with another headline, exclaiming “Critics of All Kinds at ‘Freak Art’ Exhibition.” Miss Monroe, the author of the article, explained that the crowds in New York were flocking first to the Cubists and Futurists, “eager to know the worst.” There were three basic responses, she observed: laughter, dumbstruck, or deep despair.[20] One New York visitor, made the following comment (prescient because only one year later the Great War began, and people literally feared for the safety of the world): “No, I can’t laugh at that kind of insanity. It makes me fear for the world; something must be wrong with an age which can put those things in a gallery and call them art.”[21] The constant refrain of the day was that the art must have been produced by the insane.[22]

Miss Monroe was able to ask the show’s organizers about the concept behind bringing this body of work together, to which their reply was: “We don’t necessarily agree with every artist to whom we give space; but when a man is accepted in Paris or London or Munich as representative of some phase of the modern movement, we think he is entitled to a hearing in New York.”[23] This was self-promotional balderdash. The Post-Impressionist works were no more “accepted” in the European capitals than they were in New York. Miss Monroe quoted Arthur Davies as espousing how shows in New York were limited by hide-bound juries, which would never allow an exhibition that included a more modern point of view.[24]

Comments such as these were direct attacks on the conservative semi-annual exhibitions of the National Academy of Design, decidedly the most important venue of art in the country at the time. More recent scholarship, however, has shown that the Armory Show itself was in fact edited by probably the most restrictive and narrow-minded jury ever; for it was Walter Pach and Davies who chose all of the European works, and Davies and William Glackens who chose all of the works by the American artists. There was no democracy on display here; it was purely dogmatism, masquerading as open-minded, fresh thinking—and was indeed hypocritical in the extreme.[25] Also to the point was this comment made by Miss Monroe: “Perhaps the vitality of the show is due to its representing chiefly the choice of one man [presumably Walt Kuhn]....Most juries are a compromise, divergent interests being represented.”[26]

Miss Monroe was warming to the thought that these new ideas might be something of value. She felt the organizers were giving American art a “much needed shaking up” with a show that was “sure of far-reaching influence.”[27] It was, however, as if she held two conflicting opinions, at once praising it but at the same time panning the show, with some level of disgust: “...if these little groups of theorists have any other significance than to increase the gayety of nations your correspondent confesses herself unaware of it.” As for Matisse, she said, “If the fifteen pictures here shown represent him fairly he is an unmitigated bore.”[28]

Meanwhile, in Chicago, word of the show in New York was spreading and people were beginning to take notice. The socially prominent McWilliamses, for example, organized a Cubist ball and hired Chicago artist William Penhallow Henderson (1877-1943) to drape their apartment walls in black fabric and splatter the fabric with paint. Guests were requested to attend in costume. It was reported in the society pages of the Chicago Tribune that “Most guests went in costumes reflecting the new ‘block’ system of art interpretation....‘cubists’ they call themselves—a costume which requires the artistic services of a carpenter rather than a gown builder.”[29] The society news column exclaimed “Cube Gowns Worn At Freak Party.”[30]

With enough awareness to be knowledgeable about the modernist writings of Paris art collector Gertrude Stein, the author of the Chicago Tribune column A Line o’ Type or Two featured this ditty:

I did a canvas in the Post-

Impressionistic style.

It looked like Scrambled Eggs on Toast;

I, even, had to smile.

I said, “I’ll work this Cubist bluff

With all my might and main,

For folks are falling for the stuff,

No matter how inane.”

I called the canvas Cow With Cud,

And hung It on the line.

Altho’ to me ’twas vague as mud,

’Twas clear to Gertrude Stein.[31]

This was followed a day later in the same column with an “Ode To Summer: Post-Impressionist Poem,” consisting of complete babble in verse, random banging on the typewriter, accompanied by this annotation: “The foregoing poem is apparently a Cubistic attempt to express the inexpressible, which is the best thing that Cubists do.”[32]

The opening in Chicago was still three weeks away, but humor at the expense of the art was already in full force. Front-page headlines—such as this from the Chicago Evening Post, “Freak Art Exhibit of Modern School To Be Brought Here: Sensation Expected”—were appearing more frequently, stirring up interest and controversy well in advance of the opening. (Nothing has changed: the museums then as now want tickets sold and revenue walking through their doors.) Art Institute executive secretary Newton H. Carpenter was deliberately stirring things up:

Certainly the best of all the sensational experiments of post impressionist, futurist and cubist schools will be here. Not one will be left behind. It is to be a great day for the Art Institute and…our policy of giving the people what they want in the way of excitement.[33]

Carpenter added that after visiting the New York show he had never been so excited in his whole life. His “excitement,” however, seems to have been more for the record number of visitors the Chicago version of the show would bring through the Art Institute than for the art itself. In this regard, running concurrently at the Art Institute with the Armory Show would be the American annual exhibit of watercolors and the annual horticultural show of live flowers. Carpenter noted that these two shows would make visitors to the Armory Show glad for “a quiet hour” and that “the screaming colors and puzzles and big pictures and little pictures, impressions and no impressions, would make you glad to enjoy the watercolors [and flowers].”[34]

Perhaps the most memorable observation from the New York Armory Show was made by poet Charles Harrison Towne, who said that one painting resembled “an explosion in a shingle factory.”[35] The painting he was referring to—Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase—was the lead illustration in the exhibition catalog and was by far the most derided work.[36] Appearing to depict a figure in motion descending a flight of stairs (think time-lapse photography) it “was perceived by the majority of art critics to be utterly unintelligible.”[37] Purchased from the New York Armory Show for three hundred dollars by a dealer in San Francisco, it was later bought by Duchamp’s friend, industrialist Walter Arensberg, who donated it to the Philadelphia Museum of Art where it may be seen today. Originally “the butt of jokes, jingles, and caricatures”[38] by art critics, the press, and the public, this aptly described “explosion in a shingle factory” has long been considered a masterpiece of Cubist art.

A few weeks before the Chicago opening, an exhibition of contemporary Scandinavian art was held at the Art Institute. While Harriet Monroe found almost all of the works in the show pleasing, praising particularly those by Anders Zorn, one critic focused on a handful of works by Modernists. Of those works, she decried, “Weird, colorless, absolutely lacking in everything that is usually associated with the original conceptions of art; hideous delineations which look as if they were conceived in a nightmare and executed in a delirium.”[39] Many of these same characterizations were soon to come into frequent use. Another critic decided some education was in order for his public: “Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the which and the why of the daub and smear” was his refrain, as he attempted to make sense of the modern element of the Scandinavian show. In reference to this refrain he insisted, tongue in cheek, that understanding these artists was really quite “simple.”[40]

During the Scandinavian exhibit, a painting by Norwegian artist Bernhard Folkestad was removed from the walls, having been “suppressed on moral grounds.” Art Institute director William Merchant Richardson French stated, “I won’t talk about it. The less said about such subjects the better....The art committee ordered it down.”[41] This evasive comment by French foreshadowed his underlying feelings regarding what was soon to explode at his own museum.

The issue of immorality in art was soon to literally go on trial in Chicago, and in such close timing to the opening of the show it couldn’t help but raise similar charges against the show’s Modernists. A reproduction of a painting by French artist Paul Chabas (1869-1937) entitled September Morn, winner of a gold medal at the Paris Salon of 1912, was shown in March at a local art supply store. The painting depicted a young girl bathing nude by a lakeshore in the morning hours. Mayor Carter Harrison, Jr., ordered his city art censor to march over to the store and remove the offending work.[42] The authority for this action was a municipal ordinance that stated: “No person shall exhibit…or sell…any lewd picture or other thing whatever of an immoral or scandalous nature.” Famed Chicago sculptor and senior member of the Chicago artists’ community Lorado Taft (1860-1936) was quoted as saying, in disgust, “The person who can see indecency in ‘September Morn’ is to be pitied.”[43]

Eight days before the show’s opening in Chicago, passages from Gertrude Stein’s prose study of Matisse appeared in the Tribune under the headline “Futurist Literature.” It would be safe to say that even today most of Stein’s prose is unintelligible. Critics in 1913 were amused. One columnist smirked, “...if the reader will partly close his eyes, bending over so as to bring into play the usually unemployed lower half of the retina, and holding the [newspaper] about three feet to the left…it becomes perfectly clear.”[44] On the same day Miss Stein’s prose appeared in the Tribune, Miss Monroe wrote a half-page column in an effort to get her readers ready for what was about to descend upon the metropolis. She gently told her audience, “It may be proper to prepare our minds for the point of view of the modern French radicals, who will be largely represented.”[45] The society pages, crediting two of their own for bringing the exhibition to Chicago, also urged readers to get educated beforehand.[46] University of Chicago professor and art critic George Breed Zug was skeptical. He said no one understood the works anyway and that it would be interesting to see how Chicagoans addressed the “freakish performances” of the artists.[47]

Professor Zug also made an important distinction that had been lost on most of the other critics. The word Futurist had taken hold and was uniformly applied with derision to the Post-Impressionists. Zug pointed out, however, that the Futurists were in fact a group of Italian Post-Impressionists of the “extreme type” and that none of them were actually represented in the show. Zug also had some very sharp-edged comments about the Post-Impressionists. He said of Gauguin, for example, “Whatever may have been his life’s romance in [Tahiti], he was as a painter in the class with the unskilled. We are told that towards the end he began to doubt his powers as an artist. He would have done better to have begun by doubting.”[48]

Cubist dresses were another humorous subject among clothiers who were poking fun at the art movement and trying to capitalize on a trend. In a news item titled “Cubist Gown Comes To Town,” it was noted that two styles were offered—one in the conservative mode and another in the extreme mode, with the latter supposedly the envy of any Cubist.[49] Lorado Taft had another twist on the subject. He had constructed scaffolding in his South Side studio to work on a monumental sculpture and invited a reporter to see this effort. He then remarked to the reporter that the scaffolding looked exactly like a Cubist painting.[50]

In the case of Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, American Art News, published in New York, offered ten dollars to anyone who could find said lady.[51] The Chicago Inter Ocean followed suit with its own contest to see which reader could spot the nude. The newspaper then published this little ditty:

You’ve tried to find her,

And you’ve looked in vain

Up the picture and down again.

You’ve tried to fashion her of broken bits,

And you’ve worked yourself into seventeen fits;

The reason you’ve failed to tell you I can,

It isn’t a lady, but only a man.[52]

Visitors to the show in New York had actually been angry that they could find neither the nude nor the staircase in the painting. Realizing that the press and the public were confused by the Cubists, prominent Chicago attorney Arthur Jerome Eddy, who was an important patron of James Abbott McNeill Whistler and who would later assemble one of the greatest Post-Impressionist collections in the country, made an outline of the nude, which was then published in the Tribune.[53]

It was now six days before the hotly anticipated Chicago opening. Acerbic humor would mingle in the press until given no room to breathe, and would soon become outright rage. A scathing headline accused the show of being a “Barnumized” effort and an attempt at “Leering Effrontery.”[54] The critic said the art was “Barnumized” because it was a blatant effort to create a “sensational and profitable” exploit. “Some of the painters themselves [were] a queer lot, almost as queer as their pictures.” The works, not yet even displayed, were “utterly unintelligible,” “an absurdity,” “a physiological curiosity” —and just plain “weird,” very much like the sideshows at a circus.

The artwork arrived in Chicago and was being unpacked in the basement of the Art Institute. The show’s organizers had also arrived from New York. Several members of AAPS were wearing buttons displaying their logo. It was observed that the logo looked like an “untrimmed Christmas tree.” “It’s a pine tree,” explained one member. “It is a symbol of liberty—of liberty of thought. We have tried to symbolize the artistic spirit in the treetop, far above the mean levels of life.”[55]

A schedule for the opening of the show published in the Chicago Evening Post announced that the press would have their own viewing, unhindered by the masses, followed a few days later by the official public opening scheduled for 1:00 p.m. on Monday, March 24, and that there was sure to be a throng on opening day so thick that actually viewing the works of art would be out of the question.[56] (The schedule was later adjusted to accommodate museum members and their guests on the 24th, followed by the general public on the 25th.)[57] The museum was to stay open until ten o’clock each evening to accommodate the crowds who were expected to be standing in long lines to gain admittance. One critic said of the paintings by Marcel Duchamp that if someone looked at them for more than twenty minutes he would go mad trying to understand their meaning.[58] A curious side-note was added to mentioning that Art Institute director William French and his wife would be on their way to California by the time of the opening.

In hindsight, it was a promotional coup by the organizers of the show to fill the newspapers with anticipatory newsworthy items that, like today, took on a life of their own. Now, just four days before the opening, the paintings continued to be unpacked. A Tribune news item Tribune announced “Cubists Invade City Today.” The organizers were busy trying to justify the works in the show as not all “freakish,” in an obvious attempt to attract large crowds, their protestations to the press went unheeded, which was having its own advance view on Thursday and Friday before the public opening the following Tuesday.[59]

Throughout the weekend the newspapers were alive with shrill commentary. “Cubist Art Is Here, Clear As Mud” announced the Chicago Record-Herald, offering the following on how to appreciate the artworks: “Eat three welsh rarebits, smoke two pipefuls of ‘hop’ and sniff cocaine until every street car looks like a goldfish and the Masonic Temple resembles a tiny white house.” The same critic added that “preparations are being made to care for additional patients at Dunning [an insane asylum]”[60] Another critic commented that the “cure for Cubism was two grains of potassium cyanide.”[61]

Of the six Picasso paintings in the show, his Woman with Mustard Pot caused the most outrage among the critics. Both the woman and the pot in the painting were rendered with their basic form fundamentally intact, but the Cubist depiction of the subjects was unfamiliar and baffling. Art critic John Nielsen Laurvik stated that “the discovery of the ‘mustard pot’ would scarcely have been possible without the happy cooperation of the title with the spectator's previous knowledge of the actual appearance of a mustard pot.”[62] And under a headline reading “Antics of Pot Thrill Critics of Newest ‘Art’,” with the word Art in quotation marks for ironic effect, the commentator espoused: “The lady sat beside the pot of mustard and mused. This much was very clear. The lady was deeply affected by her musings—or by the pot of mustard. The pot of mustard seemed in a hilarious mood. It hurled itself about the scene with perfect abandon. Much of itself had landed in the lady's left eye.”[63] Woman with Mustard Pot was reproduced on one of several postcards sold in conjunction with the show. The painting is now in the collection of the Gemeetemuseum in The Hague.

Three days prior to the opening, Chicago art dealer Robert W. Friedel, who owned a gallery in the Garland Building, attacked conservative painter Kenyon Cox, whose negative views of Post-Impressionism had appeared in a New York newspaper. Friedel felt the Chicago Evening Post was prejudicing the show by quoting Cox. He made a particularly salient comment, stating, “The artists of the past have worked out many a great problem, but there are still as many more that remain obscure, and if we are going to go on repeating what are now commonplaces only, art is dead, and our modern artists are little better than parrots.”[64]

Probably the most extraordinary occurrence was the departure of Art Institute director William French just prior to the public opening. Can you imagine? An exhibit that was being hailed by many as the most important ever to open at his museum, and he leaves town! While he was obviously attempting to avoid the coming public furor, he tried to persuade the press that his departure was nothing, no matter of any sorts—that he had planned to be in California anyway. A headline in the Chicago Record-Herald was skeptical: “Director French Flees Deluge of Cubist Art: Boards Train for California Just in Time to Dodge New Pictures and Escapes Late Crop of Literature.” The article noted “Friends of Mr. French assert that he very diplomatically, very delicately and quite confidentially whispered that there was something about the post-impressionistic art that irritated him.”[65] Nor could French have missed the prose that accompanied the headline:

The cubists are coming, ho, ho, ho, ho!

The cubists are coming, ho, ho, ho, ho;

The cubists are coming from stately Manhattan;

The cubists are coming, ho, ho

The art director has gone before, 

He’s said good-bye for a month or more;

The cubists are coming, and that’s enough;

He cannot stand the futurist stuff.

The “crop of literature” alluded to in the headline was verse by Gertrude Stein, made available to the press as her attempt at modern poetry. There were countless references to this haughty piece of literature, and perhaps you can see why from the following excerpt:

A walk that is not stepped where the floor is covered is not in the place where the room is entered. The whole one is the same. There is not any stone. There is the wide door that is narrow on the floor. There is all that place. There is that desire and there is no pleasure and the place is filling the only space that is placed where all the piling is not adjoining. There is not that distraction. Praying has intention and relieving that situation is not solemn. There comes that way. The time that is the smell of the plain season is not showing the water is running.[66]

The verse drags on, but the point is obvious.

Stein was regarded by many as the world’s first Cubist writer. One critic joked, “that to express in print cubism and what it means requires a cubic style of writing....Two reporters edged from the room, convinced. One of them was more [convinced]. ‘In that place where running water is not there,’ he murmured, thoughtfully, ‘and where the bar is where it is where —I’ll buy a drink.’ ”[67] The following little rhyme appeared in the Tribune in response to one critic’s impression of the artworks:

‘Those pictures,’ Ernst Penwell said,

‘They knock me all kerflummick,

For some of them upset my head,

The rest upset my stomach.’[68]

Another Tribune headline said local art critics were claiming that Post-Impressionism was a “Crime Against Nature.”[69] The paper also announced that the “master hangers” at the Art Institute were having a difficult time determining which side of many of the paintings was right side up, a circumstance noted as causing considerable “debate” among them. During the same time the paintings were being unpacked, a courtroom jury had rejected the city’s charge of indecency against the painting September Morn. Senior artist statesman Oliver Dennett Grover (1861-1927) stated, “I can see absolutely nothing in this picture that is lewd and immoral.[70]

In the final days preceding the show, Miss Monroe was curiously silent. Nothing under her byline had appeared in the Tribune for more than a week, while the rest of the press was breathless in their critical commentary. The exhibit had not yet been installed, and Chicago was already expressing horror at what was soon to be unveiled. The press itself had seen only a few of the unpacked works, and they were clearly taken aback. Frederick James Gregg, one of the show’s organizers, lamented how no one could see the genius in the show. He publically stated that he forgave Chicago for its laughter, saying, “When you are shown the entire collection, then, perhaps, you will learn to know its value.”[71]

On March 23, the Sunday Tribune featured an article with four illustrations, taking almost half a page under the heading “Futurist Pictures—Two of Them from Dunning. Which Are Which?”[72] It was bedlam again, and readers were being asked to choose between art by Post-Impressionists and art by the institutionalized insane. Another article stated that one of the patients at Dunning claimed the artworks were his own and had yelled “Plagiarism.”[73]

Mayor Carter Harrison had been granted, with the head of the Tribune art department, an advance viewing of the show. He toured the exhibit with Chicago art patrons Arthur Aldis and Arthur J. Eddy.[74] Mayor Harrison was decidedly befuddled after viewing the art. According to a member of the press, Aldis and Eddy, who had seen many of the works in Paris, and had also viewed the show in New York, were “still thirsting for punishment!”[75] Another critic, who had gained early access to the show, noted the arrangement of galleries was such that the visitor would be led gently through “the various stages of art mania and left high and dry and with only partially impaired intellect in the last corridor.” She advised her readers to keep their addresses handy on a scrap of paper “because your mind and memory may be gone when you come out of the exhibition.”[76] Yet another critic said, “Seven hundred and fifty states of mind—no two alike....The Futurist will reply that his art as expressed on canvas is a state of mind, a spiritual insurrection, an aesthetic revolt against fettering conventions, and that those who do not understand him merely admit their own shortcomings.”[77]

The show had not yet opened, but dozens of newspaper articles were heralding the advance of what was rapidly becoming an extraordinary affair in Chicago. The Evening Post pleaded with the public (which had not yet seen anything save a few black and white images in the newspapers) to be open-minded: “Chicago ought to give to ‘the greatest exhibition of insurgent art ever held’ a fair hearing and a serious consideration.”[78] Finally, in the midst of the growing uproar, Harriet Monroe broke her silence:

The foreign extremists…have aroused so much comment as to overshadow the other nine-tenths of the exhibit. Whether they please, or amuse, or disgust us, they should not obscure the fact that this is the most comprehensive and interesting international modern show which has been held…in this country, or according to some critics, in the world.[79]

This was a fitting final say-so, the day before the show opened, by the critic who had first introduced Chicago to the Armory Show.

II

And then it happened. The hotly anticipated show opened. Rather, it exploded onto the Chicago cultural scene, in a thousand sharp, Cubist-edged pieces. Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase had been described as an “explosion in a shingle factory,” and once Chicagoans had a look at this painting they began to understand why.

The Chicago version of the exhibition had 634 works, roughly half the number shown in New York. The Impressionist paintings were not sent to Chicago and neither were many of the works by American artists. The organizers had learned from the New York exhibition that the most radical paintings and sculpture would attract the most attention, and hence the most revenue. The New York show was organized in a chronological fashion in an attempt to explain the history of past art movements and thereby served as an introduction to the newest art trends. Harriet Monroe, commented, however, that the Chicago exhibition had lost something with the absence of the historical artworks. She wrote how the radical artworks overwhelmed the exhibit, and the historical context provided by the nineteenth century art had been completely lost.[80] She also noted that many of the beautiful canvases (which the reader could interpret as more generally acceptable to the public) had not been included. Diminished in size, and with most of the historical part of the collection missing, the art that had been most controversial in New York grew in impact and importance.

The Chicago version of the Armory Show occupied several galleries on the second floor of the Art Institute, three of which were reserved for American art. There was one gallery for the French symbolist Odilon Redon; another for the Cubists; one gallery for French Modernists such as Henri Matisse; and one gallery for Post-Impressionist artists such as Gauguin, van Gogh, and Cézanne. Three more galleries were filled with works from England, Ireland, and Germany. Harriet Monroe noted that Gallery No. 53 was sure to “draw the crowd, for here gathered the enigmatic Cubists.” She went on to say, “…one may amuse oneself by searching for the elusive human beings in Picabia’s [work] or Duchamp’s ‘Nude Descending the Stair,’ or by wondering why Picasso’s lady is so contorted in contemplating her pot of mustard.”[81]

Opening night attracted Chicago society. The names of McCormick, Butler, Aldis, Blair, Shaw, and Brewster represented the bluest of Chicago’s bluebloods.[82] Tickets to the reception cost one dollar per person, with the funds benefiting the Municipal Art League, which was supporting the tuition of needy art students. One dollar (twenty-five dollars today) wasn’t much of a charge. It’s curious how the wealthiest men in Chicago were asked for so little financial support. As for the opening itself, the Chicago Examiner made light of it by stating that “…when the exhibition of Cubist and futurist canvases was turned loose upon a selected and unsuspecting portion of society…those who were not convulsed by unholy shrieks of demonic laughter looked as if they were suffering excruciating pain as they passed from [gallery] to [gallery].”[83]

There was much fun to be had by the press as they simply scoffed at the art, claiming it was little better than a ruse shoved upon an unsuspecting public. The Chicago Inter Ocean ran a headline stating, “Cube Art Staggers Institute Members. International Exhibition Opened to Chicago Patrons Amid Ohs and Ahs of Deep Bewilderment[84] The Tribune’s A Line o’ Type or Two column had offered a humorous poem about the paintings of American Arthur Dove, which read in part:

I cannot tell you how I love

The canvases of Mr. Dove,

At first you fancy they are built

As patterns for a crazy-quilt,

But soon you see that they express

An ambient simultaneousness.

This thing, which you would almost bet,

Portrays a Spanish omelette,

Depicts instead, with wondrous skill,

A horse and cart upon a hill.

It's all as simple as can be;

He paints the things you cannot see.

The column ended by stating: “A FRIENDLY word of warning: Don’t pretend to see more in any of the pictures than you actually do see. You might happen on a hoax instead of the real thing and make a sublime donkey of yourself.”[85]

Meanwhile, one of the organizers, Walt Kuhn, was trying to explain Cubist art to a newspaper writer: “I want a picture of [my friend] Mike O’Brien, and I draw a simple square. I can look at that and visualize my friend without trouble.” The reporter was obviously baffled so Kuhn went on with another example. “Suppose I want a picture of [a] Lady….Here she is,” and Mr. Kuhn drew a quarter circle. “I think, and I see the lady.” When asked if he thought all portrait painting would come to this style fifty years hence, he stated (seriously mind you), “Yes. It will require education and thinking, but it will come.”[86]

Mayor Carter Harrison sent his vice squad to the exhibit, where Sergeant O’Connor proclaimed he could find no fault in Duchamp’s painting King and Queen Surrounded by Nudes, for as far as he was concerned “...there was no impropriety visible—or much of anything else.”[87] Sending the vice squad to the art exhibition, incidentally, was out of character for Mayor Harrison, who did not believe in trying to legislate morality. He had once been quoted as saying that the two major desires of Chicagoans were to make money and to spend it. He turned a blind eye to Chicago’s vice districts, which blossomed during his five terms in office. During his tenure, there were private maps published to enable tourists to find their way from brothel to brothel.

By opening day, ten artworks had been sold, which, mused a Tribune critic, “were of the type that requires the purchaser to furnish the imagination as well as the price.”[88] The Chicago Record-Herald cut deep with its mockery, comparing the art to a carnival sideshow. One quote read, “Here, here, here we have the famous one-eyed lady, brought from the wilds of France; the human skeleton carrying a heliotrope owl and leading a camel with elephant ears; the horse with legs like a bullfrog; the greatest galaxy of...abnormal nudes ever assembled on this or any other continent.”[89] When one onlooker pulled out his Tribune newspaper clipping showing the outline of Duchamp’s nude, another exhibit-goer said to him, “That’s the idea, why don’t they furnish diagrams to go with these things?”[90]

At about the same time, the highly respected Reverend Simeron Gilbert wrote a terse letter to the Art Institute scolding, “The cube exhibition is a big, jolly piece of artistic fooling. If really done at Dunning it would have some topical, psychological interest.”[91]

After reading the voluminous negative press outpouring, it is hard to realize, from a timeline perspective, it was only opening night. While well-heeled patrons and persons noted for their literary and artistic talents, including many members of the Chicago Literary and Cliff Dwellers clubs, were among the first persons to attend the opening, the public had not yet had the opportunity to see the artwork firsthand. Judging from the flow of newspaper articles that followed the opening, the press had no intention of abandoning its ardent criticism. The whole city was buzzing.

On March 26, the day after opening night, a Tribune headline blared, “Chicago Artist Starts Revolt. Charles Francis Browne Opens Fire on Futurists.” The esteemed Art Institute professor, painter, and lecturer Charles Francis Browne had spoken to a standing-room-only crowd in the Art Institute’s Fullerton Hall. Disparaging the art he said, “IT’S trying to prove ITSELF by ITS own ITNESS.” This fusillade was met with “thunderous applause.”[92] Browne continued his attack by recounting a fictional story about Matisse. One day Matisse went out for lunch, and his young son came into his empty studio and scribbled paint upon a half-finished artwork sitting on the easel. Upon returning, Matisse was said to “exclaim ‘That’s It!’ and a new school of art was founded.”[93] While the story was preposterous, the audience gobbled it whole. The Tribune column A Line o’ Type or Two chimed in with this poetic masterpiece:

Willie is right in it now;

See his picture of a cow.

Willie’s up to Cubist tricks.

Ain’t he cute! He’s only six.[94]

I would ask the reader to consider, if you were one of the organizers, with the intent to turn a profit by attracting mobs of people to your show, could you have possibly planned for a better opening outcome?

Now that Browne had publicly opened the attack on the modern art and artists, other conservative Chicago artists, that included pretty much everybody then practicing art in the city, were emboldened to step forward to express their own negative opinions. Chicago in 1913 was decidedly pre- modern. It was a conservative city, living with strict Victorian values, especially in artistic matters. For that matter, the country itself was slow moving, naïve, and agrarian. We understand that starting with the period following World War I and especially during the Roaring Twenties, there was a loss of societal naiveté because these were historical eras that opened channels for more modern thinking and expression. But in 1913, prior to these events, Cubism and Post-Impressionism were shocking to almost everyone.

The Chicago Society of Artists held a gathering in their rooms at the Art Institute two days after the public opening to stage a Cubist play. The attendees consisted of Art Institute employees, art students, alumni, artists, architects, and university professors—all resplendent in Cubist costumes. The group then moved to Fullerton Hall, where music by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) and Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) was parodied by likening it to the “disgusting” modern art. Highly respected local artist Pauline Palmer stated that Art Institute executive secretary Newton H. Carpenter, who had worked tirelessly to bring the Armory Show to Chicago, was more interested in a profit than being motivated to introduce new and interesting art.[95]

Indeed, hoping to generate an outpouring of interest, and to thereby sell more admission tickets, Carpenter was portraying the exhibition as a sensation. He told one newspaper “people are growing more angry every day. I have seen them leave the institute in a rage, calling down maledictions on all artists, and Cubists in particular.”[96] On March 28, Mayor Carter Harrison was asked his opinion of the art after viewing the show a second time, and he said, “Oh, it’s only another kind of degeneracy.” You can imagine the impact such a statement had on the general public. Who wouldn’t clamor to see degeneracy in a respectable museum? Press articles noted that public school children might be asked by their teachers to stay away from the exhibit. “Nasty,” “obscene,” “indecent,” “immoral,” “lewd,” and “demoralizing” were a few of the maledictions an art instructor from Waller High School  rained down upon the art.[97]

Arthur J. Eddy was asked to give his view of the exhibition in the same Fullerton Hall where three days previously Charles Browne had incited his audience to riot. The Cubist movement, he lectured, was “…like the Progressive party. It is a protest against existing conditions in art.” Eddy was further quoted as saying, “President Wilson I am sure, is a Cubist. He is drawn on square planes and straight lines, etc., and I know Colonel Roosevelt is a Futurist; he looks it. The trouble with most persons and particularly museums is that they are about thirty years behind the times.”[98] Despite the fact that no one was receptive to his views, Eddy was absolutely correct. Hardly anyone can spot a an important trend. That’s what makes trends, especially in art, nearly impossible to identify.

A Chicago Examiner reporter, who covered the talk by Eddy, poked fun at him by saying he was such a smooth talker “…that he will prove some time the moon really is made of green cheese.” Another Examiner reporter covering Eddy’s talk teased, “These pictures which can be explained, he explained, and the ones which cannot be explained, he explained why they cannot be explained. In fact, he explained his explanations, and with each explanation bewilderment increased.”[99]

It is evident today that Eddy was insightful in his thinking. He had noted the jury for the Paris Salon of 1860 rejected everything by artists Corot, Millet, Turner, and Whistler. One critic in London had even said Turner’s works looked as though they had been painted with currant jelly, chocolate cake, tomatoes and gravy. Eddy had also noted the disparaging comments in the press sounded much like those some fifty years earlier. He said that all of the paintings in the present exhibition could be purchased for relatively little, and that the artworks would one day prove to be valuable. Eddy was of course correct, but, judging by the ongoing invective in the press, it was apparent that few agreed with his predictions.

Harriet Monroe also had something to say about the future value of the artworks, and voiced what was a common view at the time.

These cubist pictures are all theory; they are so completely the product of a theory that there is no picture left. They try to tell the story of a nude lady coming downstairs, or a draped one playing the piano, or a prince talking to a mute.... But these extremists miss the point; they try to express the pictorially inexpressible. And so these canvases...are probably of no...permanent value.[100]

Of the many critics, the most severe was University of Chicago professor George B. Zug, who was a frequent lecturer at the Art Institute and who also wrote a regular column for the Sunday Chicago Inter Ocean, entitled “Among The Galleries.” His scathing remarks were unequaled, and his conservative stance was unwavering. On March 30, the first Sunday after the exhibit opened, he wrote,

I assert that Matisse is an impostor, that his pictures are lacking in all the elements of true art, and that the Cubists are just exactly nothing. One may have a mind as “open” as a Western prairie, one may seek far and wide in books…but one will nowhere find an explanation which explains. Surely if a painting is not understandable on its surface, and if a piece of sculpture does not explain itself, there is something wrong with the ‘art’ of it….I have yet to meet [an artist] great or small, who is satisfied with all he does, who would not, if he could, seek to improve many a picture….Not so Matisse, [who] in all his paintings [says] he ‘would do nothing differently.’[101]

That Sunday, the Art Institute was open until 10:00 p.m., in order to accommodate the multitude of visitors. The day set a weekend attendance with almost 18,000 people paying admission to see the Cubists and other Modernists.[102] Even by today’s standards, that many people attending an exhibit would be noteworthy. The newspapers were filled with photographs that had no doubt spurred readers to see the great commotion in their town. To actually see the nude on the staircase in Duchamp’s painting, it was suggested in one Tribune article:

Take a careful survey of the picture, study the purported idea, whirl around three times, close your eyes, count twenty, bump your head twice against the wall, and if you bump hard enough the picture of the nude descending the staircase will be perfectly obvious.[103]

This article was accompanied by photos of exhibit-goers standing shoulder to shoulder, smiling for the camera, as well as a photo of the steps of the Art Institute, which were crowded all the way to the edge of Michigan Avenue.

It appeared as if the critics were having a battle to see who could heap the most insulting remarks upon the art, the artists, and the artistic concepts. Chicago Examiner critic Effa Webster insisted the Art Institute had been “desecrated,” and the show was a “blasphemous innovation,” with gallery walls filled with “pollution.” She thought the pictures were an “insult to a self-respecting Chicago public,” and having it in Chicago was a showing of “dishonor,” and she wanted to know who was responsible for the “atrocity.[104]

Displayed in the rooms of the Cliff Dwellers Club, with the regal Howard van Doren Shaw-designed vaulted ceiling, were member’s comical artworks mocking Picasso, Brancusi, and Matisse. It was noted that every member of the club (it was a men’s-only organization at the time) was violently opposed to the exhibition. One of the members of the club’s art committee was none other than Charles Francis Browne. Another art committee member, sculptor Lorado Taft, had “captivated everyone with a picture of ‘A Nude Eating Soup With a Fork.’ ”[105]

Four days after Sunday’s record crowd, an Art Institute weekday attendance record was set, as almost 16,000 people visited the museum. Those patrons, however, were not there to see the Cubists, rather, they were affirming the true conservative nature of Chicagoans. It was the annual floral show, under the auspices of the Horticultural Society of Chicago, they flocked to see.[106]

When the Armory show was in its second week, the Illinois Senate White Slave Commission made an appearance. A commission investigator filed a brief report with Lieutenant Governor O’Hara, who was so aghast at the report he immediately called for an extensive examination of the entire show. While somewhat conciliatory in his remarks to the press, Lieutenant Governor O’Hara said, “We are not condemning the International Exhibition without an impartial investigation.” He went on to say, “I have received many complaints…and we owe it to the public that the subject be looked into thoroughly.” Although the investigator had found a number of the artworks to be both “immoral and suggestive,” the committee was not heard from again.[107]

After all the vitriol, the divisive news reports, the public outrage, questions of sanity and insanity, questions of morality and of what is and is not art, what in art is beautiful, and what is a hoax and what is a serious attempt at change, Harriet Monroe, during a period when little was being written about the show (the press appearing to have temporarily exhausted itself on the subject), wrote an article supportive of the art. She had been an ardent opponent of the art, challenging whether it was genuine. These earlier criticisms, however, were in stark contrast to her later comments, which make her new, more reasoned approach seem all the more intriguing.

John Notz wrote an essay in 2014 for the Chicago Literary Club about Harriet Monroe and her sisters. An interesting point was their extensive travels—did this experience subconsciously opened Harriet’s mind to things that were altogether new, unfamiliar, and interesting?

In May, 1910, Harriet started a ’round-the-world, steamship and rail trip, with her youngest niece, Polly. They went by ship across the Atlantic, to London and by train to St. Petersburg, where they visited the Minister to Russia....From St. Petersburg, the new Imperial Russian Railroad took Harriet and Polly…across Siberia. From there, they proceeded by other rail service into Manchuria and on to Peking in Imperial China…arriving in the early Fall.…By late November, Harriet and Polly were out of China and in Japan. By January 11, 1911, Harriet was back at work at the Tribune.[108]

When Monroe was in New York to see the Armory Show, she initially exhibited a fairly violent reaction to the art. While these feelings relaxed over the course of the following month, nothing displayed the tempering of her opinion as clearly as her April 6 article in the Sunday Tribune entitled “Cubist Art a Protest Against Narrow Conservatism.” In this article she wrote with remarkably forward thinking and offered an open-minded consideration of the art that everyone else had ridiculed. This public stance was both brave and insightful. She put forth the following lucid summary:

One might construct a syllogism. Either these pictures are good or they are not. If they are good, they will make their way in spite of objections; if not, they will perish without the aid of objections. Meantime all of us, conservatives and radicals, Philistines and anarchists, Republicans, Progressives, and middle of the road Populists, have the pleasure and benefit of intellectual exercise. We are discussing, even to the point of excitement, a question which has nothing to do with money, floods, reforms, clothes, or any of the usual trials and preoccupations of our little corner of the world. We are fighting one of those battles of the intellect—those of us who have any—which are common enough in Paris, but altogether too rare in our provincially shortsighted and self-satisfied community....American art, under conservative management, is getting too pallid, nerveless, coldly correct, photographic. Better the wildest extravagances of the Cubists than the vapid works of certain artists who ridicule them. Better the most remote and mysterious symbolism than a camera-like fidelity to appearances. We are in an anemic condition which requires strong medicine, and it will do us good to take it without kicks and wry faces.[109]

On the same day Monroe’s article appeared in the Tribune, Sunday Inter Ocean critic George Zug came out with a similarly tempered viewpoint in contrast to his previous criticisms.[110] It was almost as if Monroe and Zug had arrived at the same place, at the same time, through some mystical serendipity. While insisted the Cubists were only a passing fad, he acknowledged the potential significance of the Post-Impressionists. He even accorded Matisse some respect when he noted that perhaps the artist was working at something that may be valuable, but not yet fully formed.

It was evident in the press that Cubism was now becoming quite trendy in Chicago. There were recipes for Cubist food, illustrations and photographs of the latest in women’s Cubist fashions, Cubist balls and parties, and Cubist music. Cubism had become a fad. The Tribune published a full-page display of society women in their Cubist gowns. “Are you a feminist or a suffragist?” an article asked. “If you are, step right in line and get a cubist or a futurist, an impressionist or a secessionist to build you a nice little dress of blocks, or a costume of circles.”[111]

Because there had been such strong public dislike of the art in New York, the organizers, and the Art Institute, decided to jointly print a pamphlet for sale at the exhibition (they were to share the profits) to support the organizer’s viewpoints and to also present views of those opposing the exhibit. Published shortly after the show opened in Chicago, it was entitled For and Against: Views on the International Exhibition held in New York and Chicago. The sixty-four-pages included Arthur Davies’s statement regarding the exhibition’s objectives. Also to be found were essays by Walter Pach and Frederick James Gregg defending the exhibition, a reprint of a review from the Chicago Evening Post, negative commentary by both conservative artist Kenyon Cox and Princeton art historian Frank Jewett Mather, and an article on Cubism by artist Francis Picabia. According to Newton H. Carpenter, the pamphlet sold extremely well. What was most striking about the pamphlet, however, was the dedication page, where authors typically give thanks to those who inspired and supported them through their efforts and pay homage to others to whom they would like to give some modicum of credit. Instead of doing so, however, the self-fulfilled and conceited organizers stated that the pamphlet was “Respectfully Dedicated to Ourselves.”

In the pamphlet, Kenyon Cox, a society painter in New York and former guest instructor at the School of the Art Institute, mused about the modern artists, who claimed to have put their souls into their artwork, saying, “They maintain that they have invented a symbolism which expresses their individuality, or as they say, their souls. If they have really expressed their souls in the things they show us, G_d help their souls!” He added, “These men have seized upon the modern engine of publicity and are making insanity pay.”[112] In delight, Cox quoted Hans Christian Anderson’s story of the emperor who had no clothes and chimed, “They have nothing on! They have nothing on![113]

With the benefit of hindsight, it is blatantly obvious the organizers were, frankly, full of themselves. They had written flowery, supposedly insightful, and deeply meaningful words to explain the new art movements. Self-aggrandizement was their friend and they pointed an acerbic and sarcastic finger at anyone who did not side with their viewpoint (which consisted of almost everyone), having claimed in the face of their critics that they, the organizers, were the only ones who possessed any intelligence.

The most outlandish essay in the pamphlet came from organizer Walter Pach. This self-wizened artist, just thirty years old, took it upon himself to instruct everyone. His hyperbole was unparalleled. He made several bizarre comparisons. It was his thinking that the new modern art movement was as important as the abolition of slavery and the Emancipation Proclamation—that the new art was the equivalent of the elimination of human suffering and bondage and the inhumanity of enslavement. He further claimed that modern art was as important as the discovery of America by Columbus; the equal of the theories of Darwin; and as important as the writings of Socrates. In his opinion, the entire human race was to benefit from the new art. The millions of years of development of human language was, in his view, equivalent to the ten years it had taken for modern art to develop to its current stage. And finally, he stated, “A considerable residence in Paris and exceptional opportunities to become acquainted with the glorious life and growth of the French people to-day makes me feel that the present age in France is the equivalent, for that country, of the Renaissance in Italy.”[114]

When Princeton professor Frank J. Mather had his turn in the pamphlet he chose to disparage the artworks. His was the last essay in the pamphlet and by a good margin the wordiest. Accordingly he had the last words—all 2,200 of them. Known to have a sharp wit and a tongue to match, he wrote a humorous essay. One of his pithy segments stated:

At any rate, this new art is very livening and interesting…and something like that might be one’s feeling on first visiting a lunatic asylum. The inmates might well seem more vivid and fascinating than the every-day companions of home and office....Post-Impressionism is mostly ignorant splurge, and Cubism merely an occult and curious pedantry....Post-Impressionism, then, is the feeblest imaginable reform for real artistic evils deeply based in the hesitancy of the present social order....And so far as Post-Impressionism is setting hundreds of young painters to coddling their sacred impulses, so far as it accentuates an already exaggerated cult of the individual, it will work nothing but harm.[115]

Some of the wording Mather used in his essay is difficult to follow. However, when he stated Post-Impressionism was a cult of the individual, he was echoing the artists themselves. After all, the organizers dedicated the pamphlet to themselves. How much more revealing could that possibly be?

Members of the Methodist Church, meanwhile, refused to meet in the Art Institute for a lecture on ecclesiastical architecture because the Armory Show was still on view. Reverend Charles Mitchell said, “I would move that the managers of the Art Institute be censured for prostituting the walls of the institute to such purposes as the present exhibit of cubist art. These pictures would not be allowed by the police authorities [in Paris] to be hung on the walls of the lowest barrooms of the city.”[116]

Chicago landscape architect Jens Jensen’s idea was that inadequate housing and the advent of the flat building, flat walls, and flat roofs were responsible for the Cubists and their art. He stated, “The weird looking paintings by the cubists and futurists now in the Art Institute are an example of degeneracy due to inadequate housing. The painters of those pictures are descendants of generation after generation who lived in the flats of Pairs.”[117] Jensen had what he thought was a more practical idea for land-strapped cities. Ideally, he thought a city should be comprised of one- and two-story cottages with plenty of room to breathe.

The furor regarding the show had begun to quiet down in the press, but it was only a brief respite in anticipation of a grand finale of criticism. The exhibition closed on Wednesday, April 16. While 87,000 people had viewed the show in New York, it brought an astounding 188,000 patrons through the Art Institute turnstiles. To put this number in perspective, the Chicago version of the show was open for a mere three weeks. Today at the Art Institute, full-year attendance runs 1.4 million patrons. Newton H. Carpenter accomplished his goal: the exhibition had everyone talking and everyone paying to see it.

To mark the closing day, students of the School of the Art Institute held a mock trial of one “Henry Hair Mattress,” better known as Henri Matisse. He was charged and convicted of “artistic murder, pictorial arson, artistic rape, total degeneracy of color, criminal misuse of line, general esthetic aberration and contumacious abuse of title.”[118] To bring Mr. Hair Mattress to his fitting demise, the students constructed an effigy that they then stabbed multiple times and then dragged around to the front steps of the museum to the encouraging cheers of a large crowd. A student dressed as an executioner stated, in pronouncing the dummy dead, “We regret that you have only one life to give for your principles. You were a living example of death in life; you were ignorant and corrupt, an insect that annoyed us, and it is best for you and best for us that you have died.”[119] It was reported that Carpenter had obtained a court injunction to prevent the students from constructing an executioner’s post and hanging the effigy.[120] (The Art Institute is on Park District grounds). Under threat of arrest if they left the museum terrace, the students complied with the injunction and the situation was thereby controlled.[121] Meanwhile, with the Art Student’s League band playing, three paintings created in mockery of the Cubist works were burned to an ashen heap.[122] Organizer Walter Pach was on hand for the event. His parting words were, “Ten or twenty years from now...these students will be eating crow.”[123]

Cubism had a lingering effect on Chicagoans. The Edgewater Catholic Woman’s Club held a Cubist Food Exposition, which was humorously parodied in a cartoon showing a husband with indigestion after eating a square meal. More Cubist balls were held, and even a few Cubist plays were produced, where the theme was a story without any meaning. Cubist fashions also continued to be popular. Even the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was attempting to keep pace with the Modernists and new music. When conductor Frederick Stock returned to Chicago after spending the summer of 1913 in Europe, he announced a variety of new programming, featuring composers noted by one writer as “novelties.” Among the composers new to Chicago audiences, he listed Mahler, Bruckner, Scriabin, Debussy, Elgar and Delius, all of whose works form a regular part of today’s orchestral repertoire.[124] When the orchestra performed Schoenberg’s Five Small Pieces, the house was packed. Society was quite interested in hearing this “Cubist” music.[125] On hand for that concert was Frederic Clay Bartlett, a Cliff Dwellers Club member, wealthy retired businessman, painter and interior designer. He was also the person who donated to the Art Institute its greatest Post-Impressionist paintings, including George Seraut’s La Grande Jatte.

By the end of the show, some two hundred artworks were sold, totaling $45,000, a number that equates to one million dollars today. Hence, the passion Walt Kuhn so ardently sought in the Post-Impressionists, along with the fifty pounds sterling a day in admission fees he had lusted for in London, was more than amply rewarded. As for Art Institute director William French, he returned safely from his conveniently planned vacation to Pasadena, just a day after the show closed. French had the following to say: “I am afraid that [the] bad influence of this exhibition will be felt in Chicago. The inartistic manner in which the majority of the pictures were painted and the low, and in some cases, immoral subjects, will not be for the best, I fear.”[126] He further mused, “I guess I’m getting too old to enjoy these things,” then promptly deflected any responsibility for bringing the show to Chicago, as did other museum officials who had been left behind during his absence. It is ironic that no one in a position of authority would claim responsibility for the Chicago version of the International Exhibition of Modern Art.

One important question, however, remained. When a financial accounting of the receipts of the exhibition, from its three-city tour to New York, Chicago, and Boston, was still not forthcoming some six months later, most of the key members of the American Association of Painters and Sculptors resigned in protest. Organizer Arthur Davies accused those who had challenged his accounting with being too focused on commercial self-interest. There are few better examples of the “pot calling the kettle black.” When the numbers were finally tallied, revenues came to some $90,000, and expenses somehow totaled about the same. Whether there were any financial shenanigans at play is unknown. In 1916 the AAPS passed quietly into an ignominious grave.

But what became of the value of the Post-Impressionist artworks? Does market value signify some type of acceptance or validation? A Chicago collector inherited a Van Gogh his parents had acquired in 1929, paying for the work at the time about $500,000 in today’s currency. A tidy sum, but by no means outlandish. He felt the Van Gogh painting would best be suited to a collection with ample security and sold it in 2006 for forty million dollars. A year later, a prominent Chicago-based family sold a Picasso they had acquired in the 1960s for $106,000 ($800,000 in today’s currency). That painting brought an astounding ninety-five million dollars. Walter Pach has indeed been posthumously vindicated.

Today we marvel at the bold approach the Cubists and Modernists expressed in their art; it was groundbreaking. Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase is perhaps the prime example. While we may still be perplexed upon encountering a Cubist painting or one of Matisse’s compositions, there is no denying the Modernist movement had a monumental and lasting impact on the art world. I close with this Cubist poem, in honor of Harriet Monroe, who first introduced Chicagoans to the Armory Show.[127]

I

used

to write

my verses in

the old, old fash-

ioned way. But soon

I found they would not sell

Of course, that did not pay. I

Wrote of love, and law, and

Life, and of the azure

Sky; no matter what

I wrote about, no

editor would

buy

!

I

used

to write

about the

modest little

violets in madrigals

and s o n n e ts and

sweetly trilling triolets,

Ah  me,  ‘twas sad to know that I

could twang my sweet-toned lyric,

and grind out wond’ rous poetry

that would the gods inspire—and

yet no one would seek me out, nor

to my genius bow—no one stepped

forth with laurel wreath to press

upon my brow.

I tried the stately epic

and a limerick or two,

it was no use; they

all came back;

I found they

would

not

do

!

I

hit

upon a

happy plan,

I’ll tell you and

Be terse—I saw that

Cubist art had come, why

Not the cubist verse? I quick-

Ly sold a lot like this—these

Editors are rubes—where

Once my verses were

All gems, just now

You’ll find

t h e m

cubes

!

[1]. Harriet Monroe, “BEDLAM IN ART: A Show That Clamors,” Chicago Tribune, February 16, 1913.

[2]. John R. Notz, “The Whole Town's Talking About the Monroe Girls,” presented Chicago Literary Club, April, 21 2014.

[3]. Harriet Monroe, A Poet's Life. Seventy Years in a Changing World (New York: Macmillan Company, 1938), 215.

[4]. Ibid., 211.

[5]. “The Statement,” For and Against: Views on the International Exhibition held in New York and Chicago (New York: Association of American Painters and Sculptors, 1913), 11.

[6]. Monroe, “BEDLAM IN ART.”

[7]. Letter from Walt Kuhn to Vera Kuhn, 6 November 1912, Kuhn Papers, Archives of American Art.

[8]. Gail Stavitsky, “Walt Kuhn: Armory Showman,” The Armory Show (New-York Historical Society, 2013), 45.

[9]. Kuhn to Vera Kuhn.

[10]. Patricia Condon, et. al., In Pursuit of Perfection: The Art of J.-A.-D. Ingres (Louisville: The J. B. Speed Art Museum, 1983).

[11]. George B. Zug, “Among the Art Galleries,” Sunday Inter Ocean, March 30, 1913.

[12]. Monroe, “BEDLAM IN ART.”

[13]. Ibid.

[14]. Fry held the post until 1908.

[15]. Harriet Monroe, “Art Show Open To Freaks,” Chicago Tribune, February 17, 1913.

[16]. Matisse was alternately ridiculed as Henry Hairmatress, Henry Hair Mattress, and Hennery O'Hair Mattress. The spelling varied in the press coverage.

[17]. Monroe, “Art Show Open To Freaks.”

[18]. Harriet Monroe, “International Art Show to Open at the Institute on March 24” Chicago Tribune, March 16, 1913.

[19]. “Art Insurgent,” A Line o’ Type Or Two, February 19, 1913, 6.

[20]. Harriet Monroe, “Critics of All Kinds at ‘Freak Art’ Exhibition,” Chicago Tribune, February 20, 1913.

[21]. Ibid.

[22]. Ibid. There were those who accepted this change in art, and in the world, and held the point of view that perhaps the art was “modern psychology… scientific analysis, destroying old standards [and] revitalizing art. The concentration of the power-color and form reduced to their simplest terms, the fundamental rhythms of motion.”

[23]. Ibid.

[24]. Ibid.

[25]. Kiberly Orcutt, “Arthur B. Davies – Hero or Villain?,” The Armory Show (New-York Historical Society, 2013), 39. See also Harriet Monroe, “New York Has at Last Achieved a Cosmopolitan Modern Exhibit,” Chicago Tribune, February 23, 1913.

[26]. Monroe, “New York Has at Last Achieved a Cosmopolitan Modern Exhibit.”

[27]. Ibid.

[28]. Ibid.

[29]. “Cube Gowns Worn At Freak Party,” Chicago Tribune, February 26. 1913.

[30]. Ibid.

[31]. A Line o’ Type or Two, Chicago Tribune, February 28, 1913.

[32]. A Line o’ Type or Two, Chicago Tribune, March 1, 1913.

[33]. “Freak Art Exhibit of Modern School To Be Brought Here,” Chicago Evening Post, March 8, 1913 and “Hit Mud With Brick; Result, Cubist Art,” Inter Ocean, March 9, 1913 (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago Scrapbooks), vol. 30, 42 (hereafter cited as AIC Scrapbooks).

[34]. “Freak Art Exhibit of Modern School To Be Brought Here.”

[35]. Quoted in “Freak Art Exhibit of Modern School To Be Brought Here.” In his essay “An Explosion in a Shingle Factory,” The Armory Show at 100 (New-York Historical Society, 2013), 485 n. 8, Francis M. Naumann attributes the phrase  to Joel E. Spingarn, a former Columbia University professor, who was quoted as using the phrase in “Talk of the Day,” New York Tribune, March 5, 1913. The exact wording of the quote is as follows: “That picture looks most, but not much, like an explosion in shingle factory.”

[36]. International Exhibition of Modern Art (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1913).

[37]. Twentieth-Century Painting and Sculpture in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2000), 27.

[38]. Ibid.

[39]. Amy L. Paulding, “Futurists’ Startle By Hideous Lines: Devoid of Color and Charm,” Inter Ocean, February 27, 1913 (AIC Scrapbooks) vol. 30, 29.

[40]. “Mysteries of Cubist and Radical Art Dissolved by Understanding,” Inter Ocean, March 14, 1913.

[41]. “Cast Out Picture; Stir Norwegians,” Chicago Tribune, March 11, 1913.

[42]. “When is Art Art? When Wicked?” Chicago Tribune, March 14, 1913. The name of the store is found in Harriet Monroe, “Davidson Sculpture Proves That Artist Has Ideas,” Chicago Tribune, March 23, 1913.

[43]. “When is Art Art? When Wicked?”

[44]. “Futurist Literature,” Chicago Tribune, March 16, 1913.

[45]. Monroe, “International Art Show to Open at the Institute on March 24.”

[46]. Mme. X, “News of the Society,” Chicago Tribune, March 16, 1913.

[47]. George B. Zug, “Among the Galleries,” Sunday Inter Ocean, March 16, 1913.

[48]. Ibid.

[49]. “Cubist Gown Comes To Town,” Chicago Tribune, March 18, 1913.

[50]. “The Cubists Outcubed; A Statue Frame,” Chicago Daily News, March 20, 1913 (AIC Scrapbooks), vol. 30, 59.

[51]. American Art News, March 1, 1913, vol. 11, no. 21, 3.

[52]. Zug, “Among the Galleries.”

[53].  “Here She Is: White Outline Shows ‘Nude Descending a Staircase,’” Chicago Tribune, March 24, 1913.

[54]. “ ‘Barnumized Art’ Critics Call The Cubist Pictures: As ‘Leering Effrontery’,” Chicago Evening Post, March 18, 1913.

[55]. “Artist Paint Puzzles Arrive. Look Like a State of Mind,” Chicago Examiner, March 19, 1913 (AIC Scrapbooks), vol. 30, 57.

[56]. “Big Crowd Expected At Freak Art Exhibit: Art Institute Forces Preparing for Great Crush on Opening Day to View Cubists, Futurists and the Rest: Most of Novelties Sold,” Chicago Evening Post, March 19, 1913 (AIC Scrapbooks), vol. 30, 56.

[57]. “Famous Cubists’ Collection Here,” Chicago Tribune, March 22, 1913.

[58]. “Recent Example of Cubists’ Art,” Chicago Record-Herald, March 19, 1913 (AIC Scrapbooks) vol. 30, 58.

[59]. “Cubists Invade City Today,” Chicago Tribune, March 21, 1913.

[60]. “Cubist Art Is Here as Clear as Mud,” Chicago Record-Herald, March 20, 1913.

[61]. “Know What Cubist Art Is? At Last Here’s Definition,” Wichita Eagle, March 25, 1913 (AIC Scrapbooks), vol. 30, 70.

[62]. John Nielsen Laurvik, Is It Art? Post-Impressionism, Futurism, Cubism (New York: The International Press, 1913), 12.

[63]. “Antics Of Pot Thrills Critics Of Newest ‘Art’: Mustard Receptacle Apparently Real Busy While Woman Muses in Picture at Impressionist Show,” Inter Ocean, March 20, 1913 (AIC Scrapbooks), vol. 30, 58.

[64]. Letter to the Editor, Chicago Evening Post, March 21, 1913 (AIC Scrapbooks), vol. 60, 59.

[65]. “Director French Flees Deluge of Cubist Art: Boards Train for California Just in Time to Dodge New Pictures and Escapes Late Crop of Literature,” Chicago Record-Herald, March 21, 1913.

[66]. Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, “Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia,” Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein (New York: Random House, 1962) 530.

[67]. “Cubist Art Is Explained Cleary by a Post-Impressionist Writer,” Inter Ocean, March 21, 1913.

[68]. A Line o’ Type or Two, Chicago Tribune, March 22, 1913.

[69]. “Famous Cubists’ Collections Here: Talk of ‘Freak’ Paintings Reach Institute for Exhibition Next Week; Magazine Rakes Group; Art Critics refer to Post-Impressionistic Views as ‘Crime Against Nature’,” Chicago Tribune, March 22, 1913.

[70]. “‘September Morn’ Wins Case,” Chicago Tribune, March 22, 1913.

[71]. “Forgives Chicago For Cubist Mirth,” Inter Ocean, March 22, 1913 (AIC Scrapbooks), vol. 30, 62.

[72]. “Futurist Pictures – Two of Them from Dunning. Which Are Which?” Chicago Tribune, March 23, 1913.

[73]. “Dunning Cubist Art Center,” Chicago Tribune, March 23, 1913.

[74]. Unfortunately, when Eddy met an untimely death some seven years later, the Art Institute did not receive his collection, but later purchased a small subset of his collection.

[75]. “Splash! Sploch! Cubist Art Here,” Chicago Tribune, March 23, 1913.

[76]. Mollie Morris, “Weird Art Is Shown: Mollie Morris Sees Exhibit at Art Institute and Advises Precautions Before Visit,” Chicago Daily News, March 23, 1913.

[77]. Herman Landon, Chicago Record-Herald, March 23, 1913 (AIC Scrapbooks), vol. 30, 66.

[78]. “Fair Play For Insurgent Art,” Chicago Evening Post, March 24, 1913 (AIC Scrapbooks), vol.30, 67.

[79]. Harriet Monroe, “Davidson Sculpture Proves That Artist Has Ideas,” Chicago Tribune, March 23, 1913.

[80]. Harriet  Monroe, “A Live Exhibit at the Art Institute,” Chicago Tribune, March 30, 1913.

[81]. Harriet Monroe, “Art Exhibition Opens in Chicago,” Chicago Tribune, March 25, 1913.

[82]. “Society Rushes to See Cubists,” Chicago Tribune, March 25, 1913.

[83]. “Chicago Society Has Private View of ‘Cubist Art,’” Chicago Examiner, March 25, 1913.

[84]. “Cube Art Staggers Institute Members,” Inter Ocean, March 25, 1913.

[85]. A Line-O’-Type Or Two, Chicago Tribune, March 25, 1913.

[86]. “Cubist Art Baffles Crowd,” Chicago Tribune, March 25, 1913.

[87]. Ibid.

[88]. Ibid.

[89]. “Step In! No Danger! Cubist Show Now On,” Chicago Record-Herald, March 25, 1913.

[90]. Monroe, “Art Exhibition Opens in Chicago,” March 25, 1913.

[91]. “Chicago Artist Starts Revolt,” Chicago Tribune, March 26, 1913.

[92]. Ibid.

[93]. A Line-O’-Type Or Two, Chicago Tribune, March 29, 1913.

[94]. Quoted in “Chicago Artist Starts Revolt.”

[95]. “Artists Give Cubist Play,” Chicago Tribune, March 27, 1913.

[96]. “Cubist Art Severs Friendships,” Chicago Examiner, March 28, 1913.

[97]. “May Bar Youngsters From Cubists’ Show,” Chicago Record-Herald, March 27, 1913.

[98]. Joan Candoer, “In the World of Society,” Chicago Examiner, March 28, 1913.

[99]. “Cubist Art Severs Friendships,” March 28, 1913.

[100]. Monroe, “A Live Exhibit at the Art Institute,” March 30, 1930.

[101]. George B. Zug, “Among The Art Galleries,” Sunday Inter Ocean, March 30, 1913.

[102]. “Throng To See Cubist Art,” Chicago Tribune, March 30, 1913.

[103]. “Sunday Crowds See Cubist Art,” Chicago Tribune, March 31, 1913.

[104]. H. Effa Webster, “Moderns Here On Exhibition Called Art Desecration,” Chicago Examiner, April 1, 1913.

[105]. “‘Cliff Dwellers’ Satirize the Cubist Art in Pointed Caricatures,” Chicago Examiner, April 2, 1913.

[106]. “Flower Show Sets Record,” Chicago Tribune, April 3, 1913.

[107]. “New Art Shocks Chicago,” The New York Times, April 3, 1913.

[108]. John R. Notz, “The Whole Town's Talking About the Monroe Girls.” 4/21/2014. Available on-line at http://chilit.org/content.aspx?page_id=86&club_id=11539&item_id=25708 

[109]. Harriet Monroe, “Cubist Art a Protest Against Narrow Conservatism,” Chicago Tribune, April 6, 1913.

[110]. George B. Zug, “Among the Art Galleries,” Sunday Inter Ocean, April 6, 1913.

[111]. “The Cubist Costume Milady in Crazyquilt,” Chicago Tribune, [Special Features] April 6, 1913.

[112]. Kenyon Cox, “The New Art,” For and Against: Views on the International Exhibition held in New York and Chicago (New York: Association of American Painters and Sculptors, Inc., 1913), 35-36.

[113]. Ibid., 40.

[114]. Walter Pach, “The Cubist Room,” For and Against, 52-54.

[115]. F. J. Mather, Jr., “Old and New Art,” For and Against, 56-64.

[116]. “Pastors Flail Cubist Show,” Chicago Tribune, April 8, 1913.

[117]. “Says Bad Housing Causes Cubist Art,” Chicago Tribune, April 10, 1913.

[118]. Cubists Depart; Students Joyful,” Chicago Tribune, April 17, 1913.

[119]. Ibid.

[120]. “Art Institute Students ‘Kill’ Cubist In Effigy,” Chicago Examiner, April 17, 1913.

[121]. Ibid.

[122]. Ibid.

[123]. Ibid.

[124]. Glenn Dillard Gunn, “Keeping Pace With the Futurists in Music,” Chicago Tribune, October 5, 1913.

[125]. “Society Hears ‘Cubist’ Music,” Chicago Examiner, November 3, 1913.

[126]. “Director French Fears Cubists’ Chicago Effect,” Chicago Examiner, April 27, 1913.

[127]. “A Cubist Poem,” Chicago Examiner, May 4, 1913.