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HIGH ART HIPOCRISY: Intersections of Cartoons and Fine Art Main MenuIntroductionThe Birth of the NewspaperComics: Taking Over the Sunday SupplementComics in the Early 1900sThe 1913 Armory ShowShowtime! New York City, Chicago, and BostonThe Critiques and The ComicsThe Pop Art Movement, Roy Lichtenstein, and Comic BooksDeconstructing Perspectives of Lichtenstein’s Work: Pro-Appropriation or Pro-Cartoonist?The Rise of 1940s Comic Books in the Late 20th CenturyComics in MuseumsThe MoMA “High and Low” ShowArt Spiegelman’s Response to MoMA High and LowComics in Museums TodayAbstract ComicsCora's Curation of Abstract ComicsConclusionReferencesCora Hernandezca60d402b432a51ad192c7a6d79f42e30854c48e
Front page of 1913 Armory Show Catalogue
1media/Internation Exhibition of MOARt_thumb.jpg2024-08-13T20:14:44-07:00Cora Hernandezca60d402b432a51ad192c7a6d79f42e30854c48e456711Front page of 1913 Armory Show Catalogueplain2024-08-13T20:14:44-07:00Cora Hernandezca60d402b432a51ad192c7a6d79f42e30854c48e
The International Exhibition of Modern Art began on February 17, 1913. More than 1,300 artworks were shown at the New York Armory Show. On the first day of the exhibition, 4,000 guests would be admitted into the show. When guests first entered, they would find themselves in Gallery A, and could move through the exhibition as they pleased. Each gallery held a different origin or movement of art. The American art featured in the show was aligned with the traditional standards of art in America at the time, but the avant-garde European work featured made a much bigger splash, drawing crowds into the exhibition. Abstract and Cubist works would absolutely thrill crowds of unprepared witnesses. The International Exhibition of Modern Art wrapped up on March 15th, 1913. By the end of the show, approximately 85,000 attendees had visited the exhibition. However, there was not a lot of time to reflect on the exhibition, as it was traveling to Chicago next and set to open on March 24th, 1913. The Chicago run of the Armory Show was drastically different from the original New York exhibition. Lunday summarizes this point in her book, stating, “While New York lagged behind Europe artistically, Chicago in turn lagged behind New York. Chicago had only been introduced to Impressionism in 1893 at the Chicago World’s Fair, and European Post-Impressionism and modernism remained virtually unknown.” (Lunday 89) The Chicago Armory Show was also half the size of the New York exhibition. Since the Art Institute of Chicago, the venue for the Chicago Armory Show, had much less space for the exhibition, they could only fit 634 works into the show. The organizers chose to show more of the progressive art instead of sticking with the traditional American work. The progressive European artwork came as a shock to most Chicagoans, which will be discussed further in the next section. However, since the exhibition was so shocking, the Chicago Armory Show had the highest attendance of all three of the exhibitions, welcoming a whopping 100,000 guests in to see the show. The Chicago Armory Show wrapped up on April 16th, 1913. The Boston Armory Show was the most lackluster of the three variations. The Boston run took place from April 28th, 1913 to May 19th, 1913 at Copley Hall, an even smaller venue than the Art Institute of Chicago. The Boston show was only able to hold 244 artworks from the original curation of over 1,300 works. The crowd in Boston was not necessarily excited that the show was making an appearance in their city. The show only pulled in around 13,400 guests over three weeks of exhibition. The excitement was over, but luckily, we have yet to discuss the best part of the whole ordeal—the critiques, and then the comics.
