On the show’s final day, students from the School of the Art Institute, egged on by their teachers, gathered on the museum’s steps to put Henri Matisse on trial. “Hennery O’Hair Mattress,” they ruled, “is found guilty of artistic murder, pictorial arson, total degeneracy of color sense, artistic rapine, criminal abuse of title, and general aesthetic abortion.”
“We don’t want to fall into the trap of ‘we know better than you,’” Lincoln explains. “We want to understand and explain people’s response to it.”
“Henri didn’t insult their intelligence,” says Pohlad.
Americans had several years to adjust to modernism after the Armory Show. The outbreak of World War I stopped the flow of new work from Europe for a while. In the meantime, adventurous collectors like Eddy continued to buy up cubist paintings and sculpture from American artists and dealers. And even though William French wouldn’t show any more modernist work at the Art Institute, other institutions opened that would, notably the Arts Club of Chicago.
Correction: This article has been amended to reflect the correct author of the comparison between Brancusi’s Madame Pogany and an ostrich egg.
Reception Fri 4/5, 5:30-7:30 PM. Through 6/16, DePaul Art Museum, 935 W. Fullerton, 773-325-7506, museums.depaul.edu, free.
