Milton W. brown, The Story of the Armory Show. Abbeville Press The Story of the Armory Show is a detailed and elaborate study of the history of one of the most important art shows in the history of the US. It was the first time the American public met the modern art that swept through Europe. Impressionists like Manet, Monet, modern masters like Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, modernist artists like Matisse, Léger, Picasso, hanged side by side with American artists. What aroused the most uproar were the artists which were called "cubists" (Watson describes in his book Strange Bedfellows why European avantgarde movements like futurism, cubism and artists who mixed those like Duchamp and Picabia were to be collected under the enumeration "cubists"). The Some citations: 91: "The Armory Show was not only the most dramatic in our history but unquestionably the best published. The drumbeating was almost worthy of a Barnum." 110: "The Armory Show displayed about 1,300 works of art, of which approximately one-third were foreign. Walter Pach estimated the total, including lithographs which were not in the Exibition proper, at 1,600." 131: "The Ducamp Nude, which had been the most talked work in the Show, was bought, sight unseen, by Frederick C. Torrey of the San Francisco firm of art dealers and decorators Vickery, Atkins and Torrey, for the sum of $324." 131: The highest price for a work of art at the Armory Show and one of the most important sales was the $6,700 peid by the Metropolitan Museum of Art for Ce'zanne's "Colline des pauvres", the first painting of that artist to enter an American museum colle 157-159 Royal Cortissoz of the tribune over Cézanne, Van Gogh en Gauguin: "The common sense view is that these men painted poorly." 178: …it should be said for the critics that there were many among them who were not unintelligent, that most of them rook their work seriously, made an honnes effort to understand, and according to their lights acted fairly. 178: MW: Change was a major argument for the defenders of the AS, as they "could not base their case on accepted standards of artistic judgement". 188: Eind AS: Crowds still filled the hall, with spectators packed tight in front of the "Nude" at the witching hour. At 10 P.M. the guards began to urge the last visitors to leave. 235: "… there were two major sources form which it (AS) emerged: the Independent movement led by Henri and the Realists, and the modernist movement fostered by Stieglitz at 291, movements which were mutually antagonistic bu temporarily reconcilable." 187: "Interest in the Armory Show, promoted by the coninuing press comment and controversy, kept mounting and reached a triumphant climax on the las day, Saturday, March 15. All day long and into the evening a steady stream of spectators surged through the galleries. The surrounding streets were clogged by automobiles and carriages, people had to line up and wait to get in, and from two to four during the afternoon the doors had to be closed because the Armory was filled to capacity. Newspaper estimates of attendance printed the following day ranged from ten to twelve thousand, and it was reported that many visitors had been turned away." 187: "Jerome Myers, recalling that night years later, wrote with fon nostalgia: 'It was the wildest, maddest, most intensely exited crowd that ever broke decorum in any scene I have witnessed. The huge Armory was packed with the elite of New York - and many not so elite. The celebrities were too numerous to register. Everyone came to witness the close, and the audience created a show equally as phenomenal as the exhibition itself. Millionaires, art collectors, society people, all were packed like sardines.'" 149: "One of the major suprises of the Armory Show was the attention paid to Picabia. He did not have the international reputation of Picasso or braque, but his paintings at the Exhibition were more striking in both size and color, so that to an American audience with no experience in Cubism, he could appear as the major figure in this movement. He was often treated in critical reviews as the leading representative of the style, en impression which Picabia was not interested in dispelling. Added to this was the fact that Picabia was the only foreign artist represented at the Show who was in America at the time. He was not averse to publicity, and the press carried interviews in which he explained the modern movement and described himself as one of its leading and most succesfull members." 149: "The Sunday World printed a long statement by Picabia and offered as a prize for the best 150-word explanation of its meaning one original "cubist" drawing by a member of the newspaper's art staff."

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