#147 Art Insanity: The Armory Show of 1913

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Places & Travel, History, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.7 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 11 January 2013

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Armory Show of 1913 was the mainstream debut of modernist art -- both European and American -- to New York City audiences. Galleries had previously devoted themselves to the great European masters, antiquity and American landscapes as a way to influence the taste of a growing city. But even though vanguards like Alfred Stieglitz debuted artists like Picasso and Cezanne into his Fifth Avenue gallery, those names were still barely known to the average New Yorker. The Armory Show, located at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue, changed all that, but not without controversy. When the exhibition debuted on February 17, 1913, writers and art critics exploded in shock and outrage. This is the story of an important moment in American art history, but also a moment in New York City pop culture, an event that shook society and challenged its beliefs about taste and beauty -- not a small thing in the waning years of the Gilded Age. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Bowry Boys Episode 147, the Armory Show of 1913.
0:05.5	Hey, it's the Bowry Boys.
0:07.0	Hey.
0:08.0	The Bowry Boys is brought to you by EuroChipo.com.
0:13.0	EuroChipo's editors expect and recommend the best budget hotels in Europe.
0:19.0	On the web at EuroChipo.com.
0:23.0	Hi there, welcome to the Bowry Boys.
0:24.5	This is Greg Young with a solo show for you this week at the beginning of 2013.
0:29.0	And I hope you're in the mood for a little scandal.
0:32.0	As we'll be spending some time with some of the ugliest offenses to mankind ever perpetrated
0:37.0	by the human hand, blasphemous, morally repugnant works of filth.
0:41.0	Well, at least if you take the words of mortified New York journalist 100 years ago,
0:46.0	it was a month-long exhibition that would have had PT Barnum tipping his hat.
0:50.0	We're talking about the Armory Show of 1913, or the International Exhibition of Modern Art,
0:56.0	as it was officially called, possibly the most buzzed about, most written-about exhibit in New York City history.
1:03.0	This display, which took place at the 69th Regiment Armory, from February 17th to March 15th, 1913,
1:11.0	is the first significant show of American and European modern art in the United States,
1:16.0	allowed an auspicious introduction of modernism into the end of the Gilded Age.
1:21.0	Today, if you were to reassemble the show, gather the 1600 odd pieces of art together,
1:27.0	you would literally have to spend billions of dollars.
1:31.0	But you don't need to be an art history student to appreciate the impact of the show.
1:35.0	After all, I'm not an art historian.
	...

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