In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

81 7 the armory show One day in November 1912, three Americans arrived at Puteaux to see the Duchamps. They were led there by the American painter and art agent Walter Pach, who had been living in Paris.1 The consummate New Yorker, Pach introduced the Americans, and then gave Raymond Duchamp-Villon some exciting news: in New York City, the Association of American Painters and Sculptors was set to hold a great art show in three months. Named the International Exhibition of Modern Art, it was in need of new European art. It would also go down in history as the “Armory Show,” a name derived from its ordinary Manhattan building , yet a name also remembered as an extraordinary turning point in the introduction of modern art to the United States. At the time of Pach’s visit, the Duchamp brothers’ works had been returned from the Section d’ Or exhibit, none sold. So they let the Americans —Pach, Arthur Davies, and Walt Kuhn—select what they liked. Although Marcel was not around that day, the Americans chose all four of his biomechanical paintings. Of the set, Davies said, “That’s the strongest expression I’ve seen yet!”2 Jacques and Raymond also offered works, paintings, sculptures, and Raymond’s scale model of a “Cubist room” facade.3 Puteaux was not the only stop on Pach’s tour around Paris for the American visitors. They also went to see Kahnweiler, Picasso’s dealer, since Picasso was not around for an unannounced visit. Kahnweiler was about to put on Picasso’s largest retrospective ever, slated for Munich at the exact time of the Armory Show, so he offered four Picasso works, but hardly his strongest.4 Then, on visiting the Steins’, the Americans were loaned two more Picassos to send across the Atlantic. The idea of the Armory Show was hatched earlier that year, soon after the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, Inc., was founded. Some months later the group rented the Armory Building as the venue; it was a block-long edifice used for drills by the Sixty-ninth Infantry Regiment , the “fighting Irish.” In its dedication to “contemporary art,” the 82 || picasso and the chess player primary goal of the association was to open an American market for the more serious progressive painters (who were rather traditional by today’s standards). “Exhibition is the purpose of our uniting,” the group declared at the founding.5 Yet in the spirit of the French Salon des Indépendants, the Armory Show organizers also wanted to be reasonably open: “the Association feels that it may encourage non-professional, as well as professional artists, to exhibit the result of any self-expression in any medium .”6 To be an “international” art show, the Armory also had to include European art. The organizers expected to gather a sufficient amount of that from American collectors. However, in the fall of 1912, the urge to go art-hunting abroad became irresistible. Unexpectedly, Davies and Kuhn had seen the catalog for a massive European show that had been underway in Cologne, Germany, the Sonderbund Exhibition.7 “I wish we could have a show like this,” Davies wrote to Kuhn, who was painting in Nova Scotia.8 The Sonderbund closed September 30. Davies could not travel that quickly, but Kuhn felt a sort of mandate. “In a flash I was decided,” he recalled. “I wired him to secure steamer reservations for me; there was just time to catch the boat, which would make it possible to reach Cologne before the close of the show.”9 By November both Kuhn and Davies had reached Paris, and after Kuhn reported what art he had recruited in the wake of the Sonderbund, especially art in Germany and Holland, guided by Walter Pach they scoured Paris (and later London). To make this work in Paris, Pach was the key. A native of New York City, he came from a prosperous art-related publishing family. He had traveled to Paris to study art and had enrolled at the Académie Julian. While in Paris, the scholarly Pach also became an art consultant, helping wealthy Americans—some of whom visited Europe—understand “modern” art (and then purchase it). He was the first American to write a scholarly work on Cézanne, and many other writings followed, including one on Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Marcel’s brother. Pach recognized that Picasso was in the vanguard in Paris painting, but he was much closer intellectually...

Share