?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
DESIGNER UNKNOWN INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF MODERN ART. 1913. 201/2x141/4 inches. Condition B+: creases in image; tear through right margin. Printed on card. Among the most significant events in the history of modern art, the Armory Show introduced Americans to Impressionism, Neo- and Post-Impressionism, Symbolism, Fauvism, Cubism, and modern sculpture. Coolly received by critics, the show was an inspiration to American artists such as Man Ray, Stuart Davis, and Joseph Stella. The show was America's introduction to Europe's modernist painters like Picasso, Matisse, Gaugin and Van Gogh. It was at this show that Marcel Duchamps "scandalous" Nude Descending the Staircase and other Cubist and Futurist works sent shocks through the American art world, which could not at all come to terms with such a departure from conventional representational art, feeling threatened by the unknown. The uprooted pine tree image on the poster (which was the same used for the cover of the exhibition catalogue) is taken from the Massachusetts, Revolutionary era battle flag, "proclaiming liberation from the art of the past" (Shapiro 135), and clearly signifying another revolution, this time in art. The Armory is, incidentally, directly across the street from Swann Galleries. Although frequently reproduced we can find no record of this poster ever coming up for auction.
