THE CUBIES' ABC
Rare first edition of this children's book parody of the landmark 1913 Armory Show that first introduced many Americans to the work of Picasso, Duchamp, Matisse, and more — drawing both fanfare and hostility from visitors.
Near fine.
Price: $9,500.00
THE CUBIES' ABC
"D is for Duchamp, the Deep-Dyed Deciever, Who drawing accordions, labels them stairs. With a lady that must have been done in a fever, – His model won't see her, we trust, it would grieve her!"
The March 1913 Armory Show fundamentally altered the direction of American art. As the New York Historical Society said when celebrating the 100th anniversary of the event: "[I]t changed the way Americans thought about modern art. It has been called the most important exhibition ever held in the United States." Organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, the show introduced American audiences to Cubist, Surrealist, and Fauvist art, and helped establish artists like Picasso and Matisse as household names. But this change was not a uniformly welcome one: "Is their work a conspicuous milestone in the progress of art? Or is it junk?" pondered THE NEW YORK TIMES review of the show. "[M]any of [Matisse's] paintings are simply the exaltation to the walls of a gallery of the drawings of a nasty boy," artist and critic Kenyon Cox remarked in the same review.
Mary Mills and Earl Harvey Lyall were quick to respond with THE CUBIES' ABC. It was published the same year as the watershed exhibition, while critics continued to debate the assemblage of Modern Art featured therein. Earl, an architect and government architectural advisor, was well-placed to execute the pastiches of the Armory Show's most significant works. Dotted throughout this abecedary are clever nods to Matisse's "Blue Nude," Wilhelm Lehmbruck's "The Kneeling One," Picasso's "Woman with Mustard Pot," and more. The angular bodies of the Cubies themselves recall isolated shapes within Duchamp's iconic "Nude Descending a Staircase," the piece that became most identified with many viewers' fury at the show.
While OCLC locates some two dozen holdings (though presumably many of these are circulating copies), CUBIES is scarce on the market; we trace only four copies at auction in the last fifty years and perhaps as many again in the trade. A particularly beautiful copy of an uncommon document satirizing one of the defining artistic events of the 20th century.
Read more: Kenyon Cox, "Cubists of All Sorts" and "Cubists and Futurists are Making Insanity Pay," The New York Times 16 March 1913.
The Object
First printing. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, (1913). 9'' x 7.7''. Original brown cloth boards with color pictorial onlay. Illustrated in color. 62 pages. Binding with mild rubbing. Leaves with scattered faint finger soil, one gathering a touch proud. Else bright and sound.
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