1 gen 1913 anni - New York's 1913 Armory Show

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In the visual arts, new technologies influenced aesthetics. By 1900, some photographers argued that their “true” representations made painting obsolete. But painters invented their own forms of realism. Nebraska-born artist Robert Henri became fascinated with life in the great cities. “The backs of tenement houses are living documents,” he declared, and he set out to put them on canvas. Henri and his followers, notably John Sloan and George Bellows, called themselves the New York Realists. Critics derided them as the Ash Can school because they chose subjects that were not conventionally beautiful.

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What effect did technology and scientific ideas have on literature and the arts?

This modernistic art painting by Arthur B. Davies, entitled the Dancers, was painted in 1914-1915. This painting dates from a three-​year period, just after the Armory Show, in which Davies experimented with Cubist techniques.
Arthur B. Davies, Dancers, 1914–1915

Artist Arthur Davies (1862–1928) was one of the primary organizers of New York’s 1913 Armory Show, which introduced Americans to modernist art. An associate of John Sloan and other New York realists, Davies experimented with an array of painting styles, as well as printmaking and tapestry making. This painting dates from a three-year period, just after the Armory Show, in which Davies experimented with Cubist techniques.


In 1913, realists participated in one of the most controversial events in American art history, the Armory Show. Housed in an enormous National Guard building in New York, the exhibit introduced America to modern art. Some painters whose work appeared at the show were experimenting with cubism, characterized by abstract, geometric forms. Along with works by Henri, Sloan, and Bellows, organizers featured paintings by European rebels such as Pablo Picasso. America’s academic art world was shocked. One critic called cubism “the total destruction of the art of painting.” But as the exhibition went on to Boston and Chicago, more than 250,000 people crowded to see it.

A striking feature of both realism and modernism, as they developed, was that many leading writers and artists were men. In making their work strong and modern, they also strove to assert their masculinity. Paralleling Theodore Roosevelt’s call for “manly sports,” they denounced nineteenth-century culture as hopelessly feminized. Stephen Crane called for “virility” in literature. Jack London described himself as a “man’s man, … lustfully roving and conquering.” Artist Robert Henri banned small brushes as “too feminine.” In their own ways, these writers and artists contributed to a broad movement to masculinize American culture.

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