10 - The Armory show of 1913 and the Decline of Innocence

Summary

No event more fully captures the rebellion, the divisions, and the evasions of the Lyric Years than the Armory Show that opened in New York on the evening of February 17, 1913, shortly before the Woolworth Building, standing 792 feet high, became the tallest building in the world. In Movers and Shakers, the third part of her four-part autobiography, Intimate Memoirs (1933–37), Luhan discusses several “Revolutions in Art” – and also reprints her own piece, “Speculations, or Post-Impressions in Prose,” written on the occasion of the Armory Show, in which she asserts that “Gertrude Stein is doing with words what Picasso is doing with paint” – “impelling language to induce new states of consciousness.” Luhan thus reinforces her broader claim: that the spirit that inspired the era’s artists also imbued the planners of the Armory Show. Frederick James Gregg and Arthur Davies were co-conspirators with Stein and Picasso in a plot to open the eyes of “the great, blind, dumb New York Public” to art that is “really modern.” Planning the exhibition, they talked “with creepy feelings of terror and delight” about their plan to “dynamite America.” “Revolution – that was what they felt they were destined to provide for these States – and one saw them shuddering and giggling like high-spirited boys daring each other.” The show itself, Luhan concluded, was the most important event of its kind “that ever happened in America” precisely because it had touched the “unawakened consciousness” of people, allowing artists to set them free.