An Exhibition on the Centenary of the 1913 Armory Show Andrianna Campbell and Daniel S. Palmer

DE NY/ CE dc

An Exhibition on the Centenary of the NT 1913 Armory Show Andrianna Campbell E R and Daniel S. Palmer

February 17-April 7, 2013 September 11-December 20, 2013 Abrons Art Center Luther W. Brady Art Gallery The Henry Street Settlement The George Washington University 466 Grand Street 805 21st Street, NW New York, New York 10002 Washington, DC 20052 table of contents

Introduction iv David Garza, Executive Director, Henry Street Settlement

Introduction v Lenore D. Miller, Director, University Art Galleries and Chief Curator

Digital Art in the Modern Age 1 Robert Brennan

Rethinking Decenter 2 Daniel S. Palmer

Decenter: Visualizing the Cloud 8 Andrianna Campbell

Nicholas O’Brien interviews Cory Arcangel, Michael Bell-Smith, James Bridle, Douglas Coupland, Jessica Eaton, Manuel Fernandez, Sara Ludy, Yoshi Sodeoka, Sara VanDerBeek, and Letha Wilson 14 Nicholas O’Brien

The Story of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Armory Show 20 Charles Duncan

Reprint of the Founding Document of the Abrons Arts Center 23 Winslow Carlton, President of Henry Street Settlement

Artworks 24

List of Works 47

Acknowledgements 50

Published in conjunction with the exhibition: DECENTER NY/DC: An Exhibition on the Centenary of the 1913 Armory Show, Abrons Arts Center, The Henry Street Settlement February 17-April 7, 2013 and Luther W. Brady Art Gallery, The George Washington University, September 11-December 20, 2013. Catalogue designed by Alex Lesy

© 2013 Luther W. Brady Art Gallery, The George Washington University. All rights reserved. No portion of this catalogue may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-935833-07-9 “Decenter” is defined as: To cause gallery to offer an exciting and original iel S. Palmer, to whom we are indebted. to lose or shift from an established center statement to complement the New York We hope this thought-provoking evocation of focus. Historical Society’s exhibitions, and of times past and present will further gen- The Art Show in the Park Avenue Ar- should appeal strongly to GW students erate outreach for GW’s arts initiatives. mory sets a standard amongst the world’s who have embraced the digital world in While the Armory Show took place in ever-proliferating international art fairs. their artistic practice and social media. New York, its hundredth anniversary is It was at the 2013 Art Show, organized by We have thus initiated a highly innovative being celebrated all over the country. We the Art Dealers Association of America dialogue and collaboration with New York are proud to commemorate this great art (ADAA) to benefit Henry Street Settle- curators. The Luther W. Brady Art Gallery historical legacy. I would like to ac- ment, that I learned of the existence of has raised its capability of borrowing art- knowledge David Garza, Executive Direc- a contemporary and complementary ex- work for exhibition from other academic tor, Henry Street Settlement for making hibition, DECENTER: An Exhibition on institutions and museums and has staged an introduction to DECENTER. We are the Centenary of the 1913 Armory Show. exhibitions of the work of internationally grateful to Clarice Smith for her generos- It was originally shown in the Abrons renowned artists. ity in supporting this exhibition. Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement Modified to fit the Luther W. Brady Art from February to April 2013. Gallery’s space and augmented with work Lenore D. Miller Presenting DECENTER here at the by DC area artists, this adaptation is guest Director, University Art Galleries Luther W. Brady Art Gallery enables the curated by Andrianna Campbell and Dan- and Chief Curator

introduction

Henry Street Settlement is hon- York. The event, one of the first to make work and remains a dynamic home ored to have hosted DECENTER: the vital connection of philanthropy to where artists can experiment with all An Exhibition on the Centenary of the the art world, was the creative vision of art forms. The 27 emerging and interna- 1913 Armory Show, at our Abrons Arts Margaret Carlton (Mrs. Winslow Carlton) tionally recognized contemporary artists Center. While DECENTER highlights and Alice Kaplan (Mrs. Jacob Kaplan). It featured in DECENTER are a true the diversity and expansiveness of the was on this occasion that we announced testament to our history of innovation. 1913 show’s legacy, the exhibition also our commitment to build a new cultural We are deeply grateful to the curators celebrates Henry Street Settlement’s center, today known as the Abrons Arts Andrianna Campbell and Daniel S. past, present and future as a pioneering Center. Henry Street continues our arts Palmer, Visual Director at the Abrons art institution. legacy through the annual Art Show at Arts Center Jonathan Durham, and The Armory Show was pivotal in the the Park Avenue Armory in partnership the participating artists for mounting Settlement’s full embrace of the arts. with the Arts Dealers Association of this groundbreaking exhibition at In 1963, Henry Street sponsored the 50th America, the first of multiple art fairs Henry Street. anniversary exhibition of the show, which inspired by the original Armory Show. explored its historic significance through To this day, the Settlement’s Abrons David Garza a partial recreation at the Munson-Wil- Arts Center supports the creation and Executive Director liams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New presentation of bold, multidisciplinary Henry Street Settlement iv v Digital Art in rethinking decenter the Modern Age daniel s.palmer robert BRENNAN

Rococo, rococo, rococo, rococo. Rococo, rococo, rococo, rococo. —Arcade Fire

If you would have asked visitors to eign to us now. Some would say we’re the the Armory Show in 1913 what “modern wiser for it. But far too often we forget art” was, there’s a good chance they that our inability to think like moderns would have described what we today call doesn’t mean the problems that occupied art nouveau. This was only the latest in them have simply gone away. Are we not a long succession of styles in European still, amidst the Great Recession, coping art called modern in their time, from with the consequences of automation? Is Gothic to Renaissance and Rococo. Not the health care crisis not still essentially a that every style was born modern, as if problem of distributing the fruits of rapid by default: many fashioned themselves as technological development? Is climate torch-bearers of classical antiquity. And change not yet another unforeseen con- since the path laid down by the ancients sequence of industrialization that leaves was broad enough to encompass much those who trust the scientists little choice variety and innovation, the moderns who but to commit to an even more radical managed to stray from it usually did so in program of transformation? recurrent, established ways, either as al- There is no question that digital lies of new science or champions of fleet- technology has the potential to move ing pleasure. The modernity of this or us beyond the service economy. It that art could thus last a very long time— remains to be seen, however, whether long enough that it should not surprise that transformation will entail anything Jessica Eaton, CFAAL 140, 2013. Photograph: 40 x 32" and John Newman, Headturners Prop and Kiss Greyed Stripes, 2008. Cast bronze, acrylic us to find the art of the Armory Show more than a reshuffling of employees 1 paint on acqua resin, wood putty, Japanese paper, papier-mache, foamcore, armature wire: 22 ⁄2 x 8 x 5". still, 100 years later, called modern. It from counters to distribution centers and took Jacques-Louis David and the French delivery routes. Could digital art offer Revolution to displace the modernity of such a society more than palliatives for Ninety-nine years after Marcel Du- and its historiography. As the two of us that drew explicit parallels between 1913 the Rococo. What would it take for us to boredom? Just as it didn’t take long for champ caused an uproar with his Nude worked to develop an exhibition together, and 2013 or came across as a history displace Picasso’s? our 20th century modernists to grow tired Descending a Staircase, No. 2, a poster and continued our studies (we were both lesson. Instead, we took the anniversary Many are convinced that our epoch of making armchairs for weary business- designed by the master sat tucked away in doctoral students at the time), we were as an opportunity to analyze the changes will go down in history as the digital age. men, neither do many artists of the digital a utility closet at Henry Street Settlement’s thrilled to discover that Abrons had in fact in perception that have been brought It is clear, moreover, that this convic- age rest content designing screensavers. Abrons Arts Center. This reinterpretation been created with funds raised by Milton on by the technologies of our digital age tion has accompanied a radical deple- Nor should we be discouraged by those of his famous painting quietly touted the Brown’s groundbreaking work on the by assembling contemporary artworks tion of our ability to hope for the future. who, measuring the initial results of our “50th Anniversary of the Famous Inter- Armory Show and its fiftieth anniversary that speak to “the legacy of Cubism in Today’s realists look forward to a world efforts against such vague ambitions, national Armory Show 1913, Re-created celebration. This realization eventually led the hundred years since the Armory where smartphones adjust thermostats; deem them boring or superficial. Indeed, in the original armory, Lexington Avenue to our Decenter exhibition, and after some Show’s radical display of modern art, and its dreamers, to one where languages as it occurred to Hegel in his medita- and 25th Street, New York for the benefit more digging, we found the framed poster especially, how (it has) become relevant are learned at the click of a button. In tions on the twilight of the Rococo, “the of the Henry Street Settlement, April 6-28, that (perhaps to be provocative) Duchamp today.” Our hope was that by bringing to- the 1950s my father’s P.E. classes were superficiality and boredom that pervade 1963,” but the organization had no plans had signed twice. gether a diverse group of artists working offered under the pretext that hobbies the existing order, the vague sense of an to honor their own important anniversary. We knew that we had to mark the cen- across different media and styles, includ- would be more important once automa- unknown, are harbingers that something When Andrianna Campbell and I came tenary of the 1913 Armory Show on the ing some that utilize a vernacular of frag- tion had abolished labor and inaugurated else is in store.”* n to Abrons as independent curators with Lower East Side, and have been thrilled mentation, nonlinearity, simultaneity, and a universal leisure society. a very different exhibition idea, we were to continue this celebration at George decenteredness, we could address the The rationale of those P.E. classes * Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes completely unaware of the connection that Washington University’s Luther W. ways that the early modernist artworks (Suhrkamp, 1970), 18: “…der Leichtsinn wie die Langeweile, would have been as familiar to Courbet, die im Bestehenden einreißen, die unbestimmte Ahnung eines this community-based, inter-disciplinary Brady Art Gallery, but at both venues we shown in the 1913 Armory Show have Signac, Duchamp, and Léger as it is for- Unbekannten sind Vorboten, daß etwas anderes im Anzuge ist.” arts center had to the landmark exhibition wanted to avoid simply creating a show inspired contemporary artists. We also

1 2 hoped to highlight how many of these art- have been endlessly folded and rubbed ists have adapted the innovations of the by the artist’s hands and blackened by historical avant-garde to respond to the graphite, visually convey a haptic sense revolutionary changes brought on by the of contact and tactility that honestly digital technologies that have permeated expresses process in a composition that nearly all facets of contemporary life. evokes fragmented, Rayonist dynamism. Our attention to these realities played an David Gilbert’s photograph The Giraffe important role in how we thought about is the result of the artist’s unique studio the project and tried to fundamentally practice where he combines fabrics, rethink the very notion of an exhibition. paper, string, and other highly empathetic We believe that this has important impli- objects to produce staggeringly beautiful cations for digital art and tried to engage and subtly lit characterized compositions. these issues in the web-based portion of The intimate scale of the print in our ex- our exhibition, as Andrianna will discuss hibition encourages direct experience so more thoroughly in her essay. that the viewer can retrace the construc- The architecture of the Abrons gallery tion of his ephemeral creation. Backdrop, is remarkably different from that of the tape, and clamps all reveal his process, historic exhibition, but this difference and in doing so, exemplify “modernism highlighted some of the changes that with a human face” to offer warmth and have occurred since 1913. Abrons’s con- wit as a corrective to art with a hard edge crete building had been lauded by archi- as much as to the estrangement of human tectural critics like Ada Louise Huxtable contact and the constant bombardment when it first opened because of how it of data that we experience online. and other Brutalist structures negotiate However much the exposed concrete the legacy and shortcomings of early 20th of the Abrons building has meaningful century modernism. Many of the best ex- ideological implications, we still had to amples exhibit what Kenneth Frampton deal with the fact that our Lower East has termed “Critical Regionalism,” in that Side venue lacked a unified gallery space. when thoughtfully and properly designed The impossibility of assembling a cohe- (as in Louis I. Kahn’s poetic master- sive white-box gallery show in fact turned pieces), these structures use humble into an additional boon, as it allowed us human-scale and richly tactile elements to shake-up the traditional, hierarchi- to correct the harsh coldness, totalizing cal art-viewing experience by creating a master-narratives, and other problematic more engaging installation. Accordingly, deficiencies of modernism without verg- we took this as a metaphor for the social ing into postmodernist superficiality. landscape of our present era. We hoped The principle tenets of modernism that by scattering artworks throughout seem to resonate again with many con- the building as well as an online venue, temporary artists who have surpassed and quite literally “decentering” the show, feelings of skepticism or indifference we could activate our viewers by creat- by recovering a determined sense of ing intimate moments. We have tried purpose in their art. They re-affirm art’s to achieve this at the Brady gallery by power by directly addressing the issues isolating works in an attempt to heighten of the times, and by aligning themselves each visitor’s engagement. Ideally, as the with the deeply political efforts of many decenteredness of the internet and social early 20th century artists, who gener- media have allowed us access to friends ally did so through abstraction. Kahn’s in remote places but also augmented the Top: Seher Shah, Unit Object (court), 2012. Graphite and gouache on paper: 22 x 30". concrete forms are as much about meaning of our face-to-face interaction, Bottom: Seher Shah, Unit Object (auto-block), 2013. Graphite and gouache on paper: 22 x 30". post-war existentialism as light, materi- we hoped that our exhibition’s decen- Courtesy the artist. als, and space, and so too have many tered installation would engage visitors contemporary artists found tactful ways and create a connection that helped them matic spotlighting. It punctuated arrivals tailed work tied together multiple floors, to comment on important contempo- reflect on the highly complex operations and departures, while also offering a corridors, and galleries in a totalizing rary issues by adapting modernism to addressed by each artist. tower-like marker to navigate the space. way that collapsed private and public, as the changing conditions of modern life, To anchor these dispersed artworks, Like Barthes’ description of the Eiffel well as historical and contemporary by rather than abandoning it. In our show, we placed David Kennedy Cutler’s Tower: “with it we all comprise a shifting intermixing references to Matisse and a pair of Unit Object drawings by Seher Weight Forever in Abrons’s open-air figure of which it is the steady center: Duchamp’s iconic offerings in the 1913 Shah make a statement about complexity amphitheater, around which the rest of the Tower is friendly.” Similarly, Ulrike exhibition with images of other artists and contradiction similar to mid-century the building is organized, but which has Mohr’s Black Holes cut through the from Decenter’s roster he gathered from architecture by combining ambiguous rarely been used for performances or arabesque curve of the gallery to further the internet. Each of these interventions forms of imaginatively gridded build- installations in recent years. This fifteen- fragment the space while simultaneously invert the 1913 Armory Show’s scheme ing elements with non-western motifs foot tall steel outdoor public sculpture drawing in shadow, and Franklin Evans’s of endless rows of paintings hung on to produce fantastically hybrid utopian covered by fractured CD-ROM and oil- painting installation bluenudedissent burlap by articulating the dramatic shifts David Kennedy Cutler, Weight Forever, 2013. Inkjet on aluminum, wood, steel: structures. Along the same lines, N. slick imagery served as a perfect beacon interjected into another of the building’s that have occurred in exhibition-making 15 x 6'. Courtesy the artist and Derek Eller Gallery. Dash’s Commuter series works, which because of its monumentality and dra- interstitial spaces. His immensely de- during the last hundred years, but also in

3 4 such a way that made it appear as if the building had been specifically designed and destined for each of these artworks, which address their time as much as it did the crises of years past. While these examples and other strik- ing artworks boldly punctuated the show, their more minute details also rewarded deeper inspection. In this way, we hoped to create an environment that cultivated close-reading in order to address the com- plexities of perception in our era. While technology enables us to see more at a faster rate, this is often at the sacrifice of genuine engagement. We chose numerous artworks for our show because of the way that they frustrate superficial interpreta- tion, or to put it more positively, that they offer magnificent rewards to those who take time to unlock their minutiae. Paintings by young consummate masters of technique like Amy Feldman, Douglas Melini, and Andrew Kuo demonstrate the possibilities available to traditional media in this era. These artists each use paint in such a way that allows them to achieve complicated optical effects with a presence unattainable by even the highest resolution computer monitors or digital prints. Specifically, Feldman’s seemingly informal, yet thoughtfully composed grey 4 Likes explores figure-ground rela- Amy Feldman, 4 Likes, 2012. Acrylic on canvas: 72 x 88". Courtesy the artist and Blackston Gallery. tionships with a process that belies its complexity. The painting resists a stable his powerful sculpture Glint produces aspects deal with the weight of (art) his- reading but rather oscillates between a visual oscillation created by opposing tory and the massive changes that we’ve surface, the iconography of social media, grooves that approach pixelation to make undergone in the past decades. Three and pure geometry. Similarly, paintings it look as if it were photoshopped into final works address this still by offering a by Melini and Kuo, which have an added the room. Similarly, Ethan Greenbaum challenge to optical reception, and in do- forcefulness in digital reproduction due and John Houck complicate the striking ing so, showing how traditional modes of to their bright color and compositional beauty of their artworks with trompe experience have expanded. Cory Arcan- acrobatics, convey even more information l’oeil processes that make full use of digi- gel’s Airport is an open IEEE 802.11 wire- when seen in person. Their rhythm and tal technologies as tools to wrestle with less network that can only be perceived flow are heightened by drips and visible the seeming ethereality of the internet with a Wi-Fi-enabled device, and Douglas brushstrokes—the remaining traces of a age. Greenbaum scans and manipulates Coupland’s Imagine a Car Crash..... and laborious process—as well as a perceived construction materials, and Houck uses Hey Boy, Hey Girl, Superstar DJ are three-dimensionality that Melini achieves computer programs to produce infinitesi- colorfully pixelated QR-code paintings by juxtaposition and physical overlap, mally complex “aggregate” grid patterns firmly within the legacy of modernist and which Kuo helps reveal and decode of color. Each of their works presents its abstraction, but which offer additional in the diagrams and legends included at own moment of elucidation to reveal its textual information embedded by the the bottom of his panels. magic and also its cultural relevance— writer-artist when they are scanned with These themes carried over into Greenbaum’s digital layering is further the appropriate software. Each of these photographic works in the show as well. complicated by the physical layering of artworks and many others throughout Jessica Eaton and Barbara Kasten each sheets of acrylic panel leaned against both exhibitions suggest more than a new use the possibilities afforded by the the wall, and upon close inspection, the aesthetic or style, but rather an evolved camera to create striking images that veracity of Houck’s array of folds and relationship between viewer and art- frustrate any simple reception. They play shadows unravels to reveal his process. work. While some require digital devices complicated tricks with mirrors, filters, Each of these examples channel the to be perceived, or awareness of digital color, and more, all while achieving an digital as a mode of perception that processes to be understood, they do extremely contemporary, almost seem- artists, and the culture at large must not in any sense deny the power of art. ingly digital feel (in Kasten’s case, far encounter because of significant societal Instead, these artworks offer insights that before this look had become prevalent). shifts. Many of these works embrace the fully invest the viewer in the conceptual Although created in a rather un-advanced diagonal lines, fragmented planes, and complexities of our present moment, as plywood material, the technological pro- other elements that recall the vernacular was hopefully the case for the entirety of

cess Michael DeLucia used to construct of Cubism, but their most significant our lovingly crafted exhibitions. n John Houck, Untitled #155, 809,999 combinations of a 2x2 Greg Silpe. Courtesy the artist and On Stellar Rays. grid, 30 colors , 2013. Creased archival pigment print: 60 x 40". Collection of Mr.

5 6 Decenter: Visualizing the Cloud andrianna campbell

Clockwise, from top left: Tony Cokes, Evil.12: Fear, Spectra & Fake Emotions, 2009. Brenna Murphy, Latticescanr, 2012. Rafaël Rozendaal, http://www.fromthedarkpast.com, 2009. James Bridle, Rorschmap, 2013.

De-cent, Descent, Dissent

The monuments that made Manhat- logically independent media like painting certain structural tendencies that at their tan’s cityscape into an epitome of the and sculpture.4 Leading scholars in the most basic gravitate towards a geo- modern industrial city still stand. Even field such as Claire Bishop and David metrically and informationally reductive the glass behemoths that surround us now Joselit either posit that the digital impact visual language, and on the other hand, were, in their basic form, foreseeable to on art production has been eschewed at their most advanced, produce hyper- the forward thinkers 100 years ago.1 Today, by artists, resulting in a nostalgia for real, mimetically fluid forms.6 The formal one of the most extensive changes is the outmoded technology or, in the latter’s qualities of the former emulate early construction of support systems for the case, foregrounds a “network aesthetics” advances in modernist abstraction; the World Wide Web, which were initially built that considers the distribution of these latter forces us to consider certain modes over a quarter century ago and remain un- works as central to their narrative.5 Our of figuration as genuine heirs to modern- seen; an infrastructure of interconnected interaction with the digital is primarily ism’s legacy. The concern of this essay nodes stretches over a million miles in the through screens and visualization tech- and of the DECENTER exhibition is an United States alone.2 This tangible support nologies; the impact on art ought to have atemporal consideration of the formal af- framework for the Internet, for cloud stor- a more direct manifestation. DECENTER finities between abstract works displayed age and for our numerous data computa- evolved out of a desire to locate a visible in the 1913 Armory Show and contempo- tion systems and devices, remains invisible structure at work in art praxis, as well as rary abstract works engaged with digital and sublimely unfathomable.3 to evolve a curatorial model that embrac- technologies in order to expose the In the arts, it has been difficult to es the digital network. visible and conceptual marks of what has pinpoint the formal influence that digital What does this visual structure look been a radical if largely under-the-surface mediation has had on primarily techno- like? Digital technologies manifest visual revolution.7 Michael DeLucia, Glint , 2012. Enamel and plywood: 96 x 48 48". Courtesy the artist Eleven Rivington.

7 8 Why consider Modernism now? patchwork view of the landscape from an Toward a decentered Laocoon The interplay between these two airplane. As John Welchman has found, dimensions is evident in Cory Arcangel’s Henry Street Settlement’s Abrons Arts WWI pilots were shown copies of Cubist Although the majority of the abstract Hello World, a sculpture created using Center, where our exhibit was first held, paintings in their war manuals to explain works in this exhibition fall outside a 3D printer. The work exists both in was built as a testament to the continued what the landscape would look like from of the Greenbergian conception of code and in space, making the creation production and display of modern art, the sky.15 Today, in a directly analogous abstraction, there are many that in fact accessible to anyone who has the which their president, Winslow Carlton project, Omer Fast explores the view make use of his principles: progressive technology to print their own version. saw as beginning in the United States from a plane without a cockpit, captured interrogation of the boundaries of the Travess Smalley’s Compositions in with the 1913 Armory Show.8 Funds by drones 5,000 feet above ground. Other digital medium and its interaction with Clay works are flatbed scans of clay raised for the construction of the Abrons artists such as Trevor Paglen, James others. One manifestation of this is a modeled on the scanner bed. Formally, Arts Center came from a 1963 reconstitu- Bridle, and Yoshi Sodeoka use digital tendency towards a pared down aesthetic they allude to collage and highlight the tion of the original Armory Show orga- technologies to reveal secret government exposing digital code— a binary of zeros tactility of clay because of imprinted nized by Milton Wolf Brown and Marcel sites and to map and interrogate our and ones.18 But I suggest that this, which fingerprints. John Newman’sCollections Duchamp.9 Because of the rich historical surveillance culture. I call “pixelation,” is only one of three and Corrections with Vermillion adopts legacy of the Abrons Arts Center, the In 1913, the world was on the cusp trajectories evident in a broader formal the form of scientific models from the 19th impetus to re-examine the 1913 exhibit of its first international, technologically dynamic. The other I call digital space, century and show how parallel planes developed naturally. All over the country, advanced war. At home, socio-political or a “new space,” that blends physical do not intersect in space. David Gilbert exhibitions celebrating the advent of ab- tumult interrupted capitalist production, and virtual; and the third trajectory is the constructs elaborate deskilled paper straction and the anniversary of the 1913 with events such as the workers’ strike archive, which presents an unprecedented sculptures, which are then photographed Armory Show opened,10 and in all cases, in Paterson, NJ.16 In many ways, the potential for information access. Each has like a model. The fact that the paper a re-consideration of modern art seemed scale of these technological shifts a distinct presence in the exhibition. sculptures of Cubism were in many ways imperative. For the purposes of this show, in labor, production, and individual This stylistic and conceptual tendency the “principal rupture” leading the way modernism centers on that 1913 mo- perceptual experience parallel those revels in the use of pixelation as an for sculpture in the twentieth century ment.11 Features of modern art involve that have accompanied the rise of digital aesthetic mode akin to pointillism. For made the inclusion of this work even medium specificity, self-reflexivity, and technologies, our visual understanding of instance, in Gabriel Orozco’s particle more fitting.24 Sara VanDerBeek’s totems often an engagement with the broader several long wars, and the exaggerated painting series, the artist photographs were made specifically for this exhibition socio-cultural issues of modernity.12 immaterial relationship of labor/property flora. He then filters the photographs and were sourced from an archive of At the turn of the nineteenth and to value in the Western world.17 In both through a pixelation program, transfers scanned Cubist engravings that Duchamp- twentieth centuries, vast technological periods, technological expansion was them to canvas, and uses Q-tips to Villon showed in the 1913 Armory Show. upheavals changed the structure of visual bound up with dramatic social and paint each dot to emulate a larger than The sculpture is modular like Constantin information.13 Gertrude Stein famously political turmoil, and it was the new ratio pixel. John Houck’s background Brancusi’s standing forms, but in its labeled the First World War as the first technology, in turn, that framed our in programming inspired him to create installation echoes Cubist sculpture. Cubist war,14 presumably referring to the understanding of both. software, which combines a few dozen The piece alludes to Cubist innovations in fusing two-dimensional and three- dimensional form in sculpture, and also

Gregor Hildebrandt, Kalkweifler Pierrot (Pierrot Lunaire, Schoenberg) , 2011. Cassette tape Black Holes , 2012–2013. Carbon. on canvas: 97 x 60". Courtesy the artist. Ulrike Mohr, is culled from a digital archive which accentuates this play with space.25 colors into almost a million combinations blocks of primary color also are a kind So many artists working today in his photographs.19 He calls these of technology, the perfect emblem of the maintain an archive of their process.26 works aggregates. Ethan Greenbaum’s information age. Andrew Kuo’s If I Could Re-do Tuesday photographs of marble veneer samples The notion of “new space,” which explores a mundane Christmas Day are blown-up, and when printed on the has been theorized about digitally first recounted on Tumblr. Gregor scale of the body, they become a cloud mediated art, echoes Yves-Alan Bois’ Hildebrant’s black monochrome field of floating color. Butt Johnson’sThe description of Cubist space, which he made from cassette tapes of Arnold Curse of Knowledge resembles a blue has described as the “disassociation Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire references monochrome, which on closer inspection of volume from mass…through abrupt early experiments with abstraction reveals a field of lines made in areas visual discontinuities.” 20 Furthermore by Schönberg and Kandinsky, but where the artist does not draw. In many Bois interprets the works of Picasso and also a soon inaccessible archive: the ways, The Curse of Knowledge alludes to Braque as mingling the intangible space of outdated technology of the cassette the techniques of Henri Matisse, but also art with “real” space.21 These immaterial tape. Similarly, Corin Hewitt’s buried to the Adobe Photoshop drawing program volumetric explorations resemble the inkjet prints become blurred watercolor- where it is second nature to mask space created by digital mediation, a like paintings. Lisa Ruyter’s Arthur layers. Michael Delucia made sketches fusion/confusion of the physical and Rothstein “Dry and Parched Earth in for his sculpture Glint in AutoCAD and virtual in demarcating boundaries. In the the Badlands of South Dakota” was fabricated it with a digital router. The early days of virtual theory, the virtual sourced from the Library of Congress’ tension created by its rejection of any was seen as a possible outer space to online archive. In 1936, Rothstein’s biomorphic reality in its shape and the escape our bodies, our polluted world image sparked a public discussion about oscillating patterns of pixelation on its and even perhaps our mortality.22 Yet, the indexicality of the photographic vulnerable plywood surface makes it look now we are faced with a digital world that medium; this issue resonates with our as if it were pasted into the exhibition remains tethered to our own. Our phones concerns of the source and veritability space. Douglas Coupland’s Imagine a Car are considered extensions of our bodies. of the digital image. David Kennedy Crash is a large scale, fully functional QR This new space is not another world, but Cutler’s Weight Forever is a monumental code. Its rectangular forms refer to the rather a commixture of the tangible and sculpture, which is also a print of CD Franklin Evans, Bluenudesdissent, 2013. Site-specific installation. work of Piet Mondrian, but its rectangular the intangible.23 data onto aluminum again alluding to

9 10 Cheswick’s Internet Mapping Project. We wanted to accentuate those connections by encouraging exhibiting artists to invite other artists from all over the world to participate: in the digital age, diagrams like Barr’s can generate themselves. Hosting an online platform also meant that we could stage a truly international show. In conversation, artists who work on the web expressed reservations about placing computers in the gallery. This made sense, because this “new space” was not one you encountered sitting in a gallery, but rather at home on your laptop, on your smartphone, or tablet. The ubiquity of these devices means that an online exhibition can hardly be considered any more restrictive in socio- economic terms than a physical one. The explosion of interest in the online website resulted in thousands of submissions. When the exhibit traveled to the Luther Brady Art Gallery at George Washington University, we were happy to 5 1 Gabriel Orozco, Red Flower Shadow, 2011. Pigment ink and acrylic on canvas: 23 ⁄8" x 31 ⁄2". include artists who we met through our Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman, NY. open source curatorial model. It was our way of decentering curatorial bias and the information age. Franklin Evans’ Bush and continuing to the presidency centers of artistic practice. Bluenudesdissent was an installation of Barack Obama. Andrea Geyer culls work made onsite. Evans used the from the archives of the Museum of Conclusion Internet to source images of the artists Modern Art the names of the 50 women in the exhibition and paired them with who exhibited works in the 1913 In the case of Cubism and other early artists from the 1913 exhibit. He also Armory Show, but are not frequently abstract movements, formal simplification fused the two most controversial pieces discussed in the literature. Because coincided with technological shifts in from the 1913 exhibit: Matisse’s Blue the Internet is most often used to communication, travel, and even warfare. Nude and Duchamp’s Nude Descending repost already available information, Cubism developed alongside these a Staircase No.2. Blue nudes of women Googling the majority of these women changes, and came to be used as a visual and men were pasted onto the gallery generates feeble results. Geyer also language to explain them. The greatest floors transitioning the upper gallery to orchestrated a performance, in which difference between analogical changes the lower one. The work, reproductions she reprinted Gertrude Stein’s Portrait and digital ones is the visibility of the of photographs and paintings, upsets the of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia structure of the former and not of the conventional display of the female nude and handed out 100 free copies at the latter. Obsolete materiality remains part dominated by the male gaze, but is also two exhibition openings in New York of our lives from old cars to rabbit-ear a socio-cultural observation of our often and Washington DC.28 The novel is TVs. The World Wide Web looks nothing voyeuristic interactions online. digitally scanned, printed, wrapped in like it did in 1990 and not even like it did The political implications of digital historic wallpaper and features a hand- 5 years ago. The old is replaced, deleted, form are clear, and unlikely to be drawn graph of women instrumental or made incompatible by innovation. marginalized in the way early scholars to the establishment of modern art For the viewer, that means that obfuscated the political imperatives of in the United States. The work is an “the look” of the digital is relentlessly early abstraction: work that is made archival replica of another piece, but changing, adapting, and re-inserting itself using digital tools can be dispersed also addresses the pertinent issues of into our visual scope. This ephemerality using the technology itself and therefore scanning and reproducing copyrighted obscures its visual impact, but does not minimizes the importance of cultural material in the digital era. make it invisible. By analyzing formal gatekeepers.27 But as a primary venue of affinities between the digital and the mainstream political discourse, it is also decenterarmory.com: Rethink- modern, I hoped to portray the co- uniquely positioned to explore political ing the curatorial model evolution of modernism and technical content. Tony Cokes’ Evil.12: Fear, advances as a model for visualizing the Spectra & Fake Emotions is a colorful When we began organizing this exhibit, impact of digitization on the way we text and type examination of the war we knew that in order to fully engage with see and therefore on contemporary art. in Iraq. Liz Magic Laser’s The Digital the digital realm, we had to have an online After all, akin to the experiences of pilots Face references the choreographed and offline exhibition. We also speculated in World War I, we need to develop a movements of politicians, which that an online network of artists would language to understand our changed she locates as beginning during the structurally resemble Alfred Barr Jr.’s visual landscape in order to see beyond

David Gilbert, The Giraffe , 2012. Archival pigment print: 22 x 17 ". Courtesy the artist and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery. presidency of George Herbert Walker diagram of modern art and William the cloud cover. n

11 12 NOTES

1. This essay evolved out of numerous conversations with part of the cultural sphere. See Leah Dickerman, “Inventing Nicholas O’Brien interviews scholars, writers, artists, and thinkers, who acknowledge Abstraction,” in Inventing Abstraction, 1919-1925 (New that the maelstrom of the digital has permeated every York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2013), 29. aspect of life in the Western world and beyond. I begun Cory Arcangel, Michael Bell-Smith, this essay in Mexico City and am now finishing it in India- 14. Gertrude Stein, Picasso (New York: Dover Publica- where many working class people (i.e., rickshaw drivers) tions, 1984), 20 Kindle. Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The sport smart phones. However, issues of connectivity still Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French plague many developing countries where frequent power Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), James Bridle, Douglas Coupland, outages or low Wi-Fi capabilities make it difficult for the 213-214 n. 7. Paraphrased in Stephen Kern, The Culture of average person to manage large digital files at home. Time and Space 1880-1918 (Cambridge: Harvard Univer- sity Press, 1983), 7 and 288. 2. See a recent mapping project from GeoTel Communica- Jessica Eaton, Manuel Fernández, tions, which are working with Columbia University and 15. John Welchman, “Here there and otherwise,” Artforum MIT to map the Internet. International (September 1988): 18. 3. Recent mapping efforts from GeoTel Communications 16. Of course, on a larger scale the 1917 Russian Revolution. Sara Ludy, Yoshi Sodeoka, Sara only account for the millions of miles of major pathways. 17. This is not a technological determinist argument 4. The fall 2011 issue of October, “Digital Art,” dealt primar- postulating that technological innovations encouraged ily with film, video and photography; all three are areas formal innovations in art on a one-on-one basis. Rather VanDerBeek, and Letha Wilson where technological advances change the “look” of their that they expose new visual languages from which artists product. Photography and digital video were important can adapt, adopt or disavow. As Martin Heidegger wrote, components of our exhibition, but we wanted to include too often technological arguments focus so much on the painting and sculpture in a consideration of the digital. instrumental function of tools and their affect on form that we lose track of the “essence” of technology. For 5. I am thinking here of Claire Bishop’s controversial instance, state of the art digital users and tools function as article, “Digital Divide,” in the September 2012 issue of instruments most professionally when they are recreating Artforum, in which she announces the “subterranean pres- or improving upon the “real” as seen in a survey of the ence” of the digital revolution was helpful for the formation plethora of Hollywood blockbusters from 300 to Star of this essay. Other scholars such as Rainer Usselmann call Trek. The sophistication of digital tools means that these the digital revolution a “dud.” See “The Dilemma of New real/hyperreal environments are the ideal for general Media Art: Cybernetic Serendipity at the ICA London,” audiences; however the simplified look of the Internet Leonardo 36 (2003): 389. Curatorial projects like Rhizome, aesthetic in contemporary art does not always make full Triple Canopy, and e-publications such as Hyperallergic use of these advanced tools. The essence of technology are devoted to these issues. David Joselit, After Art (Princ- then is not solely in its instrumentation. eton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013), 43. 18. Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (Cam- 6. Art made using digital technology is meant to define art bridge: MIT Press, 2001): 69. As Manovich notes, by the that has been conceived, processed or fabricated using 1990s, digital photography was capable of capturing more digital technologies in the post-1989 period. It certainly detail than light based photography. For our purposes encompasses terms such as computer-generated graphic then, pixelation is an aesthetic choice made by artists in art, and even at times new media art. It does not account order to foreground the relationship to technology. for earlier terms such as Cybernetic art, which could be used to categorize works from as early as 1956. 19. I found Julian Stallabrass’ discussion of the sublimity of data useful. See ‘A Conversation with Trevor Paglen’, 7. The impact of digitization in the musical and literary arts October 138 (Fall 2011): 3–14. has been tremendous. Whereas art made with digital tools To say that there is “something hap- for contemporary exhibition. This project DIT mentality that spurred the intro- has been under- discussed. This is notable because similar 20. Lauren Cornell’s Free exhibition at the New Museum, pening” in the arts right now would be a uses the 100-year anniversary of the duction of the avant-garde to American arguments for the impact of media on content and style are October 20, 2010-January 23, 2011 was based on this merg- central to art history-for instance the shift from tempera ing of the physical and virtual space. Also, David Kennedy bit of an understatement. Certainly, a new Armory Exhibition in 1913 as a starting audiences remains incredibly relevant in to oil in the Renaissance has been fodder for generations Cutler’s “The Sky Inside” CUSP-Ryan Wallace (New York: alteration has been in the works arguably point to reflect on the ways in which art today’s contemporary artist-run apartment of scholars. Morgan Lehman Gallery), 2012. Yves-Alan Bois, “Kahnwei- ler’s Lesson,” Representations 18 (Spring 1987): 44. since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, or has both radically changed and strikingly galleries and online exhibition spaces. 8. The 1913 Armory Show officially was known as the First at least since Y2K. With the wall coming remained the same. Although much has The counter-cultural inspiration that 21. Ibid, 41. International Exhibition of Modern Art in America (New down, international conversations of changed since the introduction of Mod- moved the artists of the early 20th Century York, 1913). Carlton’s letter is reproduced in this catalogue 22. N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Post-Human as well as the 1963 one. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999), 12. contemporary art started to disseminate ernism to American audiences a century certainly holds true to the spirit for many

th across obsolete geographic borders. That ago, central themes remain for today’s within our current time. This spirit then 9. This 50 anniversary exhibit was held at the Munson Wil- 23. Cornell’s exhibition Free, 2010 was admirably one of liams Proctor Arts Institute. See Daniel Palmer’s essay and the first to investigate artwork that was made by digital marked shift also sparked new channels artists. These topics revolve around not only pervades the work, but also the Charles Duncan’s reflection on the impact of 1963 exhibit. means, but did not exist solely online. of communication to stretch to more in- how artists attempt to respond, react, infrastructure that emerged to support the 10. I am thinking of the Museum of Modern Art’s Inventing 24. Bois, “Kahnweiler’s Lesson,” 44. ternational audiences. Around this time is and rethink the contemporary technolo- voice of these respective generations. Abstraction, Montclair Art Museum’s The New Spirit: when the infrastructure of contemporary gies of their time. Where Duchamp and Putting technological innovation aside, American Art in the Armory Show, 1913, the NY Histori- 25. This intersection can lead to what viewers see as cal Society’s The Armory Show at 100: Modern Art and “flatness” in contemporary work. This move towards telecommunications started sustaining the Futurists tackled the surmounting one can argue that the material, the con- Revolution, and the Phillips Collection’s History in the flatness is nothing new for abstract art; however, allowing a more dominant role in reshaping our mechanization of movement and vision, ventions, or the subjects of western art Making 100 Years After the Armory Show. a machine to create an all-over surface does seem to give more of an even distribution of emphasis to foreground perspectives on culture, media, and art. artists like Cory Arcangel and Sara Ludy have not changed drastically during the 11. The majority of the abstract works in the 1913 exhibit and background. It would be a mistake to say that these address the ways in which the digital has past 100 years. However our approach to were not completely non-objective. Many featured the figure, wild use of color, and modern subject matters. In 26. The archive is of particular importance to Bishop’s shifts are without precedent, or else altered our senses and selves. the concerns, devices, and culture of our addition, besides Kandinsky, the Russian avant-garde was discussion of the impact of the digital on changes in per- occurring in some kind of completely The similarities run deeper than the time has a much more measurable and not represented. Only Analytic Cubist examples were ception. See “Digital Divide,” 438-440. She references Hal unique cultural vacuum. In fact, prece- surface concerns of the artists of the impactful discrepancy worthy of further shown from Picasso and Braque, who also rejected the Foster’s explorations of the archival impulse as well as his idea of complete abstraction. In Marcel Duchamp’s Nude focus on material archive as opposed to the “technologi- dents like early video art, conceptual art, avant-garde and the problems that face scrutiny. It is in the disparity between Descending a Staircase and Francis Picabia’s Procession cal” one epitomized by the Internet. See “An Archival performance, Fluxus, and experiments contemporary makers. It is in the very the past and the present that we begin to in Seville, there is simultaneity and movement. For a Impulse,” October 110 (Autumn 2004): 3-5. with analog synthesis are all the more core of the mounting of the Armory of see the clear importance of the art of our reminiscence of the 1913 show by Duchamp, see Toutfait. “Marcel Duchamp: Armory Show Lecture, 1963” http:// 27. See Seth Price, “Dispersion” http://www.distributedhis- pressing as the dominance of network 1913 where a resonant chord continues time. To imagine, for instance, that we www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_5/news/miller/ tory.com/Dispersion2008.pdf. (Accessed October 4, 2013). technology engulfs more and more of our to reverberate into the eardrums of today. could begin to broach the subject of iden- miller1.htm (accessed November 12, 2012). 28. Mabel Dodge distributed Portrait of Mabel Dodge at immediate attention. In short, being able The early exhibition took place thanks to tity and the figure, as the Dadaists did, via 12. These could be societal ills, a utopian or spiritual vision. the Villa Curonia at the 1913 Armory show. The pam- phlet was also reprinted in the June 1913 issue of Camera to look back seems to be an essential the efforts of The Association of Ameri- a platform capable to reaching millions 13. Technology is defined in the broader sense so tools, Work, 3-5. Dodge’s article “Speculations” included a often part of looking ahead. can Painters and Sculptors, a group of of individuals simultaneously—and that machines scientific innovation, but also information reprinted description of Gertrude Stein, “In a large studio It is in this spirit that Andrianna Camp- young artists that took it upon themselves this process could happen in real time, systems. By 1913, the airplane, automobile, photography, in Paris, hung with paintings by Renoir, Matisse, and non-Euclidean mathematics, Semiotics, telegraphy, gramo- Picasso, Gertrude Stein is doing with words what Picasso bell and Daniel S. Palmer’s Decenter ex- to do their own fundraising, organizing no less—is, in and of itself, a remarkable phone, trans-continental and trans-Atlantic travel et al were is doing with paint,” 6. hibition takes its cues and posits a vision and publishing. This retrospective DIY/ change from 1913.

13 14 It could be argued that despondency, mentioning that in the future the only to a part of the architecture that I had by which I was able to track down and in a sense, is the lifeblood that runs way people are going to know about this never been. I came across several stories purchase the original stock images which through the work of the 1913 Armory piece is this conversation. of empty floors and was immediately were used in the hotels; thirdly, the “real show into the veins of the Decenter exhi- caught in this space where everything space” system you bring up, the fact that bition. It is in the unrealized horizon of a MF: I think digital practice can be was familiar from my previous these images exist on the walls of hotel future void of current discord where the seen as a very important aspect of experiences of the architecture, but rooms all across North America. avant-garde appears to perpetually rest. contemporary art practice. The first the structure was entirely different. In response, the project of Modernism Armory show was influenced by After taking roughly 200 photographs, DC: The 1913 Armory Show aims to bring the unconscious into mate- technological advancements, and this I narrowed down a selection of about foregrounded the massive collective rial form as a means to make that discord theme connects to the modern age, 7 varying perspectives to create a time trauma, which was created in the western physical. One can draw parallels between shaping formal aspects and conceptual based perspective and space portrait of mind by the introduction of radio and this original pursuit and the desire of thinking derived from it. the architecture. other modes of mass communication. today’s artists working online to make In 1913, people were unlearning ancient physical their digital creations. SVB: When starting a project, I often begin MBS: My work in the show, Piano ways of experiencing time and space The motivation behind the desire of with image-based research, either by and Violin Variations, is a web-based and replacing them with then-mysterious artists to make physical the virtual, var- taking the images myself or using archival collection of images of hotel interiors. new ways of interpreting distance, time, ies between Modernism’s pursuit of the material. For this piece, I asked Andrianna While the photos were taken all over individuality, mass culture, the picture unconscious and our current moment’s and Daniel to send me archival images North America (mostly by travelers plane and …well, just about everything investment in the not-yet-conscious— from their research of the original Armory reviewing their rooms for travel sites), we associate with the twentieth century. a borrowed term from José Muñoz to show for inspiration. The sculpture I the same two photos hang on the wall In 2013, we’ve collectively experienced a describe a performed state of futurity. designed is informed by images from the of each room: a close-up of a violin and similar collective trauma of perception. The pursuit of this translation of the original Armory exhibition and is created a close-up of a piano. This situation In a tiny amount of time we’ve absorbed not-yet-conscious into the physical is of concentric patterns that have come out illustrates the strange overlapping search engines, the Internet, personal an attempt at redeeming the potential of a consideration of a larger continuum systems within which images operate computing, smartphones and… well, just that technology has promised for a of forms, eternal patterns shared amongst today. In this case, there’s the “real about everything we associate with the better tomorrow. The false promise of Douglas Coupland, Pipe , 2012. Digital image Courtesy the artist and Daniel Faria Gallery. many different cultures and times. The space” system, the fact that these images twenty-first century. digital technology lies in its purposefully simple patterns found in ancient forms actually exist on the walls of hotel rooms naïve and manipulative faith in a com- Sodoeka uses maps, videos, and other temporary arts and its ongoing relation- are not that different from the baseline all across North America. There’s a LW: I started working on video pieces ing utopia brought on by our collective online imagery to talk about a specific ship with technology. pixel formations of a digital image. I think semiotic/class system, with the photos in grad school at Hunter. In those video “plugging in and switching on.” But the location from his childhood home. Again, material, space, process and form are of the piano and violin selected for their pieces it was important to layer images work within this exhibition—and the where both artists output might have Can you talk about the visual links more resonant in this time of pervasive connotations of sophistication, or “Art.” in the software for the final result… exhibition of 1913—takes this naivety as immense difference, an underlying inter- you are making between your work digital awareness. And there’s the system of commercial The work is about the distance between a point of departure to discuss the how, est—in this pairing, negotiations of space and the concepts that drive the digital image circulation, by which I was interior and exterior. The photograph in the face of a failed techno-utopia, we and its representation through online DECENTER exhibition? SL: My process is similar to that of able to track down (and purchase) the transports you between one world and can still create hope. In other words, it is media—begins to develop a network of Cubists in how I combine various original stock images used in all of these another. In this video, the gallery walk because of the troublesome impossibility interests that create a parallel. CA: The piece in the show is a good perspectives of a space to create a hotels. Our day-to-day lives require that and the canyon walk floats between for potentially emerging out of techno- These similarities in modern techno- example of what I would call a software new perspective of that space. The we sort through an increasing number those two worlds. logical inequity that artists continue to logical times are the central issue that kinetic sculpture. A few years ago, I had architecture in Transom is of a business of these different systems of meaning as explore what this technology can offer underlies Campbell and Palmer’s project. a Blackberry, and it had Shazam—one of complex in Leesburg, Virginia called we encounter images and other media. YS: [#46 — 35.23N 139.30E [FAC as an alternative to the status quo. With In this way, Decenter situates itself as an these programs that allows you to listen Market Station. It is made of several In many ways, the work is a response to 3097] E5150xx] is sort of like a fiction this in mind, we can consider works exhibition creating a network of conviv- to music and tell you what it is. I hardly uprooted historical barns and gristmills that condition and the anxiety it brings. about espionage and conspiracies. One within the Decenter exhibition, both ial affinity. This affinity respects varying ever used it except in real emergencies from the area that were combined to For me, this project was about the of the key elements in this scenario is online and off, as heeding the call of an approaches, but also allows for shared when I had to know what the music form a new complex for businesses in intersection of three systems: first, the that digital transmission technology has everlasting trail blazing into the ways in interests to echo throughout a wide was. So I had only Shazamed 7 or 8 the 1980’s. My mom owned a hair salon semiotic/class system, with photos always existed since the 70’s, and they’ve which technology can continue to shape casting web. It is through this creative tracks in the many years of having this there for 13 years. I went back a couple of a piano and violin representing been secretly trying to experiment with it and influence culture. exploration of positive association phone. For DECENTER, I downloaded of years ago to photograph the new sophistication; next, the system of in a very unsuspected location, which is Where some artists, like Manuel Fer- that breathes life into a network often all those tracks; I put them together; complex and found a door that led me commercial digital image circulation, Totsuka, Japan in this case. nandez, focus on an emergent aesthetic considered exclusive, insular, or opaque. then I uploaded them to the Internet of stock footage and Photoshop transpar- Decenter undoes some of that tension as a mix to share. I tried it on all these - ency patterns to signify some kind by not only showing diversity but also different services and kept getting those of eminent transience, other artists, like showing commonality. copyright errors. SoundCloud wouldn’t Letha Wilson, reflect on how that aes- In the following interviews, I ask let me upload it. YouTube would let me thetic coming from the screen can inform artists about the ways in which this upload it but wouldn’t let people play it. and complicate what we’ve tradition- exhibition reflects on the shared senti- So in the end, I decided these copyright ally considered to be analog. Although ments between 1913 and now, as well as errors were maybe more interesting this pairing has aesthetic difference, the critically questioning artists about the than the mix. So, I left it. So, the mix underlying conceptual interests remain tools they use to make their work. Per- is online, but can’t be listened to. It’s a quite close in that both are attempting to haps unsurprisingly, I found many artists real-time performance demonstrating all critique how the digital has reformatted show a marked reservation against the of these automatic intellectual property notions of the natural. Similarly, Michael devices and platforms that their work is systems that companies run. It has Bell-Smith uses the homogenous imagery born and bred. This resistance, though copyright violations from 9 different of Residence Inn interiors pulled offline similar to the sentiments sparked by the huge international corporations. It is a to discuss varying economies of im- 1913 Armory, sheds light on a unique representation of how these systems

ages and temporary-space, while Yoshi moment currently underway within con- operate. . . It is also probably worth - (Tran Double Buffalo Western Letha Wilson, in Buffalo onto the Wilder scriptions of Walks , 2009. Digital video. Versa) ness and Vice

15 16 JE: I am not an academic. While I have of presenting multiple moments at once walkers. To me the most interesting Since the early 21st century, one starts read a bit and am familiar with some of more so then the formal qualities of thing about what is going on is that to see a consolidation of digital life at all the works in the 1913 Armory exhibition, the work. people are just in front of their screens levels which has profoundly transformed it would be wholly dishonest of me to all day. It tends to be everybody...my society, changing traditional notions of start trying to postulate the types of YS: I honestly didn’t think too much aunt, my mother, myself. It is all my space and time. These conditions have connections you are asking about. From about that! As I understood the scope friends. And each group of friends has enabled the ampliation of traditional my own mind, all things like this seem of the show, I figured that presenting a different social network that they notions of what we understand as art, slightly arbitrary to me. I feel like if you an artwork, as one of the artists, who like. So, all these types of things have expanding into almost every field. I think look for connections between any two represent the newer generation, would been introduced into life. That is what the historical moment we are living has things you could start to make them be significant enough. As an artist who is of interest to me. Remember when certainly many similarities with the first should you chose. Or you could connect is influenced by Cubism, I think that my people used to warn you about sitting Armory Show. through disconnect, even. piece embodies a similar spirit and ideas too close to the TV or watching too that Cubism presented. much TV? People thought it was going How do you undertake the installation JB: Rorschmap is a project, which to ruin people. But now it is as if the of your work outside of a digital both emphasizes the strangeness and The DECENTER exhibition and TVs are out in the real world and people networked environment (like a criticizes the lack of imagination in projects commemorates the 100th are watching while walking, or in the browser)? Is it important for your contemporary digital maps - and by anniversary of the Armory show, subway, or in the car. So, it is like the work to exist outside of that context? extension, much of contemporary and in turn the centennial of a “New TVs have taken over, but it is not TVs, it Are there specific material concerns technology. Digital maps are not like Spirit” of Modernism coming to the is the computer. that happen in that process? Does one traditional maps; they are animations, United States. Do you think that there always have to default to standards they are alive, they are in constant flux. is a similar movement or momentum LW: There are actual objects in the presented by the traditional art world? But they are also presented as classically that is happening around current physical exhibition so in discussing the as possible: as flat planes, as definitions digital and new media practices that digital realm, the exhibition focuses on JB: My work appears in a wide variety of rather than approximations, as facts DECENTER encapsulates? the way these digital formats, techniques, formats: as websites, as books, as essays, rather than visualizations, as truth tools, processes and thinking have as physical installations, as images rather than merely as one way of seeing. SL: Yes. I find that the most relevant inserted themselves into the work of both digital and framed on a wall. This Rorschmap attempts to disrupt this and exciting works today are the result many artists. There ends up being a is entirely dependant on the work, and illusion, exposing the way in which this of how digital technologies and online conversation among the works. the format, which seems at the time to viewpoint is constructed, and opening social dynamics are informing the suit it best. But it is always, hopefully by it up to other forms of expression. All artist’s practice. JB: The New Aesthetic is illustrative design, capable of being returned to the technologies open up new ways of of deeper changes in cognition and network, to being shared, distributed, re- experiencing the world, from oil paint in DC: One thing I’ve noticed is the way experience produced by networked enacted. These are the operations which tubes to lines of code in distant servers, people go online and visit gallery sites technologies - with the emphasis on the the work ultimately has to address if it but they are also easily reduced to and inhale hundreds of artists in one “networked” part. That paradigm shift is concerned with network technologies: simplistic, reductive and controllable go, sweeping through rosters and - and understanding if it has occurred the ability to move seamlessly across metaphors. It is one of the jobs of art to sucking the information in like nicotine. or is occurring - is the business of the networks, while interrogating those fracture that top-down view. Everyone is aware of everything now, New Aesthetic. If we recognize that seams, and the transformations that and ‘being first’ no longer feels like it’s understanding the world and ourselves occur in the work as it negotiates the What similarities do you find between enough to justify lionization of one artist is always an unfinished project, we must politics and processes of different your work and the methods of Cubists over another. Also (and we all know always look to “the new” to find different media. My work has only recently been exhibited in Armory? this) online culture has stripped the ways of seeing and understanding. But of interest to the ‘traditional’ art world: vernissage of its potency as a moment at the same time, that “newness” is often it’s not my background and it’s not my DC: Flattening. Definitely a flattening. and, from what I see, and from what an illusion: the tools and techniques for primary concern. We’ve taken cutting and pasting and gallerists tell me, people are simply no seeing exist already, we just need to abstraction to profoundly new levels in longer going into physical galleries as have them brought to our attention, to MBS: There’s a lot angles one could take which time and space is reduced to a much. Museums, on the other hand, see them from a different angle. In this in talking about the distinction between glyph, and yet we don’t bat an eye. seem to be doing well… possibly way, perhaps, certain digital artworks working online and in traditional art because they promise their attendees and the Internet function exactly as contexts: economics, audience, access, MBS: I’m not sure about methodology, a larger core dump of information. Cubism and the Armory Show did agency, etc. I’ll pick a basic one: the idea but Picasso was working with Cubist in 1913. of self-publishing. Most work online is representations of violins and pianos CA: Well, I guess I would have to back self-published, neither validated nor (the “subject” of my work for the show) up and say what excites me in the real MF: The digital revolution has brought vetted by an external entity (gallery, a hundred years ago. Those objects world. Art tends to follow what is going the most significant historical shift since curator, publisher, etc) before reaching had a different meaning in the early on in the real world. It is like that thing the industrial revolution. The European its viewership. It’s a simple fact, but I 20th century, but there’s something that happens today. When you are avant-garde art of the early 20th century think it’s worth reminding ourselves of enduring about what they can represent. walking down the sidewalk and you was strongly influenced by the social periodically. It makes for a unique set In addition, the photographs on the are behind someone, who is walking changes that were derived from the of potentials. Online work can be more walls in my piece act as surrogates for a little slow and you are like “what is advancement of technology and inclusion liberated, more out there, more likely the idea of high art. In that respect, going on?”...Finally, you realize it is and standardization of machines in war, to hit an untapped audience or vein they’re a weird by-product of the early just because they are on their phone work and daily life. of genius. But it’s also more apt to be modernists’ legacy. texting. That happens all the time now You can see examples of direct terrible, uneven, and desperate. Some and to me that is really a kind of real life influence of technological progress in artists deal with this freedom through SVB: I have always had an interest in marker that we have entered some other movements such as Impressionism that an abundance of work, throwing things

the simultaneity of Cubism, its sense territory now. They are like Zombie reacted to the emergence of photography. XXIV , 2013. Plaster: 88 x 8 6". Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures. Background: Andrew Kuo. If I Could Redo Foreground: Sara VanDerBeek, 51 x 38". Courtesy the artist and Marlborough Gallery. , 2013. Acrylic and carbon transfer on panel paper, Tuesday at the wall to see what sticks, hoping

17 18 the hits overshadow the misses. I tend them are of deep concern. But that in a photographic print as it exists as an generous lender from his own collection, to work in the opposite way: slowly itself can be radicalized through a greater object first and as information second, The Story of the he cultivated among the citizens of Utica and deliberately. Maybe it seems a bit understanding and literacy in these I think that is where I struggle to find an appreciation for twentieth-century old-fashioned, but it’s about marrying technologies: they can be mastered, and a way to appreciate and engage with art. In 1949 Root made his first gift to the newer ideas and approaches with a more turned to our own uses. technology that I feel is effective. The Fiftieth Anniversary institute: Vermont Landscape of 1944 traditional set of values around what I way in which we get and engage with 1 by Luigi Lucioni. Over the next seven care about in art. I don’t want to throw CA: In a way, there is still this reaction media has changed dramatically and for of the Armory Show years the collector donated hundreds the baby out with the bathwater. that says, “Wow! Look at what this can the better, but it seems to me the greatest of works of art, and at his death late in do,” but it is very massaged now by impact the Internet has is as a living, 1956, Root’s bequest to the institute was DC: Well, online presentation does lead powerful forces that have entered into dynamic and ever changing archive, and Charles H. Duncan comprised of 227 American modern- to the raping and pillaging of gallery sites the arena. Google is a perfect example working with it as a point of capture, ist paintings and drawings, including by image-crazed browsers. We’ve all of a company that sells us “Wow! Look organization, and communication is signature works by Charles Burchfield, done it. The hyperavailability of images at what we can do” but it is so perfectly when it is most effective. Edward Hopper, Reginald Marsh, Arshile creates an expectation of more, more, polished. It is now somehow combined The story of the fiftieth anniversary of tured environment in New York City and Gorky, Theodoros Stamos, Mark Rothko, more, now, now, now, free, free, free. A with advertising and fashion. It doesn’t MF: I identify with two approaches. I the Armory Show begins not in New York Washington, D.C., that emphasized the and Jackson Pollock. show now has to do something, anything, appear the way technology used to don’t believe in the autonomy of an artist City, Chicago, or Boston, but in central importance of the visual arts. His father, In 1954, as Root was settling the terms to make the visitor experience different appear. It is more seamlessly intergrated to create works from nothing, I believe New York State, in the city of Utica. Lo- Elihu Root, Sr., was Theodore Roosevelt’s of his bequest, the board of trustees of from an online experience. into life because it is more part of that in a collective progress, therefore, it cated in the rugged Adirondack foothills secretary of state, a senator from New the Munson-Williams-Proctor embarked commercial capitalist river. It is still is true that working online shaped the celebrated by James Fenimore Cooper, York, and a founder of the American on a campaign for a new Museum of Art Do you find any resonance with the around so we don’t notice it, as much works I do, and I think that this elements Utica became an art center during the Federation of Arts. As a child Edward building, as the Fountain Elms struc- political and social implications that anymore…It is enough to say this is what of screen space influence my work too. 1830s with the founding of the Utica Art Root summered in Clinton, New York, ture was too small and aesthetically were taken up during the work of is going on. I’m interested in how we perceive the Association, which brought exhibitions eight miles southwest of Utica, and later unsuited to showcase his collection. artists represented in the 1913 Armory? reality framed by a device screen and to the city and nurtured a number of was graduated from Hamilton College in Historian Henry Russell Hitchcock was We are living in a time of drastic the way that an artwork is distributed artists early in their careers, including 1905. Early in life Root pursued a career contracted to help select an architect, MF: More than political, I find implications change, which is bringing about and received by an audience that views Arthur B. Davies. In 1935, descendants as a journalist in New York City, where and the following year the commission in breaking the barriers between social tremendous progress, as well as deep most of the exhibitions on smartphone of industrialist Alfred Munson founded he formed enduring personal bonds was awarded to Philip Johnson, who had classes and the democratization of the and troubling shared dilemmas. We or tablet screens. I am also interested in the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, with leading artists and galleries and just completed a twelve-year tenure as social in general. The artist status is enjoy much of what the virtual world blurring the boundaries between digital and their Victorian-era Italianate man- developed into an astute and passionate director of the Museum of Modern Art’s democratized today. Everyone with a provides yet often are fighting against and reality because we live in a time sion, Fountain Elms, became Utica’s collector of contemporary American art. department of architecture and design. computer can make works and give them its continual presence within our lives- when both are the same reality. Many first art museum. It was here that in 1961 Root believed it was his duty to support When the new Munson-Williams-Proctor visibility on the Internet. its distractions, its sense of alienation of my works can be read in this sense, Joseph S. Trovato, assistant to Museum the work of Americans, and he acquired Museum of Art opened in October 1960 -it feels unsustainable yet exciting- we especially “Text to speech” makes direct of Art director Edward Dwight, set out directly from artists many paintings and with three floors of simple but elegant YS: Some people in digital art community are part of an ever-growing yet fragile reference to it in a quote from William to restage the historic Armory Show as drawings soon after they were created. A galleries proportioned for the display may be politically motivated in a direct structure. How far can and do we want Gibson that says “One of the things our a comprehensive exhibition. Trovato’s notable example is his purchase from the of modern art, Utica proudly became way more so than I am. I flirt with that to take it? With all of this tension, the grandchildren will find quaintest about us inspiration for this enormous undertak- Armory Show of Maurice Prendergast’s home to the first in a series of renowned sometimes in a passive way like the actual becomes even more significant. is that we distinguish the digital from the ing was Edward Wales Root, a collector Landscape with Figures of 1912, an art museums designed by Johnson in one I did with ASCII BUSH. But maybe real” but this sentence was from the 1984 and teacher of art appreciation who had acquisition encouraged by Root’s friend the International Style.3 Reviews of the that could be also seen as a joke against SVB: I am interested in how various Neuromancer book. almost single-handedly transformed George Luks. museum in popular and architectural political art and I kind of like it that way. technologies especially mobile media, Utica into an important regional center Root’s association with the Munson- publications offered approving head- It’s up to how people want to interpret it. Photoshop and the Internet are changing I feel as though the networking of for modern art. Williams-Proctor began in 1938 as lines: “The Perfect, Professional Mu- I’m mainly a visual artist, and my main the way we consider photography, pieces and makers presented in the Like his contemporaries Lillie P. Bliss, he neared retirement from Hamilton seum” and “Utica Museum Ranks with goal is to make challenging visual art. images, and communication. So online exhibition of DECENTER Albert C. Barnes, Walter Arensberg, and College, where he taught from 1920 to Finest Anywhere.”4 Appropriately, the And it just happens to be that politics can much of our digital interface is about speaks to a sense of community John Quinn, Root was a groundbreaking 1940.2 The timing for the young institute first exhibition staged in its galleries was be an inspiration for some visual work I documentation and sharing and the surrounding art made and distributed collector of modern art and both lender was fortuitous. As a consultant, Root “The Edward Wales Root Bequest.” make, sometimes something else. quality of documentation is changing the online. Do you consider that network, to, and purchaser from, the original developed the museum’s collection of Buoyed by the rising stature of the way we understand art. The theatrical or any sense of peership with other Armory Show. Root was raised in a cul- American and European modernism; as a institute, Trovato and his staff embarked Within digital networks there is a desire and dramatic images of 20th century art makers, when creating works to be on the task of securing loans for “1913 to often fetishize how connected we books with their strong light, shadow, primarily presented online? Do you Armory Show Fiftieth Anniversary Exhi- are—regardless of how often we utilize and saturated blacks of the duotone print think that this networked sensibility bition.” Their charge was daunting, as the or mobilize on that connectivity. Do you process are giving way to flat, bright does something to the work itself? original exhibition included over 1,300 find your work to reflect on the ways in images created with the Internet in works, many of which had been retitled which we fool ourselves with the notion mind. I think the Internet is engendering SL: When I create a new work, I only since the original show or were impre- of constant tele-presence? How can we a more sophisticated, educated viewer consider the network for publishing cisely listed in the catalogues for the remain radical in the arts when our and creator of images, but I also think strategies. I don’t consider others when original three venues. An exciting discov- tools are supplied to us by corporations it is making it harder to distinguish making the work itself. ery in the library of the Art Institute of that often cannibalize culture for the imagery and to keep someone’s attention Chicago of installation photographs from sake of profit? Is it important to stay within an actual space.I am interested JE: There is a huge difference in how we the Chicago exhibition increased the radical like the Cubists and Futurists of in bridging both and using technology are all connected, specifically the time- number of visually documented works the 1913 Armory? to expand my practice but I make work space aspects of how you could connect to a total of eighty, but still, only a single considering much more the actual then versus now, but underlying in both watercolor by John Marin was found JB: It’s always important to stay radical, object as it rests in a space, and the cases is technology. In 1913, you could with an intact label from the original and I think the ways in which digital tools significance of viewing it in person. get on a train. Today, you can just log on. Armory Show.5 Appeals through the New are tightly controlled and constructed by The context of the room in which it is In 2013 you can do a lot more without York Times and other periodicals helped corporations and the people who built being shown, the unique qualities of putting on pants. n enormously in locating works in private

19 20 collections. Puvis de Chavannes’ Femme tion, a number that rivaled attendance at the Armory Show had beyond major Michael D. Somple, Auspicious Vision: Edward Wales Nue, for example, was brought forward the original Armory Show and matched American metropolitan centers. Without Root and American Modernism (Utica, N.Y.: Munson- with great fanfare by owners author- the popularity of the anniversary exhibi- question, the original Armory Show had Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, 2008). director Ranald MacDougall and his wife tion in Utica, where 40,000 visitors from set a new course for American artists, 3. Mary E. Murray, Look For Beauty: Philip Johnson and Art Museum Design (Utica, N.Y.: Munson-Williams- Nanette Fabray. By the opening of the a community of 100,000 paid homage to collectors, dealers, museums, and the Proctor Arts Institute, 2010). Johnson followed the Utica anniversary exhibition in February 1963, America’s most famous art event.14 public. New York School painters com- commission with related designs for the Amon Carter Trovato and his team had reunited 325 Popular press accounts of the anni- manded international attention, modern Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, in 1961, and the Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, in 1963. works, many from foreign collections. versary exhibition were overwhelmingly art had become integral to academic and 4. “The Perfect, Professional Museum,” Architectural Preparations for the Utica exhibi- positive, and several writers astutely museum programs throughout the United Forum (December 1960), 90--95; Edward Cowley, “Utica tion catalyzed advances in scholarship noted that hindsight allowed organizers States, and major public works projects Museum Ranks with Finest Anywhere,” Upstate Living, on the Amory Show. In 1938 Walt Kuhn, to select only the highest quality works across the country embraced modernist Sunday Times-Union (Albany, N.Y.), 15 October 1960, E-6. secretary of the Association of American for the condensed restaging. Numer- agendas. Nowhere was the latter better Painters and Sculptors (AAPS), had pub- ous newspaper and magazine reviews observed than in Rockefeller’s ambitious 5. Geoffrey T. Hellman, “Armory Show,” The Talk of the Town, New Yorker, 30 March 1963, 35. lished the pocket-sized The Story of the recalled the controversies that rocked Empire State Plaza government and arts 6. See Laurette E. McCarthy’s piece, “Armory Show: New Armory Show, yet was coy for the rest of New York and Chicago in 1913, although complex, constructed in Albany during Perspectives and Recent Rediscoveries,” Archives of his life about possible extant records of most did not venture any historical analy- the 1960s. In Utica, the Munson-Williams- American Art Journal 51, 3--4, pages 22-35, for a more the association. Entreaties from Utica on sis. Reviewers in two New York papers Proctor stood in 1963 as a temple of complete account of Brown’s book. The Walt Kuhn, Kuhn Family Papers, and Armory Show Records and the Walter behalf of the fiftieth-anniversary exhibi- attempted to situate the Armory Show in modernism for the city, as well as a Pach Papers are now housed at the Archives of American tion spurred his daughter, Brenda Kuhn, the present: Emily Genauer drew a paral- progressive cultural anchor for the entire Art (hereafter AAA); the Elmer Livingston MacRae Pa- to turn over to the Archives of American lel between the Space Age understand- Mohawk Valley. Ultimately, the evolution pers are housed at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution. Art a substantial portion of the Walt Kuhn ing of the “space-time continuum” and of the Institute exemplified how regional 7. The first letter to Duchamp, from Joseph S. Trovato, papers, giving scholars access to impor- Charles Collingwood and Marcel Duchamp at the Armory Show 50th Anniversary exhibition, 1963. Papers relating to the 1913 Armory Show 50th Anniversary Exhibition, Archives of American Art. Cubism, and John Canaday pinpointed art centers had embraced fifty years of is dated 25 July 1962. 1913 Armory Show Fiftieth An- tant official correspondence and records the events of 1913 as the culprit behind a sweeping cultural advances since the niversary Exhibition Records, AAA, (hereafter Fiftieth of transactions of the AAPS. Combined also celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in of this event, it is rewarding to real- current “pernicious . . . Madison Avenue original Armory Show, and the anniver- Anniversary Records). with the papers of treasurer Elmer 1963, published a special Armory Show ize that, in these last fifty years, the technique in art merchandising.”15 Of the sary exhibition staged there celebrated 8. See Arturo Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel MacRae, which had been discovered in issue, with a preview of the exhibition by United States has collected, in its several serious attempts to engage the its successful marriage of modernist Duchamp 3rd ed. (New York: Delano Greenridge Edi- tions; 1997), 828. Standard posters were priced at $1.50; 1958, and sales ledgers lent by Nikifora Trovato and essays by John Canaday, Carl private collections and its museums, general public on the visual polemics of American art and architecture. signed limited-edition posters $25.00. Iliapolous, the widow of Armory Show Zigrosser, Beaumont Newhall, William probably the greatest examples of the 1913 Armory Show, the most effective For general visitors unconcerned by 9. Nelson A. Rockefeller, “Back to the Sixty-Ninth Regi- organizer Walter Pach, these primary Carlos Williams, and Lloyd Goodrich. modern art in the world today.11 was a CBS television Eyewitness broad- these broad cultural issues, the center- ment Armory,” Art in America no.1 (1963), 56--59. sources gave a more complete picture of Governor Rockefeller, then considering cast of conversations with Duchamp and piece of the “Armory Show Fiftieth Anni- 10. Among dignitaries invited, but unable to attend, the historic exhibition and became the a run for president, contributed “Back Over the course of the next six Sir Kenneth Clark which were recorded versary Exhibition” was Duchamp’s Nude was Governor Rockefeller, who sent a telegram of basis for the definitive history of the exhi- to the Sixty-Ninth Regiment Armory,” an weeks the institute hosted reminis- in the galleries of the Munson-Williams- Descending a Staircase [No. 2], which, congratulations to William C. Murray dated 14 February 1963, president of the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute. 16 bition, Milton W. Brown’s The Story of the article which praised the meteoric rise cences by Brenda Kuhn, illustrated Proctor Museum of Art. as it had in 1913, ubiquitously appeared (Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute Archives, 4.4, Exhibi- Armory Show, published in May 1963.6 of the arts in the United States, stating lectures by Brown and Goodrich, “Music Substantive reviews were offered by in publicity about the show. At age tions, F 313). The well-publicized search for works “America has now emerged as a generator of 1913” piano recitals, and a symposium Harold Rosenberg and Frank Anderson seventy-five and preparing for his first 11. Marcel Duchamp, lecture at the Munson-Williams- of art brought forth a proposal from of creative forces in painting and sculp- moderated by museum director Dwight. Trapp. For Rosenberg, writing in the major American retrospective to be held Proctor Institute, 17 February 1963. Sound recording, AAA. the Henry Street Settlement, a social ture, and the performing arts as well. By all accounts, events at the Munson- New Yorker, the Armory Show “was the in Pasadena the coming fall, Duchamp Vague feelings of cultural inferiority . . . cordially stepped into the popular spot- 12. H. E. Whittemore, “Utica’s Art Exhibition is National services and arts organization on New Williams-Proctor were a success, and Great Event in the history of American News,” Utica Press, 22 February 1963. York City’s Lower East Side, for a benefit have now faded and properly so because national wire services reported that Art education, rather than in the history light as the most prominent face of the 9 13. Sanka Knox, “Sale Will Be Held at Armory Show,” showing of the Utica exhibition at the our talent in the arts is great.” “thousands of central New York art of American art.” Because of it, the critic Armory Show. His achievements, finally New York Times, 25 April 1963. original location in New York City. With On 16 February 1963 artists, private lovers wandering . . . through a Utica contended, modern art became a cause acknowledged by the general public, the 14. Frank Anderson Trapp, “The Armory Show: A Re- the help of Governor Nelson A. Rock- lenders, museum directors, and repre- museum offer evidence that American art in the United States. “The vanguard” was painter-turned-professional-chess player view,” Art Journal 23, no. 1 (Autumn 1963), 7. 12 efeller, the Sixty-Ninth Regiment Armory sentatives of the Henry Street Settlement appreciation is coming of age.” now an agenda in American art-making. reflected on the mixed blessing that the 15. Emily Genauer, “Echoes in an Old Armory,” New York on Lexington Avenue in New York City gathered in Utica for a gala preview and The gala opening of the exhibition at Thus, the fiftieth-anniversary exhibition, Nude Descending a Staircase [No. 2] . . . Times, 30 April 1963. John Canaday, “1913 Armory Show was secured for the anniversary, and the dinner for the anniversary exhibition.10 the Sixty-Ninth Regiment Armory on 6 Rosenberg concluded, commemorated held for him for the last fifty years: “It’s a is Back for Anniversary” New York Times, 5 April 1963. 17 Following an in-depth assessment of the original Armory institute and settlement combined efforts The next evening, 1,800 art enthusiasts April 1963 drew 2,000 socialites, politi- the “march of the principle of novelty.” curious thing that, at least as a picture, it Show, Genauer continued, “[A] lot has happened since to publish in 1963 a catalogue with an crowded into the new Munson-Williams- cians, and international art figures. In the Writing in Art Journal, Trapp posited that really beat me, in that I disappeared for then. We’ve been atomized. Today we identify not with introduction by Brown. Proctor Museum of Art to view Trovato’s spirit of the original exhibition, selected the original Armory Show “for the gen- forty years because people talked about the whole man but the fragmented one. . . . Space and time are what Duchamp’s walking nude is about. . . . In- Prominent figures in the arts commu- much–anticipated recreation of the works of art were available for purchase eral public and for most of the press, was the painting . . . but they never named me. side of us it’s a normal condition to feel shattered. It’s our nity took an active role in the anniversary historic event. Like most in attendance, (Paul Cézanne’s Portrait of Madame Cé- an entertaining but ephemeral event.”18 I was completely obscured, or completely being shattered that makes us feel one with the world.” Canaday, after recalling the events and reception of the celebrations. Marcel Duchamp, whose Marcel Duchamp, who had not seen the zanne was offered at $210,000; Sheeler’s Rather than a wholesale conversion of discarded---by my own painting---as an original Armory Show, assessed the fiftieth anniversary Nude Descending a Staircase [No. 2] had original show, experienced for the first Red Tulips was offered by the artist for the masses, it had confirmed for a small entity! . . . It’s only in the last ten years exhibition as partly a “nostalgic lark.” He concluded with been the most notorious work of art in time something approaching the full con- $1,500), and duplicate postcards and number of visionary artists and collectors or so that I have reappeared again on the “This country learned the power the succès de scandale can wield on the buying public.” the 1913 show, contributed recollections text of the Armory Show. That evening ephemera from MacRae’s papers were a direction that had already been estab- surface, and I’m more important than the to the anniversary exhibition catalogue, he delivered to a standing-room audience sold for the benefit of the Henry Street lished, and their embrace of the Euro- painting (laughs).”19 n 16. “The Art Show that Shocked America,” telecast on the CBS television documentary show Eyewitness. Charles 13 as did Charles Sheeler, Stuart Davis, Wil- a slide lecture about the contributions Settlement. A special historical sec- pean avant-garde had cleared the path for Collingwood interviewed Sir Kenneth Clark and Marcel Duchampabout the importance of the original exhibition, liam Zorach, Alexander Archipenko, and of many of the Armory Show’s most tion of archival materials—photographs, the widespread institutional support of Notes others whose works had been shown in prominent artists and, like Rockefeller, letters, and memorabilia—was designed modernism in America. While Trapp cited negative reviews in the press, huge attendance figures, 1. This essay is reprinted with permission of the Archives and the impact on modern art. 7 the original exhibition. Working closely addressed America’s rising status in the and installed by photographer Herbert Edward Wales Root, his analysis largely of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The piece was 17. Harold Rosenberg, “The Armory Show: Revolution commissioned by the Archives of American Art Journal with Trovato, Duchamp helped locate international cultural sphere: Matter, with the Archives of American discounted the contributions of early Reenacted,” New Yorker, 6 April 1963, 106. works of art, provided suggestions for Art lending selections from its newly advocates of American modernism. for its Armory Show issue (volume 51, numbers 3-4), which appeared in 2013 18. Trapp, “Armory Show Review,” 4. the design of the catalogue, and designed As you all know, the Armory Show acquired Walt Kuhn papers. During a Rosenberg, Trapp, and other New th 2. A complete assessment of the relationship between 19. Marcel Duchamp, interview conducted by Milton W. a commemorative poster to benefit the was opened on February 17 , 1913, three-week run, approximately 75,000 York City critics, however, failed to Edward W. Root and the Munson-Williams-Proctor Insti- Brown, 1963. Originally broadcast on the Martha Deane Henry Street Settlement.8 Art in America, fifty years ago, to the day. As a result visitors attended the Manhattan exhibi- consider the tremendous impact that tute appears in Mary E. Murray, Paul D. Schweizer, and Radio Show, 1963. Fiftieth Anniversary Records (AAA).

21 22 artworks Cory Arcangel, Hello World, 2010. CNC bent stainless steel with powdercoating (yellow) and artist software, 30 x 10 x 10 1 inches, base: 4 ⁄4 x 5 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Team Gallery, New York.

Douglas Coupland, Hey Boy, Hey Girl, Superstar DJ, 2012. Acrylic and latex on canvas, 36 x 36 inches. Courtesy the art- ist and Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto.

25 26 David Kennedy Cutler, Ties That Bind (2), 2013. Gesso, archival inkjet on alumi- N. Dash, Commuter. March I, 2012. N. Dash, Commuter. March II, 2012. num, acrylic spray paint, archival varnish: Graphite on paper, 20 x 29½ inches. Graphite on paper, 20 x 22 inches. Cour- 1 3 40 x 28 ⁄2 x 14 ⁄4 inches Courtesy the artist Courtesy the artist and Untitled, tesy the artist and Untitled, New York. and Derek Eller Gallery. New York.

27 28 Jessica Eaton, CFAAL 222, 2011. Pigment print, 40 x 32 inches. Courtesy the artist and Higher Pictures.

Andrea Geyer, Portrait of Mabel Dodge Pamphlets wrapped in historic wallpaper, at the Villa Curonia by Gertrude Stein distributed February 17 and September 25, with a Little Help by Andrea Geyer, 2013. 2013, 8 ½ x 5 ½ inches. Courtesy the artist.

29 30 Corin Hewitt, Recomposed Monochrome (216, 115, 177), 2011. Digital pigment print, 34 x 26 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Laurel Gitlen, New York.

Andrea Geyer, Indelible, 2013. 9 of 50, Sumi ink on denril, 15 x 20 inches. Courtesy the artist.

31 32 Ethan Greenbaum, Veneerist, 2012. Direct to substrate print on two acrylic panels, 96 x 48 inches. Courtesy the artist.

Victoria Greising, Unnavigable Space, 2013. Site- specific installation of previ- ously used clothing and sheets. Courtesy the artist.

33 34 Butt Johnson. The Curse of Knowledge, 2012-2013. Crayon on incised Dieu Donne cotton paper, 40 x 28 inches. Courtesy the artist and CRG Gallery.

Barbara Kasten, Construct PC IX, 1982. Polaroid: 24 x 20 inches. Courtesy the artist and Bortolami Gallery.

35 36 Liz Magic Laser, The Digital Face, 2012. Performance and two-channel video, 10 minutes, 2012. Featuring Alan Good and Cori Kresge as former President George H. W. Bush and President Barack Obama. Courtesy the artist.

Andrew Kuo. If I Could Redo Tuesday, 2013. Acrylic and carbon transfer on panel and paper, 51 x 38 inches. Courtesy the artist and Marlborough Gallery.

37 38 John Newman, Collections and Corrections with Vermillion, 2011. Cast bronze, stones, wood, Japanese paper, wood putty, papier-mâché, acqua resin, acrylic and enamel paints, 13½ x 27½ x 12½ inches. Courtesy the artist and Tibor de Nagy Gallery, NY.

Douglas Melini, Fragrant Portal, 2011. Acrylic on canvas with hand-painted frame, 53 ½ x 45 ½ x 1 ¾ inches. Collection Geoffrey Young, Courtesy of Feature Inc.

39 40 Above: Gabriel Orozco, Fluttering Below: Gabriel Orozco, Green Web Drops, Flowers, 2011. Pigment ink and acrylic on 2011. Pigment ink and acrylic on canvas, 5 5 canvas, 23 ⁄8 x 31½ inches. Courtesy the 23 ⁄8 x 31½ inches. Courtesy the artist and artist and Marian Goodman, NY. Marian Goodman, NY.

Ellington Robinson, Spin, 2011. Acrylic, collage, ink, and oil, 48 x 48 inches. Cour- tesy the artist and Project 4 Gallery.

41 42 Lisa Ruyter, Arthur Rothstein “Dry and Parched Earth in the Badlands of South Dakota,” 2009. Acrylic on canvas, 47 x 59 inches. Courtesy the artist and Connersmith.

Travess Smalley, Composition in Clay #32, 2013. Framed unique C-Print, 46 x 36 inches. Courtesy the artist and Higher Pictures.

43 44 Sara VanDerBeek, Baltimore Dancers Nine, 2012. Digital C-print, 8 x 6 inches. Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures.

Sara VanDerBeek, Baltimore Dancers Ten, 2012. Digital C-Print, 8 x 6 inches. Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures.

45 lisT of works-ny

1. Cory Arcangel 12. Amy Feldman 22. Andrew Kuo 30. Gabriel Orozco 33. Seher Shah 37. Sara VanDerBeek Racks, Freaks, etc, etc, 2012 4 Likes, 2012 If I Could Redo Tuesday, 2013 Broken Red Flower, 2011 Unit Object (court), 2012 XXIV, 2013 .WAV sound file Acrylic on canvas: 72" x 88" Acrylic and carbon transfer on panel Pigment ink and acrylic on canvas: Graphite and gouache on paper: 22" x 30" Plaster: 88" x 8" x 6" 5 Courtesy the artist Courtesy the artist and Blackston Gallery and paper: 51" x 38" 23 ⁄8" x 31½" Courtesy the artist Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures Courtesy the artist and Courtesy the artist and Marian 34. Seher Shah 2. Cory Arcangel 13. Andrea Geyer Marlborough Gallery Goodman, NY Unit Object (auto-block), 2013 38. Sara VanDerBeek Airport, 2011 Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Graphite and gouache on paper: 22" x 30" Baltimore Dancers Nine, 2012 Open IEEE 802.11 Wifi Network Curonia by Gertrude Stein With a Little 23. Liz Magic Laser 31. Gabriel Orozco Courtesy the artist Digital C-print: 8" x 6" Courtesy the artist Help by Andrea Geyer, 2013 The Digital Face, 2012 Invariant Animation, 2005 Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures Pamphlets wrapped in historic wallpaper, Video Installation: 10 minutes Digital Video 35. Travess Smalley 3. Tony Cokes distributed February 17th and April 7th: Courtesy the artist Courtesy the artist and Marian Composition In Clay XXVI 39. Sara VanDerBeek Evil.12: Fear, Spectra & 8½" x 5½" Goodman, NY (Blue Teal White), 2013 Baltimore Dancers Ten, 2012 Fake Emotions, 2009 Courtesy the artist 24. Douglas Melini Framed unique C-Print: 40" x 30" Digital C-Print: 8" x 6" Digital Video Favorable Transformations, 2012 32. Rafaël Rozendaal Courtesy the artist Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures Courtesy the artist 14. Andrea Geyer Acrylic on canvas and wood: http://www.fromthedarkpast.com, 2009 Indelible, 2013 71½" x 45½" Website 36. Travess Smalley 4. Douglas Coupland 9 of 50, Sumi ink on denril: 15" x 20" Collection of the late Buddy Bernstein Courtesy the artist Animated Optical Texture Pattern Imagine a Car Crash..., 2011 Courtesy the artist and partner Ross Hanley, Birmingham, for Alexander Peveret, 2011 Acrylic and latex on canvas: 72" x 72" MI; courtesy of Feature inc., NY Animated GIF Courtesy the artist and Daniel Faria 15. David Gilbert Courtesy the artist Gallery, Toronto The Giraffe, 2012 25. Ulrike Mohr Archival pigment print: 22" x 17" Black Holes, 2012-2013 5. Douglas Coupland Courtesy the artist and Klaus von Nich- Carbon Pipe, 2012 tssagend Gallery Courtesy the artist Digital image Courtesy the artist and Daniel 16. Ethan Greenbaum 26. Brenna Murphy Faria Gallery, Toronto Veneerist, 2012 Latticescanr, 2012 lisT of works-dc Direct to substrate print on two acrylic Website 6. David Kennedy Cutler panels: 96" x 48" Courtesy the artist Weight Forever, 2013 Courtesy the artist Inkjet on aluminum, wood, steel: 15' x 6' 27. John Newman 1. Cory Arcangel 6. Douglas Coupland 11. Andrea Geyer Courtesy the artist and Derek Eller 17. Gregor Hildebrandt Headturners Prop and Hello World, 2012 Pipe, 2012 Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Kalkweißer Pierrot (Pierrot Lunaire, Kiss Greyed Stripes, 2008 CNC bent stainless steel with powder- Digital image Curonia by Gertrude Stein With a Little 7. N. Dash Schönberg), 2011 Cast bronze, acrylic paint on acqua resin, coating (yellow) and artist software: Courtesy the artist and Daniel Faria Gal- Help by Andrea Geyer, 2013 Commuter. March I, 2012 Cassette tape on canvas: 97¼" x 60¼" wood putty, Japanese paper, papier-ma- 30" x 10" x 10”, base: 4¼" x 5" lery, Toronto Pamphlets wrapped in historic wallpaper, Graphite on paper: 20” x 29½" Collection of Peter Marino che, foamcore, armature wire: Courtesy of the artist and Team Gallery, distributed September 25th: 8½" x 5½" Courtesy the artist and Untitled, New York 22½" x 8" x 5" New York 7. David Kennedy Cutler Courtesy the artist 18. Butt Johnson Collection of Melva Bucksbaum and Ties That Bind (2), 2013 8. N. Dash The Curse of Knowledge, 2012-2013 Raymond Learsy 2. Cory Arcangel Gesso, archival inkjet on aluminum, 12. Andrea Geyer Commuter. March II, 2012 Crayon on incised Dieu Donne cotton Racks, Freaks, etc, etc, 2012 acrylic spray paint, archival varnish: Indelible, 2013 Graphite on paper: 20" x 22" paper: 40" x 28" 28. John Newman .WAV sound file 40" x 28½" x 14 ¾" 9 of 50, Sumi ink on denril: 15" x 20" Courtesy the artist and Untitled, New York Courtesy the artist and CRG Gallery Collections and Corrections with Courtesy the artist Courtesy the artist and Derek Eller Courtesy the artist Vermillion, 2011 9. Michael Delucia 19. John Houck Cast bronze, stones, wood, Japanese 3. James Bridle 8. N. Dash 13. Ethan Greenbaum Glint, 2012 Untitled #155, 809,999 combinations paper, wood putty, papier-mâché, Rorschmap, 2013 Commuter. March I, 2012 Veneerist, 2012 Enamel and plywood: 96" x 48" x 48" of a 2×2 grid, 30 colors, 2013 acqua resin, acrylic and enamel paints: Website Graphite on paper: 20” x 29½" Direct to substrate print on two acrylic Courtesy the artist and Eleven Rivington Creased archival pigment print: 60" x 40" 13½" x 27½" x 12½" Courtesy the artist Courtesy the artist and Untitled, New York panels: 96" x 48" Collection of Mr. Greg Silpe Courtesy the artist and Tibor Courtesy the artist 10. Jessica Eaton de Nagy Gallery, NY 4. Tony Cokes 9. N. Dash CFAAL 140, 2013 20. John Houck Evil.12: Fear, Spectra & Fake Emotions, Commuter. March II, 2012 14. Victoria Greising Photograph: 40" x 32" 1400 Iterations of Black Grid 29. Gabriel Orozco 2009 Graphite on paper: 20" x 22" Unnavigable Space, 2013 Courtesy the artist and Higher Pictures on a White Ground, 2013 Red Flower Shadow, 2011 Digital video Courtesy the artist and Untitled, New York Site-specific installation of previously Gallery Digital video Pigment ink and acrylic on Courtesy the artist used clothing and sheets 5 Courtesy the artist canvas: 23 ⁄8" x 31½" 10. Jessica Eaton Courtesy the artist 11. Franklin Evans Courtesy the artist and 5. Douglas Coupland CFAAL 222, 2013 Bluenudesdissent, 2013 21. Barbara Kasten Marian Goodman, NY Hey Boy, Hey Girl, Superstar DJ, 2012 Pigment Print: 40" x 32" 15. Travis Hallenbeck Site-specific installation Construct PC IX, 1982 Acrylic and latex on canvas: 36" x 36" Courtesy the artist and Higher 2^256, 2012 Courtesy the artist Polaroid: 24" x 20" Courtesy the artist and Daniel Pictures Gallery Website: 512 x 512 pixels Courtesy the artist and Bortolami Gallery Faria Gallery, Toronto Courtesy the artist

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16. Corin Hewitt 23. Brenna Murphy 29. Rafaël Rozendaal Recomposed Monochrome Latticescanr, 2012 http://www.fromthedarkpast.com, 2009 (216, 115, 177), 2011 Website Website Digital pigment print: 34" x 26" Courtesy the artist Courtesy the artist Courtesy of the artist and Laurel Gitlen, New York 24. John Newman 30. Lisa Ruyter Collections and Corrections Arthur Rothstein “Dry and Parched 17. John Houck with Vermillion, 2011 Earth in the Badlands of South 1400 Iterations of Black Grid Cast bronze, stones, wood, Japanese Dakota,” 2009 on a White Ground, 2013 paper, wood putty, papier-mâché, Acrylic on canvas: 47" x 59" Digital video acqua resin, acrylic and enamel paints: Courtesy the artist and Connersmith Courtesy the artist 13½" x 27½" x 12½" Courtesy the artist and Tibor de Nagy 31. Travess Smalley 18. Butt Johnson Gallery, NY Composition in Clay #32, 2013 The Curse of Knowledge, 2012-2013 Framed unique C-print: 46" x 33" Crayon on incised Dieu Donne cotton 25. Gabriel Orozco Courtesy the artist and Higher Pictures paper: 40" x 28" Fluttering Flowers, 2011 Courtesy the artist and CRG Gallery Pigment ink and acrylic on canvas: 32. Travess Smalley 5 23 ⁄8" x 31½" Animated Optical Texture Pattern 19. Barbara Kasten Courtesy the artist and Marian for Alexander Peveret, 2011 Construct PC IX, 1982 Goodman, NY Animated GIF Polaroid: 24" x 20" Courtesy the artist Courtesy the artist and Bortolami Gallery 26. Gabriel Orozco Green Web Drops, 2011 33. Sara VanDerBeek 20. Andrew Kuo Pigment ink and acrylic on canvas: XXIV, 2013 5 If I Could Redo Tuesday, 2013 23 ⁄8" x 31½" Wood: 88" x 8" x 6" Acrylic and carbon transfer on Courtesy the artist and Marian Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures panel and paper: 51" x 38" Goodman, NY Courtesy the artist and Marlborough 34. Sara VanDerBeek Gallery 27. Gabriel Orozco Baltimore Dancers Nine, 2012 Invariant Animation, 2005 Digital C-print: 8" x 6" 21. Liz Magic Laser Digital video Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures The Digital Face, 2012 Courtesy the artist and Marian Performance and two-channel video, 10 Goodman, NY 35. Sara VanDerBeek acknowledgements minutes, 2012. Featuring Alan Good and Baltimore Dancers Ten, 2012 Cori Kresge as former President George 28. Ellington Robinson Digital C-print: 8" x 6" H. W. Bush and President Barack Obama. Spin, 2011 Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures Courtesy the artist Acrylic, collage, ink, and oil: 48" x 48" 36. Letha Wilson All installation photographs of our panelists from the February 17, 22. Douglas Melini Courtesy the artist and Double Buffalo Western (Transcriptions DECENTER NY are courtesy of Patrick 2013 “1913 Armory Show Centennial Fragrant Portal, 2011 Project 4 Gallery of Walks in Buffalo onto the Wilderness Lyn Photography © 2013. Event” panel including Charles Duncan, Acrylic on canvas and wood: and Vice Versa), 2009 Marilyn Kushner, Mary Murray, and 53½" x 45½" x 1¾" Digital video We would like to thank the artists, the Brian Droitcour. We would also like to Collection Geoffrey Young; courtesy Courtesy the artist lenders to the exhibition, our families, thank the sponsors of the New York of Feature inc., NY and the following people who patiently exhibit: The Andy Warhol Foundation helped us along the way: Graham for the Visual Arts, Annisa Restaurant, Anderson, Ella Christopherson, Jonathan The Berlin Senate Cultural Affairs Durham, Gregory Fellows, Robert Department, CHIPS-NY, The Foundation Fellows, Roger Gaitan, John Keon, Alex for Contemporary Arts and TBD Design Lesy, Patrick Lyn, Kristian Nammack, Studio. Finally, our warmest thanks to Natalie Musteata, Adrian Saldaña, Lenore Miller and Olivia Kohler-Maga Carolyn Sickles, Joshua Weiselberg, from the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery at Lauren Wistrom and Miriam Zemel. The George Washington University and For enriching our understanding and Clarice Smith for sponsoring this exhibit discussion of these ideas, we thank in Washington DC.

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