The Woodstock Artists Association and Museum (WAAM) will present the “Embracing the New: Modernism’s Impact on Woodstock Artists” in the Towbin Museum Wing, February 9⁍ay 5. Featuring works by Alexander Archipenko, Konrad Cramer, Andrew Dasburg, Henry Lee McFee, Charles Rosen and others, the exhibition highlights the artistic influence of Europe’s avant-garde on Woodstock artists in the period surrounding the 1913 Armory Show and the two decades following.
Paintings, sculptures and works on paper will appear from the WAAM permanent collection and courtesy of several private collections and New York galleries. An opening reception takes place on Saturday, February 9, from 4 to 6 pm.
In the first decade of the Twentieth Century, radical Modernist works by European masters Cézanne, Matisse and Picasso infiltrated the minds of American artists through travel abroad and exhibitions at Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery 291. The 1913 Armory Show, the first large-scale presentation of contemporary European art in the United States, brought Post-Impressionism, Fauvism and Cubism to a broad public audience and served as a turning point in American art.
Public response to the Armory Show was strong. Artists, the press and the public were outraged by Modernist works, such as Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase” and Matisse’s “The Blue Nude.” Robert W. Chanler, who showed work in the American section at the armory, poked fun at Matisse and his followers in a painting created in the short months of the show’s duration in New York.
The painting, “Parody of the Fauve Painters,” 1913, depicts a group of young artists paying homage to Matisse, portrayed in the painting as a chimp surrounded by colorful examples of his paintings. If not immediately, other American artists came to appreciate and adopt the bold style of the Fauvist painters. Louis Bouché’s luxurious painting of a nude from 1917 revels in the intense color and expressive brushwork typical of Matisse and other French moderns.
The work of Cézanne was widely admired by American artists during this period. While living in Paris in 1909, another Armory Show participant, Andrew Dasburg, studied the work of Cézanne firsthand. The distinct influence of Cézanne’s planar brushstrokes is clearly felt in Dasburg’s landscape from around that time, as well as in other later drawings and paintings to be on view at WAAM. Dasburg’s friend Konrad Cramer was well versed in the new European styles based on his own studies on the continent and his association with Alfred Stieglitz’s circle. Two small landscapes and a nude from 1919 reveal Cramer’s affinity for Cézanne as well. Both Cramer and Dasburg would be lifelong proponents of Modernism and influential teachers in the Woodstock community and beyond.
A highlight of the WAAM exhibition is Alexander Archipenko’s “Repose” from 1911, a posthumous bronze edition of the original plaster displayed at the Armory exhibition. Archipenko was a key figure in Parisian avant-garde circles, exhibiting at the Salon des Indépendants, the historic premier showing of Cubist art in 1910.
The WAAM exhibition marks the centennial of the 1913 Armory Show, soon to be celebrated by major exhibitions at the Montclair Art Museum and the New-York Historical Society (NYHS) Museum and Library. Two prominent historians associated with the NYHS exhibition and catalog will present talks at WAAM. On Saturday, April 13, at 2:30 pm, independent scholar and author Avis Berman will present the talk “We Were Only Waiting for This Moment to Arise: American Collectors and the Armory Show.” On Saturday, April 20, at 4 pm, Kimberly Orcutt, Henry Luce Foundation curator of American art of the NYHS Museum & Library will present “Myth, Controversy, and Modern Art: Reconsidering the 1913 Armory Show.” Both talks are $7 for WAAM members and $12 to nonmembers.
Woodstock Artists Association and Museum is at 28 Tinker Street. For information, www.woodstockart.org or 845-679-2940.
