HISTÓRIA DAS VANGUARDAS AMERICANAS.
DREIER, Katherine Sophie (1877-1952).
Dreier
nasceu em Nova York e faleceu em Milfort, Connecticut: seus pais foram os
emigrantes alemães de Bremen, Dorothea Adelheid e Theodor Dreier. Katherine foi
a caçula de 5 filhos, sendo sua irmã mais velha a pintora Dorothea Dreier.
Katherine sempre demonstrou iniciativa: ela foi tesoureira da Casa Alemã Recreativa para Mulheres e Crianças; e foi membro fundador da Associação Vizinhança da Pequena Itália (Brooklyn, Nova York). Dreier estudou na Escola de Arte do Brooklyn; posteriormente no renomado Instituto Pratt. Tanto Dreier bem como sua irmã foram alunas de Walter Shirlaw, professor da Liga dos Estudantes de Arte (Nova York: v. abaixo).
A futura
artista viajou a Europa (1907), onde passou prolongada temporada estudando arte em Paris,
além de visitar Londres, Munique e Holanda, voltando aos Estados Unidos a tempo
de participar da Exposição da Armada (Armory
Show, Nova York, 1913). Na sua temporada parisiense Dreier conheceu Marcel
Duchamp (1887-1968), entre outros
artistas das vanguardas francesas: ele, acompanhado de Man Ray foi procurá-la
em Nova York (1915). Dreier apoiou os artistas e fundou com eles a dita, Sociedade Anônima (1920), que deu
origem ao Museu de Arte Inobjetiva, que
acabou resultando na doação do acervo para a Galeria de Arte da Universidade de Yale.
Dreier
viajou à China (1921-1922); ela retornou a Holanda (1925) quando conheceu Piet Mondrian
(1872-1944), de quem adquiriu a primeira obra para o museu que futuramente fundou.
Dreier participou como pintora do Grupo
Abstração-Criação (Paris, 1932-1936); uma das pinturas dela que participou de
mostra do grupo foi inspirada na obra de Marcel Duchamp, Nu descendo a escada n. 2, que participou da Exposição da Armada (Nova York, 1913; v.). Na Europa Dreier adquiriu obras abstratas para compor o acervo do futuro
museu: na América ela organizou mostra itinerante, expondo de forma didática e
educativa obras de Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), Kasimir
Malevich (1878-1935), Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) e Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), entre outros artistas internacionais de vanguarda.
Este trabalho de Dreier facilitou a eclosão da Arte Abstrata em Nova York, em meados da década de 1940. Podemos dizer que Katherine Dreier não foi uma bela mulher; mas muito simpática e sorridente apareceu na fotografia publicada (LANCHNER, 1998), na inauguração da primeira das mostras americanas de Fernand Léger, em companhia de Alexandre Calder, de quem Léger foi muito amigo, do arquiteto finlandês Alvar Aalto e respectivas senhoras, na Sociedade Anônima em Nova York.
CATÁLOGO. LANCHNER, C.; HAUPTMANN, J.; OFRAN, M. Fernand Léger. New York: MoMA, Harry N. Abrams, 1998, pp. 31-34.
DICIONÁRIO. SEUPHOR, M. Dictionaire de la peinture abstraite: precédé d´une histoire de la peinture. Paris: Fernand Hazam, 1957. 305p.: il., p. 165.
HAMMACKER, A. M. Phanthoms of the Imagination. Translated by Tony Longham. New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1981, p. 100.
SEUPHOR, M.: RAGON, M.: PLEYNET, M. L'Art Abstrait. Paris: Maeght, 1949. 1971-1988, 05 v.: il., p.263.
The Inaugural Exhibitiony on East 47th Street in New
York City. The works shown at the exhibition established the stylistically
democratic and international tenor of the group’s curatorial enterprise for the
next thirty years. In contrast to the nonjuried breadth of the Society of
independent Artists exhibition that brought Dreier and Duchamp together on its
planning board in 1916, the Société Anonyme’s first exhibition included artists
who they believed exemplified modernist zeal and creative vision.
The installation was remarkable in the eyes of the critics and visitors of the day. As Duchamp’s first exhibition design, the aesthetic was distinctly modern, with cool white oilcloth walls that captured the blue reflected light cast from neighboring skyscrapers and the electrolier lights contributed by Man Ray. The domestic scale and feel of the traditional brownstone architecture was further mediated by Duchamp’s placement of industrial gray, ribbed rubber matting over the wooden floors and a spare hanging of the artworks. Duchamp then humorously undermined his stylish presentation by placing lace paper doilies around the paintings’ frames—an imposition readily approved by his fellow artists, in true Dada spirit. Henry McBride, the art critic for the New York Herald, wrote, “One must mount two steep flights of stairs and then pay 26 cents to obtain admission to the first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., but even those to whom an outlay of 25 cents for any purpose whatever is a serious matter will probably not regret the investment. Many a movie at twice the price gives one less to remember.”
1926 Brooklyn International Exhibition
Composed of over three hundred works by 106 artists from nineteen countries, the Société Anonyme’s 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art was the most significant presentation of modern art in America since the 1913 Armory Show. Dreier, with several collaborators including Duchamp, Léger, Kandinsky, Campendonk, Kurt and Helma Schwitters, Alfred Stieglitz, and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, organized the exhibition, which opened in November at the Brooklyn Museum. More than 52,000 people saw the exhibition before it traveled nationally to three additional venues.
The original exhibition was remarkably broad in scope. Visitors progressed from a display of works by familiar, largely figurative American modernists toward paintings and sculpture by European abstractionists. From Miró to Mondrian, many of these artists made their American debuts at the Brooklyn International. With so much new visual material to assimilate, many visitors found the minimally structured presentation and variety of artistic styles overwhelming—even chaotic.
Educational Initiatives
One of the founding principles of the Société Anonyme was its commitment as an educational organization. In their minds, modern art was not a silent entity to be enshrined in a museum but an experience mediated by the multiple voices of artists, critics, poets, and musicians, not only in the Société’s original gallery space on East 47th Street, but also in workers’ clubs, community centers, and art schools. Between the wars, the organization hosted talks and symposia based on the experimental exhibitions at its New York gallery, while Dreier also took art objects on the road for lectures and exhibitions. The Société Anonyme also published numerous catalogues and books on the artists they exhibited, hosted dance and music recitals, and sponsored lectures and programs that included experimental media such as Lotte Reiniger’s animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
One of the earliest of these events was held on April 30, 1921, for the Société Anonyme’s first birthday party. This, “An Evening with Gertrude Stein,” was when friends of the Société read from Stein’s unpublished works. The first musical event at the Société Anonyme was a concert of “Modern Russian Music and Dances,” heralding the opening of Burliuk’s one-artist exhibition in 1924. One year later, Dreier, who was particularly influenced by Kandinsky’s music-inspired expressionism, delivered her first talk on “Modern Art in Relation to Modern Music” at a benefit event in her home. As she explained in Western Art and the New Era (1923), Dreier considered music, like visual art, an “international language,” constructed on the same formal principles as abstract painting and sculpture. The International Symphony of the Société Anonyme, a short-lived enterprise founded in 1930 under Russian conductor Wassily Savadsky, was a natural outgrowth of this idea.
Building a Collection
John Covert’s gift of four works to the Société Anonyme in 1923 introduced the idea of establishing a collection as a permanent expression of the group’s endeavors. Dreier had already generated significant momentum in building a corpus of cutting-edge modern art works in 1922, through the purchase of major paintings by Kasimir Malevich, Konstantin Medunetsky, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Marthe Donas from the Der Sturm and van Diemen galleries in Berlin. Over the next thirty years, Dreier and Duchamp continued to supplement this core with purchases and solicited gifts. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dreier purchased major sculptural works by Naum Gabo and Kurt Schwitters, as well as paintings by Josef Albers and Heinrich Campendonk, among others; important gifts, meanwhile, came from Max Ernst and Piet Mondrian.
As Dreier advanced in age, she became concerned about the stewardship of the collection. In 1936 she envisioned a country museum in her West Redding, Connecticut, home that would feature the works assembled by her and Duchamp. Her hopes to raise financial support for the venture foundered, however, and in 1941 Dreier and Duchamp donated a portion of the collection to Yale University. At this time, Dreier and Duchamp actively sought additional gifts to round out the Société Anonyme Collection. Their efforts prompted donations from numerous artists including Jean Arp, John Graham, Jean Crotti, and one of the organization’s cofounders, Man Ray. When the group formally dissolved in 1950, the collection assembled by the Société Anonyme constituted one of the foremost assemblages of modern art in America, paralleled only by The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York.
The installation was remarkable in the eyes of the critics and visitors of the day. As Duchamp’s first exhibition design, the aesthetic was distinctly modern, with cool white oilcloth walls that captured the blue reflected light cast from neighboring skyscrapers and the electrolier lights contributed by Man Ray. The domestic scale and feel of the traditional brownstone architecture was further mediated by Duchamp’s placement of industrial gray, ribbed rubber matting over the wooden floors and a spare hanging of the artworks. Duchamp then humorously undermined his stylish presentation by placing lace paper doilies around the paintings’ frames—an imposition readily approved by his fellow artists, in true Dada spirit. Henry McBride, the art critic for the New York Herald, wrote, “One must mount two steep flights of stairs and then pay 26 cents to obtain admission to the first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., but even those to whom an outlay of 25 cents for any purpose whatever is a serious matter will probably not regret the investment. Many a movie at twice the price gives one less to remember.”
1926 Brooklyn International Exhibition
Composed of over three hundred works by 106 artists from nineteen countries, the Société Anonyme’s 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art was the most significant presentation of modern art in America since the 1913 Armory Show. Dreier, with several collaborators including Duchamp, Léger, Kandinsky, Campendonk, Kurt and Helma Schwitters, Alfred Stieglitz, and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, organized the exhibition, which opened in November at the Brooklyn Museum. More than 52,000 people saw the exhibition before it traveled nationally to three additional venues.
The original exhibition was remarkably broad in scope. Visitors progressed from a display of works by familiar, largely figurative American modernists toward paintings and sculpture by European abstractionists. From Miró to Mondrian, many of these artists made their American debuts at the Brooklyn International. With so much new visual material to assimilate, many visitors found the minimally structured presentation and variety of artistic styles overwhelming—even chaotic.
Educational Initiatives
One of the founding principles of the Société Anonyme was its commitment as an educational organization. In their minds, modern art was not a silent entity to be enshrined in a museum but an experience mediated by the multiple voices of artists, critics, poets, and musicians, not only in the Société’s original gallery space on East 47th Street, but also in workers’ clubs, community centers, and art schools. Between the wars, the organization hosted talks and symposia based on the experimental exhibitions at its New York gallery, while Dreier also took art objects on the road for lectures and exhibitions. The Société Anonyme also published numerous catalogues and books on the artists they exhibited, hosted dance and music recitals, and sponsored lectures and programs that included experimental media such as Lotte Reiniger’s animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
One of the earliest of these events was held on April 30, 1921, for the Société Anonyme’s first birthday party. This, “An Evening with Gertrude Stein,” was when friends of the Société read from Stein’s unpublished works. The first musical event at the Société Anonyme was a concert of “Modern Russian Music and Dances,” heralding the opening of Burliuk’s one-artist exhibition in 1924. One year later, Dreier, who was particularly influenced by Kandinsky’s music-inspired expressionism, delivered her first talk on “Modern Art in Relation to Modern Music” at a benefit event in her home. As she explained in Western Art and the New Era (1923), Dreier considered music, like visual art, an “international language,” constructed on the same formal principles as abstract painting and sculpture. The International Symphony of the Société Anonyme, a short-lived enterprise founded in 1930 under Russian conductor Wassily Savadsky, was a natural outgrowth of this idea.
Building a Collection
John Covert’s gift of four works to the Société Anonyme in 1923 introduced the idea of establishing a collection as a permanent expression of the group’s endeavors. Dreier had already generated significant momentum in building a corpus of cutting-edge modern art works in 1922, through the purchase of major paintings by Kasimir Malevich, Konstantin Medunetsky, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Marthe Donas from the Der Sturm and van Diemen galleries in Berlin. Over the next thirty years, Dreier and Duchamp continued to supplement this core with purchases and solicited gifts. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dreier purchased major sculptural works by Naum Gabo and Kurt Schwitters, as well as paintings by Josef Albers and Heinrich Campendonk, among others; important gifts, meanwhile, came from Max Ernst and Piet Mondrian.
As Dreier advanced in age, she became concerned about the stewardship of the collection. In 1936 she envisioned a country museum in her West Redding, Connecticut, home that would feature the works assembled by her and Duchamp. Her hopes to raise financial support for the venture foundered, however, and in 1941 Dreier and Duchamp donated a portion of the collection to Yale University. At this time, Dreier and Duchamp actively sought additional gifts to round out the Société Anonyme Collection. Their efforts prompted donations from numerous artists including Jean Arp, John Graham, Jean Crotti, and one of the organization’s cofounders, Man Ray. When the group formally dissolved in 1950, the collection assembled by the Société Anonyme constituted one of the foremost assemblages of modern art in America, paralleled only by The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York.
The Inaugural Exhibition
The Inaugural Exhibition
The startlingly eclectic first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., opened on April 30, 1920, at the Société Anonyme gallery on East 47th Street in New York City. The works shown at the exhibition established the stylistically democratic and international tenor of the group’s curatorial enterprise for the next thirty years. In contrast to the nonjuried breadth of the Society of independent Artists exhibition that brought Dreier and Duchamp together on its planning board in 1916, the Société Anonyme’s first exhibition included artists who they believed exemplified modernist zeal and creative vision.
The installation was remarkable in the eyes of the critics and visitors of the day. As Duchamp’s first exhibition design, the aesthetic was distinctly modern, with cool white oilcloth walls that captured the blue reflected light cast from neighboring skyscrapers and the electrolier lights contributed by Man Ray. The domestic scale and feel of the traditional brownstone architecture was further mediated by Duchamp’s placement of industrial gray, ribbed rubber matting over the wooden floors and a spare hanging of the artworks. Duchamp then humorously undermined his stylish presentation by placing lace paper doilies around the paintings’ frames—an imposition readily approved by his fellow artists, in true Dada spirit. Henry McBride, the art critic for the New York Herald, wrote, “One must mount two steep flights of stairs and then pay 26 cents to obtain admission to the first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., but even those to whom an outlay of 25 cents for any purpose whatever is a serious matter will probably not regret the investment. Many a movie at twice the price gives one less to remember.”
1926 Brooklyn International Exhibition
Composed of over three hundred works by 106 artists from nineteen countries, the Société Anonyme’s 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art was the most significant presentation of modern art in America since the 1913 Armory Show. Dreier, with several collaborators including Duchamp, Léger, Kandinsky, Campendonk, Kurt and Helma Schwitters, Alfred Stieglitz, and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, organized the exhibition, which opened in November at the Brooklyn Museum. More than 52,000 people saw the exhibition before it traveled nationally to three additional venues.
The original exhibition was remarkably broad in scope. Visitors progressed from a display of works by familiar, largely figurative American modernists toward paintings and sculpture by European abstractionists. From Miró to Mondrian, many of these artists made their American debuts at the Brooklyn International. With so much new visual material to assimilate, many visitors found the minimally structured presentation and variety of artistic styles overwhelming—even chaotic.
Educational Initiatives
One of the founding principles of the Société Anonyme was its commitment as an educational organization. In their minds, modern art was not a silent entity to be enshrined in a museum but an experience mediated by the multiple voices of artists, critics, poets, and musicians, not only in the Société’s original gallery space on East 47th Street, but also in workers’ clubs, community centers, and art schools. Between the wars, the organization hosted talks and symposia based on the experimental exhibitions at its New York gallery, while Dreier also took art objects on the road for lectures and exhibitions. The Société Anonyme also published numerous catalogues and books on the artists they exhibited, hosted dance and music recitals, and sponsored lectures and programs that included experimental media such as Lotte Reiniger’s animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
One of the earliest of these events was held on April 30, 1921, for the Société Anonyme’s first birthday party. This, “An Evening with Gertrude Stein,” was when friends of the Société read from Stein’s unpublished works. The first musical event at the Société Anonyme was a concert of “Modern Russian Music and Dances,” heralding the opening of Burliuk’s one-artist exhibition in 1924. One year later, Dreier, who was particularly influenced by Kandinsky’s music-inspired expressionism, delivered her first talk on “Modern Art in Relation to Modern Music” at a benefit event in her home. As she explained in Western Art and the New Era (1923), Dreier considered music, like visual art, an “international language,” constructed on the same formal principles as abstract painting and sculpture. The International Symphony of the Société Anonyme, a short-lived enterprise founded in 1930 under Russian conductor Wassily Savadsky, was a natural outgrowth of this idea.
Building a Collection
John Covert’s gift of four works to the Société Anonyme in 1923 introduced the idea of establishing a collection as a permanent expression of the group’s endeavors. Dreier had already generated significant momentum in building a corpus of cutting-edge modern art works in 1922, through the purchase of major paintings by Kasimir Malevich, Konstantin Medunetsky, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Marthe Donas from the Der Sturm and van Diemen galleries in Berlin. Over the next thirty years, Dreier and Duchamp continued to supplement this core with purchases and solicited gifts. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dreier purchased major sculptural works by Naum Gabo and Kurt Schwitters, as well as paintings by Josef Albers and Heinrich Campendonk, among others; important gifts, meanwhile, came from Max Ernst and Piet Mondrian.
As Dreier advanced in age, she became concerned about the stewardship of the collection. In 1936 she envisioned a country museum in her West Redding, Connecticut, home that would feature the works assembled by her and Duchamp. Her hopes to raise financial support for the venture foundered, however, and in 1941 Dreier and Duchamp donated a portion of the collection to Yale University. At this time, Dreier and Duchamp actively sought additional gifts to round out the Société Anonyme Collection. Their efforts prompted donations from numerous artists including Jean Arp, John Graham, Jean Crotti, and one of the organization’s cofounders, Man Ray. When the group formally dissolved in 1950, the collection assembled by the Société Anonyme constituted one of the foremost assemblages of modern art in America, paralleled only by The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York.
The startlingly eclectic first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., opened on April 30, 1920, at the Société Anonyme gallery on East 47th Street in New York City. The works shown at the exhibition established the stylistically democratic and international tenor of the group’s curatorial enterprise for the next thirty years. In contrast to the nonjuried breadth of the Society of independent Artists exhibition that brought Dreier and Duchamp together on its planning board in 1916, the Société Anonyme’s first exhibition included artists who they believed exemplified modernist zeal and creative vision.
The installation was remarkable in the eyes of the critics and visitors of the day. As Duchamp’s first exhibition design, the aesthetic was distinctly modern, with cool white oilcloth walls that captured the blue reflected light cast from neighboring skyscrapers and the electrolier lights contributed by Man Ray. The domestic scale and feel of the traditional brownstone architecture was further mediated by Duchamp’s placement of industrial gray, ribbed rubber matting over the wooden floors and a spare hanging of the artworks. Duchamp then humorously undermined his stylish presentation by placing lace paper doilies around the paintings’ frames—an imposition readily approved by his fellow artists, in true Dada spirit. Henry McBride, the art critic for the New York Herald, wrote, “One must mount two steep flights of stairs and then pay 26 cents to obtain admission to the first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., but even those to whom an outlay of 25 cents for any purpose whatever is a serious matter will probably not regret the investment. Many a movie at twice the price gives one less to remember.”
1926 Brooklyn International Exhibition
Composed of over three hundred works by 106 artists from nineteen countries, the Société Anonyme’s 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art was the most significant presentation of modern art in America since the 1913 Armory Show. Dreier, with several collaborators including Duchamp, Léger, Kandinsky, Campendonk, Kurt and Helma Schwitters, Alfred Stieglitz, and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, organized the exhibition, which opened in November at the Brooklyn Museum. More than 52,000 people saw the exhibition before it traveled nationally to three additional venues.
The original exhibition was remarkably broad in scope. Visitors progressed from a display of works by familiar, largely figurative American modernists toward paintings and sculpture by European abstractionists. From Miró to Mondrian, many of these artists made their American debuts at the Brooklyn International. With so much new visual material to assimilate, many visitors found the minimally structured presentation and variety of artistic styles overwhelming—even chaotic.
Educational Initiatives
One of the founding principles of the Société Anonyme was its commitment as an educational organization. In their minds, modern art was not a silent entity to be enshrined in a museum but an experience mediated by the multiple voices of artists, critics, poets, and musicians, not only in the Société’s original gallery space on East 47th Street, but also in workers’ clubs, community centers, and art schools. Between the wars, the organization hosted talks and symposia based on the experimental exhibitions at its New York gallery, while Dreier also took art objects on the road for lectures and exhibitions. The Société Anonyme also published numerous catalogues and books on the artists they exhibited, hosted dance and music recitals, and sponsored lectures and programs that included experimental media such as Lotte Reiniger’s animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
One of the earliest of these events was held on April 30, 1921, for the Société Anonyme’s first birthday party. This, “An Evening with Gertrude Stein,” was when friends of the Société read from Stein’s unpublished works. The first musical event at the Société Anonyme was a concert of “Modern Russian Music and Dances,” heralding the opening of Burliuk’s one-artist exhibition in 1924. One year later, Dreier, who was particularly influenced by Kandinsky’s music-inspired expressionism, delivered her first talk on “Modern Art in Relation to Modern Music” at a benefit event in her home. As she explained in Western Art and the New Era (1923), Dreier considered music, like visual art, an “international language,” constructed on the same formal principles as abstract painting and sculpture. The International Symphony of the Société Anonyme, a short-lived enterprise founded in 1930 under Russian conductor Wassily Savadsky, was a natural outgrowth of this idea.
Building a Collection
John Covert’s gift of four works to the Société Anonyme in 1923 introduced the idea of establishing a collection as a permanent expression of the group’s endeavors. Dreier had already generated significant momentum in building a corpus of cutting-edge modern art works in 1922, through the purchase of major paintings by Kasimir Malevich, Konstantin Medunetsky, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Marthe Donas from the Der Sturm and van Diemen galleries in Berlin. Over the next thirty years, Dreier and Duchamp continued to supplement this core with purchases and solicited gifts. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dreier purchased major sculptural works by Naum Gabo and Kurt Schwitters, as well as paintings by Josef Albers and Heinrich Campendonk, among others; important gifts, meanwhile, came from Max Ernst and Piet Mondrian.
As Dreier advanced in age, she became concerned about the stewardship of the collection. In 1936 she envisioned a country museum in her West Redding, Connecticut, home that would feature the works assembled by her and Duchamp. Her hopes to raise financial support for the venture foundered, however, and in 1941 Dreier and Duchamp donated a portion of the collection to Yale University. At this time, Dreier and Duchamp actively sought additional gifts to round out the Société Anonyme Collection. Their efforts prompted donations from numerous artists including Jean Arp, John Graham, Jean Crotti, and one of the organization’s cofounders, Man Ray. When the group formally dissolved in 1950, the collection assembled by the Société Anonyme constituted one of the foremost assemblages of modern art in America, paralleled only by The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York.
The Inaugural Exhibition
The startlingly eclectic first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., opened on April 30, 1920, at the Société Anonyme gallery on East 47th Street in New York City. The works shown at the exhibition established the stylistically democratic and international tenor of the group’s curatorial enterprise for the next thirty years. In contrast to the nonjuried breadth of the Society of independent Artists exhibition that brought Dreier and Duchamp together on its planning board in 1916, the Société Anonyme’s first exhibition included artists who they believed exemplified modernist zeal and creative vision.
The installation was remarkable in the eyes of the critics and visitors of the day. As Duchamp’s first exhibition design, the aesthetic was distinctly modern, with cool white oilcloth walls that captured the blue reflected light cast from neighboring skyscrapers and the electrolier lights contributed by Man Ray. The domestic scale and feel of the traditional brownstone architecture was further mediated by Duchamp’s placement of industrial gray, ribbed rubber matting over the wooden floors and a spare hanging of the artworks. Duchamp then humorously undermined his stylish presentation by placing lace paper doilies around the paintings’ frames—an imposition readily approved by his fellow artists, in true Dada spirit. Henry McBride, the art critic for the New York Herald, wrote, “One must mount two steep flights of stairs and then pay 26 cents to obtain admission to the first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., but even those to whom an outlay of 25 cents for any purpose whatever is a serious matter will probably not regret the investment. Many a movie at twice the price gives one less to remember.”
1926 Brooklyn International Exhibition
Composed of over three hundred works by 106 artists from nineteen countries, the Société Anonyme’s 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art was the most significant presentation of modern art in America since the 1913 Armory Show. Dreier, with several collaborators including Duchamp, Léger, Kandinsky, Campendonk, Kurt and Helma Schwitters, Alfred Stieglitz, and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, organized the exhibition, which opened in November at the Brooklyn Museum. More than 52,000 people saw the exhibition before it traveled nationally to three additional venues.
The original exhibition was remarkably broad in scope. Visitors progressed from a display of works by familiar, largely figurative American modernists toward paintings and sculpture by European abstractionists. From Miró to Mondrian, many of these artists made their American debuts at the Brooklyn International. With so much new visual material to assimilate, many visitors found the minimally structured presentation and variety of artistic styles overwhelming—even chaotic.
Educational Initiatives
One of the founding principles of the Société Anonyme was its commitment as an educational organization. In their minds, modern art was not a silent entity to be enshrined in a museum but an experience mediated by the multiple voices of artists, critics, poets, and musicians, not only in the Société’s original gallery space on East 47th Street, but also in workers’ clubs, community centers, and art schools. Between the wars, the organization hosted talks and symposia based on the experimental exhibitions at its New York gallery, while Dreier also took art objects on the road for lectures and exhibitions. The Société Anonyme also published numerous catalogues and books on the artists they exhibited, hosted dance and music recitals, and sponsored lectures and programs that included experimental media such as Lotte Reiniger’s animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
One of the earliest of these events was held on April 30, 1921, for the Société Anonyme’s first birthday party. This, “An Evening with Gertrude Stein,” was when friends of the Société read from Stein’s unpublished works. The first musical event at the Société Anonyme was a concert of “Modern Russian Music and Dances,” heralding the opening of Burliuk’s one-artist exhibition in 1924. One year later, Dreier, who was particularly influenced by Kandinsky’s music-inspired expressionism, delivered her first talk on “Modern Art in Relation to Modern Music” at a benefit event in her home. As she explained in Western Art and the New Era (1923), Dreier considered music, like visual art, an “international language,” constructed on the same formal principles as abstract painting and sculpture. The International Symphony of the Société Anonyme, a short-lived enterprise founded in 1930 under Russian conductor Wassily Savadsky, was a natural outgrowth of this idea.
Building a Collection
John Covert’s gift of four works to the Société Anonyme in 1923 introduced the idea of establishing a collection as a permanent expression of the group’s endeavors. Dreier had already generated significant momentum in building a corpus of cutting-edge modern art works in 1922, through the purchase of major paintings by Kasimir Malevich, Konstantin Medunetsky, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Marthe Donas from the Der Sturm and van Diemen galleries in Berlin. Over the next thirty years, Dreier and Duchamp continued to supplement this core with purchases and solicited gifts. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dreier purchased major sculptural works by Naum Gabo and Kurt Schwitters, as well as paintings by Josef Albers and Heinrich Campendonk, among others; important gifts, meanwhile, came from Max Ernst and Piet Mondrian.
As Dreier advanced in age, she became concerned about the stewardship of the collection. In 1936 she envisioned a country museum in her West Redding, Connecticut, home that would feature the works assembled by her and Duchamp. Her hopes to raise financial support for the venture foundered, however, and in 1941 Dreier and Duchamp donated a portion of the collection to Yale University. At this time, Dreier and Duchamp actively sought additional gifts to round out the Société Anonyme Collection. Their efforts prompted donations from numerous artists including Jean Arp, John Graham, Jean Crotti, and one of the organization’s cofounders, Man Ray. When the group formally dissolved in 1950, the collection assembled by the Société Anonyme constituted one of the foremost assemblages of modern art in America, paralleled only by The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York.
The startlingly eclectic first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., opened on April 30, 1920, at the Société Anonyme gallery on East 47th Street in New York City. The works shown at the exhibition established the stylistically democratic and international tenor of the group’s curatorial enterprise for the next thirty years. In contrast to the nonjuried breadth of the Society of independent Artists exhibition that brought Dreier and Duchamp together on its planning board in 1916, the Société Anonyme’s first exhibition included artists who they believed exemplified modernist zeal and creative vision.
The installation was remarkable in the eyes of the critics and visitors of the day. As Duchamp’s first exhibition design, the aesthetic was distinctly modern, with cool white oilcloth walls that captured the blue reflected light cast from neighboring skyscrapers and the electrolier lights contributed by Man Ray. The domestic scale and feel of the traditional brownstone architecture was further mediated by Duchamp’s placement of industrial gray, ribbed rubber matting over the wooden floors and a spare hanging of the artworks. Duchamp then humorously undermined his stylish presentation by placing lace paper doilies around the paintings’ frames—an imposition readily approved by his fellow artists, in true Dada spirit. Henry McBride, the art critic for the New York Herald, wrote, “One must mount two steep flights of stairs and then pay 26 cents to obtain admission to the first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., but even those to whom an outlay of 25 cents for any purpose whatever is a serious matter will probably not regret the investment. Many a movie at twice the price gives one less to remember.”
1926 Brooklyn International Exhibition
Composed of over three hundred works by 106 artists from nineteen countries, the Société Anonyme’s 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art was the most significant presentation of modern art in America since the 1913 Armory Show. Dreier, with several collaborators including Duchamp, Léger, Kandinsky, Campendonk, Kurt and Helma Schwitters, Alfred Stieglitz, and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, organized the exhibition, which opened in November at the Brooklyn Museum. More than 52,000 people saw the exhibition before it traveled nationally to three additional venues.
The original exhibition was remarkably broad in scope. Visitors progressed from a display of works by familiar, largely figurative American modernists toward paintings and sculpture by European abstractionists. From Miró to Mondrian, many of these artists made their American debuts at the Brooklyn International. With so much new visual material to assimilate, many visitors found the minimally structured presentation and variety of artistic styles overwhelming—even chaotic.
Educational Initiatives
One of the founding principles of the Société Anonyme was its commitment as an educational organization. In their minds, modern art was not a silent entity to be enshrined in a museum but an experience mediated by the multiple voices of artists, critics, poets, and musicians, not only in the Société’s original gallery space on East 47th Street, but also in workers’ clubs, community centers, and art schools. Between the wars, the organization hosted talks and symposia based on the experimental exhibitions at its New York gallery, while Dreier also took art objects on the road for lectures and exhibitions. The Société Anonyme also published numerous catalogues and books on the artists they exhibited, hosted dance and music recitals, and sponsored lectures and programs that included experimental media such as Lotte Reiniger’s animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
One of the earliest of these events was held on April 30, 1921, for the Société Anonyme’s first birthday party. This, “An Evening with Gertrude Stein,” was when friends of the Société read from Stein’s unpublished works. The first musical event at the Société Anonyme was a concert of “Modern Russian Music and Dances,” heralding the opening of Burliuk’s one-artist exhibition in 1924. One year later, Dreier, who was particularly influenced by Kandinsky’s music-inspired expressionism, delivered her first talk on “Modern Art in Relation to Modern Music” at a benefit event in her home. As she explained in Western Art and the New Era (1923), Dreier considered music, like visual art, an “international language,” constructed on the same formal principles as abstract painting and sculpture. The International Symphony of the Société Anonyme, a short-lived enterprise founded in 1930 under Russian conductor Wassily Savadsky, was a natural outgrowth of this idea.
Building a Collection
John Covert’s gift of four works to the Société Anonyme in 1923 introduced the idea of establishing a collection as a permanent expression of the group’s endeavors. Dreier had already generated significant momentum in building a corpus of cutting-edge modern art works in 1922, through the purchase of major paintings by Kasimir Malevich, Konstantin Medunetsky, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Marthe Donas from the Der Sturm and van Diemen galleries in Berlin. Over the next thirty years, Dreier and Duchamp continued to supplement this core with purchases and solicited gifts. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dreier purchased major sculptural works by Naum Gabo and Kurt Schwitters, as well as paintings by Josef Albers and Heinrich Campendonk, among others; important gifts, meanwhile, came from Max Ernst and Piet Mondrian.
As Dreier advanced in age, she became concerned about the stewardship of the collection. In 1936 she envisioned a country museum in her West Redding, Connecticut, home that would feature the works assembled by her and Duchamp. Her hopes to raise financial support for the venture foundered, however, and in 1941 Dreier and Duchamp donated a portion of the collection to Yale University. At this time, Dreier and Duchamp actively sought additional gifts to round out the Société Anonyme Collection. Their efforts prompted donations from numerous artists including Jean Arp, John Graham, Jean Crotti, and one of the organization’s cofounders, Man Ray. When the group formally dissolved in 1950, the collection assembled by the Société Anonyme constituted one of the foremost assemblages of modern art in America, paralleled only by The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York.
The Inaugural Exhibition
The startlingly eclectic first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., opened on April 30, 1920, at the Société Anonyme gallery on East 47th Street in New York City. The works shown at the exhibition established the stylistically democratic and international tenor of the group’s curatorial enterprise for the next thirty years. In contrast to the nonjuried breadth of the Society of independent Artists exhibition that brought Dreier and Duchamp together on its planning board in 1916, the Société Anonyme’s first exhibition included artists who they believed exemplified modernist zeal and creative vision.
The installation was remarkable in the eyes of the critics and visitors of the day. As Duchamp’s first exhibition design, the aesthetic was distinctly modern, with cool white oilcloth walls that captured the blue reflected light cast from neighboring skyscrapers and the electrolier lights contributed by Man Ray. The domestic scale and feel of the traditional brownstone architecture was further mediated by Duchamp’s placement of industrial gray, ribbed rubber matting over the wooden floors and a spare hanging of the artworks. Duchamp then humorously undermined his stylish presentation by placing lace paper doilies around the paintings’ frames—an imposition readily approved by his fellow artists, in true Dada spirit. Henry McBride, the art critic for the New York Herald, wrote, “One must mount two steep flights of stairs and then pay 26 cents to obtain admission to the first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., but even those to whom an outlay of 25 cents for any purpose whatever is a serious matter will probably not regret the investment. Many a movie at twice the price gives one less to remember.”
1926 Brooklyn International Exhibition
Composed of over three hundred works by 106 artists from nineteen countries, the Société Anonyme’s 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art was the most significant presentation of modern art in America since the 1913 Armory Show. Dreier, with several collaborators including Duchamp, Léger, Kandinsky, Campendonk, Kurt and Helma Schwitters, Alfred Stieglitz, and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, organized the exhibition, which opened in November at the Brooklyn Museum. More than 52,000 people saw the exhibition before it traveled nationally to three additional venues.
The original exhibition was remarkably broad in scope. Visitors progressed from a display of works by familiar, largely figurative American modernists toward paintings and sculpture by European abstractionists. From Miró to Mondrian, many of these artists made their American debuts at the Brooklyn International. With so much new visual material to assimilate, many visitors found the minimally structured presentation and variety of artistic styles overwhelming—even chaotic.
Educational Initiatives
One of the founding principles of the Société Anonyme was its commitment as an educational organization. In their minds, modern art was not a silent entity to be enshrined in a museum but an experience mediated by the multiple voices of artists, critics, poets, and musicians, not only in the Société’s original gallery space on East 47th Street, but also in workers’ clubs, community centers, and art schools. Between the wars, the organization hosted talks and symposia based on the experimental exhibitions at its New York gallery, while Dreier also took art objects on the road for lectures and exhibitions. The Société Anonyme also published numerous catalogues and books on the artists they exhibited, hosted dance and music recitals, and sponsored lectures and programs that included experimental media such as Lotte Reiniger’s animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
One of the earliest of these events was held on April 30, 1921, for the Société Anonyme’s first birthday party. This, “An Evening with Gertrude Stein,” was when friends of the Société read from Stein’s unpublished works. The first musical event at the Société Anonyme was a concert of “Modern Russian Music and Dances,” heralding the opening of Burliuk’s one-artist exhibition in 1924. One year later, Dreier, who was particularly influenced by Kandinsky’s music-inspired expressionism, delivered her first talk on “Modern Art in Relation to Modern Music” at a benefit event in her home. As she explained in Western Art and the New Era (1923), Dreier considered music, like visual art, an “international language,” constructed on the same formal principles as abstract painting and sculpture. The International Symphony of the Société Anonyme, a short-lived enterprise founded in 1930 under Russian conductor Wassily Savadsky, was a natural outgrowth of this idea.
Building a Collection
John Covert’s gift of four works to the Société Anonyme in 1923 introduced the idea of establishing a collection as a permanent expression of the group’s endeavors. Dreier had already generated significant momentum in building a corpus of cutting-edge modern art works in 1922, through the purchase of major paintings by Kasimir Malevich, Konstantin Medunetsky, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Marthe Donas from the Der Sturm and van Diemen galleries in Berlin. Over the next thirty years, Dreier and Duchamp continued to supplement this core with purchases and solicited gifts. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dreier purchased major sculptural works by Naum Gabo and Kurt Schwitters, as well as paintings by Josef Albers and Heinrich Campendonk, among others; important gifts, meanwhile, came from Max Ernst and Piet Mondrian.
As Dreier advanced in age, she became concerned about the stewardship of the collection. In 1936 she envisioned a country museum in her West Redding, Connecticut, home that would feature the works assembled by her and Duchamp. Her hopes to raise financial support for the venture foundered, however, and in 1941 Dreier and Duchamp donated a portion of the collection to Yale University. At this time, Dreier and Duchamp actively sought additional gifts to round out the Société Anonyme Collection. Their efforts prompted donations from numerous artists including Jean Arp, John Graham, Jean Crotti, and one of the organization’s cofounders, Man Ray. When the group formally dissolved in 1950, the collection assembled by the Société Anonyme constituted one of the foremost assemblages of modern art in America, paralleled only by The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York.
The startlingly eclectic first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., opened on April 30, 1920, at the Société Anonyme gallery on East 47th Street in New York City. The works shown at the exhibition established the stylistically democratic and international tenor of the group’s curatorial enterprise for the next thirty years. In contrast to the nonjuried breadth of the Society of independent Artists exhibition that brought Dreier and Duchamp together on its planning board in 1916, the Société Anonyme’s first exhibition included artists who they believed exemplified modernist zeal and creative vision.
The installation was remarkable in the eyes of the critics and visitors of the day. As Duchamp’s first exhibition design, the aesthetic was distinctly modern, with cool white oilcloth walls that captured the blue reflected light cast from neighboring skyscrapers and the electrolier lights contributed by Man Ray. The domestic scale and feel of the traditional brownstone architecture was further mediated by Duchamp’s placement of industrial gray, ribbed rubber matting over the wooden floors and a spare hanging of the artworks. Duchamp then humorously undermined his stylish presentation by placing lace paper doilies around the paintings’ frames—an imposition readily approved by his fellow artists, in true Dada spirit. Henry McBride, the art critic for the New York Herald, wrote, “One must mount two steep flights of stairs and then pay 26 cents to obtain admission to the first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., but even those to whom an outlay of 25 cents for any purpose whatever is a serious matter will probably not regret the investment. Many a movie at twice the price gives one less to remember.”
1926 Brooklyn International Exhibition
Composed of over three hundred works by 106 artists from nineteen countries, the Société Anonyme’s 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art was the most significant presentation of modern art in America since the 1913 Armory Show. Dreier, with several collaborators including Duchamp, Léger, Kandinsky, Campendonk, Kurt and Helma Schwitters, Alfred Stieglitz, and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, organized the exhibition, which opened in November at the Brooklyn Museum. More than 52,000 people saw the exhibition before it traveled nationally to three additional venues.
The original exhibition was remarkably broad in scope. Visitors progressed from a display of works by familiar, largely figurative American modernists toward paintings and sculpture by European abstractionists. From Miró to Mondrian, many of these artists made their American debuts at the Brooklyn International. With so much new visual material to assimilate, many visitors found the minimally structured presentation and variety of artistic styles overwhelming—even chaotic.
Educational Initiatives
One of the founding principles of the Société Anonyme was its commitment as an educational organization. In their minds, modern art was not a silent entity to be enshrined in a museum but an experience mediated by the multiple voices of artists, critics, poets, and musicians, not only in the Société’s original gallery space on East 47th Street, but also in workers’ clubs, community centers, and art schools. Between the wars, the organization hosted talks and symposia based on the experimental exhibitions at its New York gallery, while Dreier also took art objects on the road for lectures and exhibitions. The Société Anonyme also published numerous catalogues and books on the artists they exhibited, hosted dance and music recitals, and sponsored lectures and programs that included experimental media such as Lotte Reiniger’s animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
One of the earliest of these events was held on April 30, 1921, for the Société Anonyme’s first birthday party. This, “An Evening with Gertrude Stein,” was when friends of the Société read from Stein’s unpublished works. The first musical event at the Société Anonyme was a concert of “Modern Russian Music and Dances,” heralding the opening of Burliuk’s one-artist exhibition in 1924. One year later, Dreier, who was particularly influenced by Kandinsky’s music-inspired expressionism, delivered her first talk on “Modern Art in Relation to Modern Music” at a benefit event in her home. As she explained in Western Art and the New Era (1923), Dreier considered music, like visual art, an “international language,” constructed on the same formal principles as abstract painting and sculpture. The International Symphony of the Société Anonyme, a short-lived enterprise founded in 1930 under Russian conductor Wassily Savadsky, was a natural outgrowth of this idea.
Building a Collection
John Covert’s gift of four works to the Société Anonyme in 1923 introduced the idea of establishing a collection as a permanent expression of the group’s endeavors. Dreier had already generated significant momentum in building a corpus of cutting-edge modern art works in 1922, through the purchase of major paintings by Kasimir Malevich, Konstantin Medunetsky, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Marthe Donas from the Der Sturm and van Diemen galleries in Berlin. Over the next thirty years, Dreier and Duchamp continued to supplement this core with purchases and solicited gifts. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dreier purchased major sculptural works by Naum Gabo and Kurt Schwitters, as well as paintings by Josef Albers and Heinrich Campendonk, among others; important gifts, meanwhile, came from Max Ernst and Piet Mondrian.
As Dreier advanced in age, she became concerned about the stewardship of the collection. In 1936 she envisioned a country museum in her West Redding, Connecticut, home that would feature the works assembled by her and Duchamp. Her hopes to raise financial support for the venture foundered, however, and in 1941 Dreier and Duchamp donated a portion of the collection to Yale University. At this time, Dreier and Duchamp actively sought additional gifts to round out the Société Anonyme Collection. Their efforts prompted donations from numerous artists including Jean Arp, John Graham, Jean Crotti, and one of the organization’s cofounders, Man Ray. When the group formally dissolved in 1950, the collection assembled by the Société Anonyme constituted one of the foremost assemblages of modern art in America, paralleled only by The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York.
The Inaugural Exhibition
The startlingly eclectic first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., opened on April 30, 1920, at the Société Anonyme gallery on East 47th Street in New York City. The works shown at the exhibition established the stylistically democratic and international tenor of the group’s curatorial enterprise for the next thirty years. In contrast to the nonjuried breadth of the Society of independent Artists exhibition that brought Dreier and Duchamp together on its planning board in 1916, the Société Anonyme’s first exhibition included artists who they believed exemplified modernist zeal and creative vision.
The installation was remarkable in the eyes of the critics and visitors of the day. As Duchamp’s first exhibition design, the aesthetic was distinctly modern, with cool white oilcloth walls that captured the blue reflected light cast from neighboring skyscrapers and the electrolier lights contributed by Man Ray. The domestic scale and feel of the traditional brownstone architecture was further mediated by Duchamp’s placement of industrial gray, ribbed rubber matting over the wooden floors and a spare hanging of the artworks. Duchamp then humorously undermined his stylish presentation by placing lace paper doilies around the paintings’ frames—an imposition readily approved by his fellow artists, in true Dada spirit. Henry McBride, the art critic for the New York Herald, wrote, “One must mount two steep flights of stairs and then pay 26 cents to obtain admission to the first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., but even those to whom an outlay of 25 cents for any purpose whatever is a serious matter will probably not regret the investment. Many a movie at twice the price gives one less to remember.”
1926 Brooklyn International Exhibition
Composed of over three hundred works by 106 artists from nineteen countries, the Société Anonyme’s 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art was the most significant presentation of modern art in America since the 1913 Armory Show. Dreier, with several collaborators including Duchamp, Léger, Kandinsky, Campendonk, Kurt and Helma Schwitters, Alfred Stieglitz, and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, organized the exhibition, which opened in November at the Brooklyn Museum. More than 52,000 people saw the exhibition before it traveled nationally to three additional venues.
The original exhibition was remarkably broad in scope. Visitors progressed from a display of works by familiar, largely figurative American modernists toward paintings and sculpture by European abstractionists. From Miró to Mondrian, many of these artists made their American debuts at the Brooklyn International. With so much new visual material to assimilate, many visitors found the minimally structured presentation and variety of artistic styles overwhelming—even chaotic.
Educational Initiatives
One of the founding principles of the Société Anonyme was its commitment as an educational organization. In their minds, modern art was not a silent entity to be enshrined in a museum but an experience mediated by the multiple voices of artists, critics, poets, and musicians, not only in the Société’s original gallery space on East 47th Street, but also in workers’ clubs, community centers, and art schools. Between the wars, the organization hosted talks and symposia based on the experimental exhibitions at its New York gallery, while Dreier also took art objects on the road for lectures and exhibitions. The Société Anonyme also published numerous catalogues and books on the artists they exhibited, hosted dance and music recitals, and sponsored lectures and programs that included experimental media such as Lotte Reiniger’s animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
One of the earliest of these events was held on April 30, 1921, for the Société Anonyme’s first birthday party. This, “An Evening with Gertrude Stein,” was when friends of the Société read from Stein’s unpublished works. The first musical event at the Société Anonyme was a concert of “Modern Russian Music and Dances,” heralding the opening of Burliuk’s one-artist exhibition in 1924. One year later, Dreier, who was particularly influenced by Kandinsky’s music-inspired expressionism, delivered her first talk on “Modern Art in Relation to Modern Music” at a benefit event in her home. As she explained in Western Art and the New Era (1923), Dreier considered music, like visual art, an “international language,” constructed on the same formal principles as abstract painting and sculpture. The International Symphony of the Société Anonyme, a short-lived enterprise founded in 1930 under Russian conductor Wassily Savadsky, was a natural outgrowth of this idea.
Building a Collection
John Covert’s gift of four works to the Société Anonyme in 1923 introduced the idea of establishing a collection as a permanent expression of the group’s endeavors. Dreier had already generated significant momentum in building a corpus of cutting-edge modern art works in 1922, through the purchase of major paintings by Kasimir Malevich, Konstantin Medunetsky, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Marthe Donas from the Der Sturm and van Diemen galleries in Berlin. Over the next thirty years, Dreier and Duchamp continued to supplement this core with purchases and solicited gifts. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dreier purchased major sculptural works by Naum Gabo and Kurt Schwitters, as well as paintings by Josef Albers and Heinrich Campendonk, among others; important gifts, meanwhile, came from Max Ernst and Piet Mondrian.
As Dreier advanced in age, she became concerned about the stewardship of the collection. In 1936 she envisioned a country museum in her West Redding, Connecticut, home that would feature the works assembled by her and Duchamp. Her hopes to raise financial support for the venture foundered, however, and in 1941 Dreier and Duchamp donated a portion of the collection to Yale University. At this time, Dreier and Duchamp actively sought additional gifts to round out the Société Anonyme Collection. Their efforts prompted donations from numerous artists including Jean Arp, John Graham, Jean Crotti, and one of the organization’s cofounders, Man Ray. When the group formally dissolved in 1950, the collection assembled by the Société Anonyme constituted one of the foremost assemblages of modern art in America, paralleled only by The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York.
The startlingly eclectic first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., opened on April 30, 1920, at the Société Anonyme gallery on East 47th Street in New York City. The works shown at the exhibition established the stylistically democratic and international tenor of the group’s curatorial enterprise for the next thirty years. In contrast to the nonjuried breadth of the Society of independent Artists exhibition that brought Dreier and Duchamp together on its planning board in 1916, the Société Anonyme’s first exhibition included artists who they believed exemplified modernist zeal and creative vision.
The installation was remarkable in the eyes of the critics and visitors of the day. As Duchamp’s first exhibition design, the aesthetic was distinctly modern, with cool white oilcloth walls that captured the blue reflected light cast from neighboring skyscrapers and the electrolier lights contributed by Man Ray. The domestic scale and feel of the traditional brownstone architecture was further mediated by Duchamp’s placement of industrial gray, ribbed rubber matting over the wooden floors and a spare hanging of the artworks. Duchamp then humorously undermined his stylish presentation by placing lace paper doilies around the paintings’ frames—an imposition readily approved by his fellow artists, in true Dada spirit. Henry McBride, the art critic for the New York Herald, wrote, “One must mount two steep flights of stairs and then pay 26 cents to obtain admission to the first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., but even those to whom an outlay of 25 cents for any purpose whatever is a serious matter will probably not regret the investment. Many a movie at twice the price gives one less to remember.”
1926 Brooklyn International Exhibition
Composed of over three hundred works by 106 artists from nineteen countries, the Société Anonyme’s 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art was the most significant presentation of modern art in America since the 1913 Armory Show. Dreier, with several collaborators including Duchamp, Léger, Kandinsky, Campendonk, Kurt and Helma Schwitters, Alfred Stieglitz, and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, organized the exhibition, which opened in November at the Brooklyn Museum. More than 52,000 people saw the exhibition before it traveled nationally to three additional venues.
The original exhibition was remarkably broad in scope. Visitors progressed from a display of works by familiar, largely figurative American modernists toward paintings and sculpture by European abstractionists. From Miró to Mondrian, many of these artists made their American debuts at the Brooklyn International. With so much new visual material to assimilate, many visitors found the minimally structured presentation and variety of artistic styles overwhelming—even chaotic.
Educational Initiatives
One of the founding principles of the Société Anonyme was its commitment as an educational organization. In their minds, modern art was not a silent entity to be enshrined in a museum but an experience mediated by the multiple voices of artists, critics, poets, and musicians, not only in the Société’s original gallery space on East 47th Street, but also in workers’ clubs, community centers, and art schools. Between the wars, the organization hosted talks and symposia based on the experimental exhibitions at its New York gallery, while Dreier also took art objects on the road for lectures and exhibitions. The Société Anonyme also published numerous catalogues and books on the artists they exhibited, hosted dance and music recitals, and sponsored lectures and programs that included experimental media such as Lotte Reiniger’s animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
One of the earliest of these events was held on April 30, 1921, for the Société Anonyme’s first birthday party. This, “An Evening with Gertrude Stein,” was when friends of the Société read from Stein’s unpublished works. The first musical event at the Société Anonyme was a concert of “Modern Russian Music and Dances,” heralding the opening of Burliuk’s one-artist exhibition in 1924. One year later, Dreier, who was particularly influenced by Kandinsky’s music-inspired expressionism, delivered her first talk on “Modern Art in Relation to Modern Music” at a benefit event in her home. As she explained in Western Art and the New Era (1923), Dreier considered music, like visual art, an “international language,” constructed on the same formal principles as abstract painting and sculpture. The International Symphony of the Société Anonyme, a short-lived enterprise founded in 1930 under Russian conductor Wassily Savadsky, was a natural outgrowth of this idea.
Building a Collection
John Covert’s gift of four works to the Société Anonyme in 1923 introduced the idea of establishing a collection as a permanent expression of the group’s endeavors. Dreier had already generated significant momentum in building a corpus of cutting-edge modern art works in 1922, through the purchase of major paintings by Kasimir Malevich, Konstantin Medunetsky, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Marthe Donas from the Der Sturm and van Diemen galleries in Berlin. Over the next thirty years, Dreier and Duchamp continued to supplement this core with purchases and solicited gifts. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dreier purchased major sculptural works by Naum Gabo and Kurt Schwitters, as well as paintings by Josef Albers and Heinrich Campendonk, among others; important gifts, meanwhile, came from Max Ernst and Piet Mondrian.
As Dreier advanced in age, she became concerned about the stewardship of the collection. In 1936 she envisioned a country museum in her West Redding, Connecticut, home that would feature the works assembled by her and Duchamp. Her hopes to raise financial support for the venture foundered, however, and in 1941 Dreier and Duchamp donated a portion of the collection to Yale University. At this time, Dreier and Duchamp actively sought additional gifts to round out the Société Anonyme Collection. Their efforts prompted donations from numerous artists including Jean Arp, John Graham, Jean Crotti, and one of the organization’s cofounders, Man Ray. When the group formally dissolved in 1950, the collection assembled by the Société Anonyme constituted one of the foremost assemblages of modern art in America, paralleled only by The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York.
The Inaugural Exhibition
The startlingly eclectic first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., opened on April 30, 1920, at the Société Anonyme gallery on East 47th Street in New York City. The works shown at the exhibition established the stylistically democratic and international tenor of the group’s curatorial enterprise for the next thirty years. In contrast to the nonjuried breadth of the Society of independent Artists exhibition that brought Dreier and Duchamp together on its planning board in 1916, the Société Anonyme’s first exhibition included artists who they believed exemplified modernist zeal and creative vision.
The installation was remarkable in the eyes of the critics and visitors of the day. As Duchamp’s first exhibition design, the aesthetic was distinctly modern, with cool white oilcloth walls that captured the blue reflected light cast from neighboring skyscrapers and the electrolier lights contributed by Man Ray. The domestic scale and feel of the traditional brownstone architecture was further mediated by Duchamp’s placement of industrial gray, ribbed rubber matting over the wooden floors and a spare hanging of the artworks. Duchamp then humorously undermined his stylish presentation by placing lace paper doilies around the paintings’ frames—an imposition readily approved by his fellow artists, in true Dada spirit. Henry McBride, the art critic for the New York Herald, wrote, “One must mount two steep flights of stairs and then pay 26 cents to obtain admission to the first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., but even those to whom an outlay of 25 cents for any purpose whatever is a serious matter will probably not regret the investment. Many a movie at twice the price gives one less to remember.”
1926 Brooklyn International Exhibition
Composed of over three hundred works by 106 artists from nineteen countries, the Société Anonyme’s 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art was the most significant presentation of modern art in America since the 1913 Armory Show. Dreier, with several collaborators including Duchamp, Léger, Kandinsky, Campendonk, Kurt and Helma Schwitters, Alfred Stieglitz, and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, organized the exhibition, which opened in November at the Brooklyn Museum. More than 52,000 people saw the exhibition before it traveled nationally to three additional venues.
The original exhibition was remarkably broad in scope. Visitors progressed from a display of works by familiar, largely figurative American modernists toward paintings and sculpture by European abstractionists. From Miró to Mondrian, many of these artists made their American debuts at the Brooklyn International. With so much new visual material to assimilate, many visitors found the minimally structured presentation and variety of artistic styles overwhelming—even chaotic.
Educational Initiatives
One of the founding principles of the Société Anonyme was its commitment as an educational organization. In their minds, modern art was not a silent entity to be enshrined in a museum but an experience mediated by the multiple voices of artists, critics, poets, and musicians, not only in the Société’s original gallery space on East 47th Street, but also in workers’ clubs, community centers, and art schools. Between the wars, the organization hosted talks and symposia based on the experimental exhibitions at its New York gallery, while Dreier also took art objects on the road for lectures and exhibitions. The Société Anonyme also published numerous catalogues and books on the artists they exhibited, hosted dance and music recitals, and sponsored lectures and programs that included experimental media such as Lotte Reiniger’s animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
One of the earliest of these events was held on April 30, 1921, for the Société Anonyme’s first birthday party. This, “An Evening with Gertrude Stein,” was when friends of the Société read from Stein’s unpublished works. The first musical event at the Société Anonyme was a concert of “Modern Russian Music and Dances,” heralding the opening of Burliuk’s one-artist exhibition in 1924. One year later, Dreier, who was particularly influenced by Kandinsky’s music-inspired expressionism, delivered her first talk on “Modern Art in Relation to Modern Music” at a benefit event in her home. As she explained in Western Art and the New Era (1923), Dreier considered music, like visual art, an “international language,” constructed on the same formal principles as abstract painting and sculpture. The International Symphony of the Société Anonyme, a short-lived enterprise founded in 1930 under Russian conductor Wassily Savadsky, was a natural outgrowth of this idea.
Building a Collection
John Covert’s gift of four works to the Société Anonyme in 1923 introduced the idea of establishing a collection as a permanent expression of the group’s endeavors. Dreier had already generated significant momentum in building a corpus of cutting-edge modern art works in 1922, through the purchase of major paintings by Kasimir Malevich, Konstantin Medunetsky, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Marthe Donas from the Der Sturm and van Diemen galleries in Berlin. Over the next thirty years, Dreier and Duchamp continued to supplement this core with purchases and solicited gifts. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dreier purchased major sculptural works by Naum Gabo and Kurt Schwitters, as well as paintings by Josef Albers and Heinrich Campendonk, among others; important gifts, meanwhile, came from Max Ernst and Piet Mondrian.
As Dreier advanced in age, she became concerned about the stewardship of the collection. In 1936 she envisioned a country museum in her West Redding, Connecticut, home that would feature the works assembled by her and Duchamp. Her hopes to raise financial support for the venture foundered, however, and in 1941 Dreier and Duchamp donated a portion of the collection to Yale University. At this time, Dreier and Duchamp actively sought additional gifts to round out the Société Anonyme Collection. Their efforts prompted donations from numerous artists including Jean Arp, John Graham, Jean Crotti, and one of the organization’s cofounders, Man Ray. When the group formally dissolved in 1950, the collection assembled by the Société Anonyme constituted one of the foremost assemblages of modern art in America, paralleled only by The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York.
The startlingly eclectic first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., opened on April 30, 1920, at the Société Anonyme gallery on East 47th Street in New York City. The works shown at the exhibition established the stylistically democratic and international tenor of the group’s curatorial enterprise for the next thirty years. In contrast to the nonjuried breadth of the Society of independent Artists exhibition that brought Dreier and Duchamp together on its planning board in 1916, the Société Anonyme’s first exhibition included artists who they believed exemplified modernist zeal and creative vision.
The installation was remarkable in the eyes of the critics and visitors of the day. As Duchamp’s first exhibition design, the aesthetic was distinctly modern, with cool white oilcloth walls that captured the blue reflected light cast from neighboring skyscrapers and the electrolier lights contributed by Man Ray. The domestic scale and feel of the traditional brownstone architecture was further mediated by Duchamp’s placement of industrial gray, ribbed rubber matting over the wooden floors and a spare hanging of the artworks. Duchamp then humorously undermined his stylish presentation by placing lace paper doilies around the paintings’ frames—an imposition readily approved by his fellow artists, in true Dada spirit. Henry McBride, the art critic for the New York Herald, wrote, “One must mount two steep flights of stairs and then pay 26 cents to obtain admission to the first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., but even those to whom an outlay of 25 cents for any purpose whatever is a serious matter will probably not regret the investment. Many a movie at twice the price gives one less to remember.”
1926 Brooklyn International Exhibition
Composed of over three hundred works by 106 artists from nineteen countries, the Société Anonyme’s 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art was the most significant presentation of modern art in America since the 1913 Armory Show. Dreier, with several collaborators including Duchamp, Léger, Kandinsky, Campendonk, Kurt and Helma Schwitters, Alfred Stieglitz, and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, organized the exhibition, which opened in November at the Brooklyn Museum. More than 52,000 people saw the exhibition before it traveled nationally to three additional venues.
The original exhibition was remarkably broad in scope. Visitors progressed from a display of works by familiar, largely figurative American modernists toward paintings and sculpture by European abstractionists. From Miró to Mondrian, many of these artists made their American debuts at the Brooklyn International. With so much new visual material to assimilate, many visitors found the minimally structured presentation and variety of artistic styles overwhelming—even chaotic.
Educational Initiatives
One of the founding principles of the Société Anonyme was its commitment as an educational organization. In their minds, modern art was not a silent entity to be enshrined in a museum but an experience mediated by the multiple voices of artists, critics, poets, and musicians, not only in the Société’s original gallery space on East 47th Street, but also in workers’ clubs, community centers, and art schools. Between the wars, the organization hosted talks and symposia based on the experimental exhibitions at its New York gallery, while Dreier also took art objects on the road for lectures and exhibitions. The Société Anonyme also published numerous catalogues and books on the artists they exhibited, hosted dance and music recitals, and sponsored lectures and programs that included experimental media such as Lotte Reiniger’s animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
One of the earliest of these events was held on April 30, 1921, for the Société Anonyme’s first birthday party. This, “An Evening with Gertrude Stein,” was when friends of the Société read from Stein’s unpublished works. The first musical event at the Société Anonyme was a concert of “Modern Russian Music and Dances,” heralding the opening of Burliuk’s one-artist exhibition in 1924. One year later, Dreier, who was particularly influenced by Kandinsky’s music-inspired expressionism, delivered her first talk on “Modern Art in Relation to Modern Music” at a benefit event in her home. As she explained in Western Art and the New Era (1923), Dreier considered music, like visual art, an “international language,” constructed on the same formal principles as abstract painting and sculpture. The International Symphony of the Société Anonyme, a short-lived enterprise founded in 1930 under Russian conductor Wassily Savadsky, was a natural outgrowth of this idea.
Building a Collection
John Covert’s gift of four works to the Société Anonyme in 1923 introduced the idea of establishing a collection as a permanent expression of the group’s endeavors. Dreier had already generated significant momentum in building a corpus of cutting-edge modern art works in 1922, through the purchase of major paintings by Kasimir Malevich, Konstantin Medunetsky, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Marthe Donas from the Der Sturm and van Diemen galleries in Berlin. Over the next thirty years, Dreier and Duchamp continued to supplement this core with purchases and solicited gifts. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dreier purchased major sculptural works by Naum Gabo and Kurt Schwitters, as well as paintings by Josef Albers and Heinrich Campendonk, among others; important gifts, meanwhile, came from Max Ernst and Piet Mondrian.
As Dreier advanced in age, she became concerned about the stewardship of the collection. In 1936 she envisioned a country museum in her West Redding, Connecticut, home that would feature the works assembled by her and Duchamp. Her hopes to raise financial support for the venture foundered, however, and in 1941 Dreier and Duchamp donated a portion of the collection to Yale University. At this time, Dreier and Duchamp actively sought additional gifts to round out the Société Anonyme Collection. Their efforts prompted donations from numerous artists including Jean Arp, John Graham, Jean Crotti, and one of the organization’s cofounders, Man Ray. When the group formally dissolved in 1950, the collection assembled by the Société Anonyme constituted one of the foremost assemblages of modern art in America, paralleled only by The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York.
The Inaugural Exhibition
The startlingly eclectic first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., opened on April 30, 1920, at the Société Anonyme gallery on East 47th Street in New York City. The works shown at the exhibition established the stylistically democratic and international tenor of the group’s curatorial enterprise for the next thirty years. In contrast to the nonjuried breadth of the Society of independent Artists exhibition that brought Dreier and Duchamp together on its planning board in 1916, the Société Anonyme’s first exhibition included artists who they believed exemplified modernist zeal and creative vision.
The installation was remarkable in the eyes of the critics and visitors of the day. As Duchamp’s first exhibition design, the aesthetic was distinctly modern, with cool white oilcloth walls that captured the blue reflected light cast from neighboring skyscrapers and the electrolier lights contributed by Man Ray. The domestic scale and feel of the traditional brownstone architecture was further mediated by Duchamp’s placement of industrial gray, ribbed rubber matting over the wooden floors and a spare hanging of the artworks. Duchamp then humorously undermined his stylish presentation by placing lace paper doilies around the paintings’ frames—an imposition readily approved by his fellow artists, in true Dada spirit. Henry McBride, the art critic for the New York Herald, wrote, “One must mount two steep flights of stairs and then pay 26 cents to obtain admission to the first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., but even those to whom an outlay of 25 cents for any purpose whatever is a serious matter will probably not regret the investment. Many a movie at twice the price gives one less to remember.”
1926 Brooklyn International Exhibition
Composed of over three hundred works by 106 artists from nineteen countries, the Société Anonyme’s 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art was the most significant presentation of modern art in America since the 1913 Armory Show. Dreier, with several collaborators including Duchamp, Léger, Kandinsky, Campendonk, Kurt and Helma Schwitters, Alfred Stieglitz, and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, organized the exhibition, which opened in November at the Brooklyn Museum. More than 52,000 people saw the exhibition before it traveled nationally to three additional venues.
The original exhibition was remarkably broad in scope. Visitors progressed from a display of works by familiar, largely figurative American modernists toward paintings and sculpture by European abstractionists. From Miró to Mondrian, many of these artists made their American debuts at the Brooklyn International. With so much new visual material to assimilate, many visitors found the minimally structured presentation and variety of artistic styles overwhelming—even chaotic.
Educational Initiatives
One of the founding principles of the Société Anonyme was its commitment as an educational organization. In their minds, modern art was not a silent entity to be enshrined in a museum but an experience mediated by the multiple voices of artists, critics, poets, and musicians, not only in the Société’s original gallery space on East 47th Street, but also in workers’ clubs, community centers, and art schools. Between the wars, the organization hosted talks and symposia based on the experimental exhibitions at its New York gallery, while Dreier also took art objects on the road for lectures and exhibitions. The Société Anonyme also published numerous catalogues and books on the artists they exhibited, hosted dance and music recitals, and sponsored lectures and programs that included experimental media such as Lotte Reiniger’s animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
One of the earliest of these events was held on April 30, 1921, for the Société Anonyme’s first birthday party. This, “An Evening with Gertrude Stein,” was when friends of the Société read from Stein’s unpublished works. The first musical event at the Société Anonyme was a concert of “Modern Russian Music and Dances,” heralding the opening of Burliuk’s one-artist exhibition in 1924. One year later, Dreier, who was particularly influenced by Kandinsky’s music-inspired expressionism, delivered her first talk on “Modern Art in Relation to Modern Music” at a benefit event in her home. As she explained in Western Art and the New Era (1923), Dreier considered music, like visual art, an “international language,” constructed on the same formal principles as abstract painting and sculpture. The International Symphony of the Société Anonyme, a short-lived enterprise founded in 1930 under Russian conductor Wassily Savadsky, was a natural outgrowth of this idea.
Building a Collection
John Covert’s gift of four works to the Société Anonyme in 1923 introduced the idea of establishing a collection as a permanent expression of the group’s endeavors. Dreier had already generated significant momentum in building a corpus of cutting-edge modern art works in 1922, through the purchase of major paintings by Kasimir Malevich, Konstantin Medunetsky, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Marthe Donas from the Der Sturm and van Diemen galleries in Berlin. Over the next thirty years, Dreier and Duchamp continued to supplement this core with purchases and solicited gifts. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dreier purchased major sculptural works by Naum Gabo and Kurt Schwitters, as well as paintings by Josef Albers and Heinrich Campendonk, among others; important gifts, meanwhile, came from Max Ernst and Piet Mondrian.
As Dreier advanced in age, she became concerned about the stewardship of the collection. In 1936 she envisioned a country museum in her West Redding, Connecticut, home that would feature the works assembled by her and Duchamp. Her hopes to raise financial support for the venture foundered, however, and in 1941 Dreier and Duchamp donated a portion of the collection to Yale University. At this time, Dreier and Duchamp actively sought additional gifts to round out the Société Anonyme Collection. Their efforts prompted donations from numerous artists including Jean Arp, John Graham, Jean Crotti, and one of the organization’s cofounders, Man Ray. When the group formally dissolved in 1950, the collection assembled by the Société Anonyme constituted one of the foremost assemblages of modern art in America, paralleled only by The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York.
The startlingly eclectic first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., opened on April 30, 1920, at the Société Anonyme gallery on East 47th Street in New York City. The works shown at the exhibition established the stylistically democratic and international tenor of the group’s curatorial enterprise for the next thirty years. In contrast to the nonjuried breadth of the Society of independent Artists exhibition that brought Dreier and Duchamp together on its planning board in 1916, the Société Anonyme’s first exhibition included artists who they believed exemplified modernist zeal and creative vision.
The installation was remarkable in the eyes of the critics and visitors of the day. As Duchamp’s first exhibition design, the aesthetic was distinctly modern, with cool white oilcloth walls that captured the blue reflected light cast from neighboring skyscrapers and the electrolier lights contributed by Man Ray. The domestic scale and feel of the traditional brownstone architecture was further mediated by Duchamp’s placement of industrial gray, ribbed rubber matting over the wooden floors and a spare hanging of the artworks. Duchamp then humorously undermined his stylish presentation by placing lace paper doilies around the paintings’ frames—an imposition readily approved by his fellow artists, in true Dada spirit. Henry McBride, the art critic for the New York Herald, wrote, “One must mount two steep flights of stairs and then pay 26 cents to obtain admission to the first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., but even those to whom an outlay of 25 cents for any purpose whatever is a serious matter will probably not regret the investment. Many a movie at twice the price gives one less to remember.”
1926 Brooklyn International Exhibition
Composed of over three hundred works by 106 artists from nineteen countries, the Société Anonyme’s 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art was the most significant presentation of modern art in America since the 1913 Armory Show. Dreier, with several collaborators including Duchamp, Léger, Kandinsky, Campendonk, Kurt and Helma Schwitters, Alfred Stieglitz, and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, organized the exhibition, which opened in November at the Brooklyn Museum. More than 52,000 people saw the exhibition before it traveled nationally to three additional venues.
The original exhibition was remarkably broad in scope. Visitors progressed from a display of works by familiar, largely figurative American modernists toward paintings and sculpture by European abstractionists. From Miró to Mondrian, many of these artists made their American debuts at the Brooklyn International. With so much new visual material to assimilate, many visitors found the minimally structured presentation and variety of artistic styles overwhelming—even chaotic.
Educational Initiatives
One of the founding principles of the Société Anonyme was its commitment as an educational organization. In their minds, modern art was not a silent entity to be enshrined in a museum but an experience mediated by the multiple voices of artists, critics, poets, and musicians, not only in the Société’s original gallery space on East 47th Street, but also in workers’ clubs, community centers, and art schools. Between the wars, the organization hosted talks and symposia based on the experimental exhibitions at its New York gallery, while Dreier also took art objects on the road for lectures and exhibitions. The Société Anonyme also published numerous catalogues and books on the artists they exhibited, hosted dance and music recitals, and sponsored lectures and programs that included experimental media such as Lotte Reiniger’s animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
One of the earliest of these events was held on April 30, 1921, for the Société Anonyme’s first birthday party. This, “An Evening with Gertrude Stein,” was when friends of the Société read from Stein’s unpublished works. The first musical event at the Société Anonyme was a concert of “Modern Russian Music and Dances,” heralding the opening of Burliuk’s one-artist exhibition in 1924. One year later, Dreier, who was particularly influenced by Kandinsky’s music-inspired expressionism, delivered her first talk on “Modern Art in Relation to Modern Music” at a benefit event in her home. As she explained in Western Art and the New Era (1923), Dreier considered music, like visual art, an “international language,” constructed on the same formal principles as abstract painting and sculpture. The International Symphony of the Société Anonyme, a short-lived enterprise founded in 1930 under Russian conductor Wassily Savadsky, was a natural outgrowth of this idea.
Building a Collection
John Covert’s gift of four works to the Société Anonyme in 1923 introduced the idea of establishing a collection as a permanent expression of the group’s endeavors. Dreier had already generated significant momentum in building a corpus of cutting-edge modern art works in 1922, through the purchase of major paintings by Kasimir Malevich, Konstantin Medunetsky, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Marthe Donas from the Der Sturm and van Diemen galleries in Berlin. Over the next thirty years, Dreier and Duchamp continued to supplement this core with purchases and solicited gifts. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dreier purchased major sculptural works by Naum Gabo and Kurt Schwitters, as well as paintings by Josef Albers and Heinrich Campendonk, among others; important gifts, meanwhile, came from Max Ernst and Piet Mondrian.
As Dreier advanced in age, she became concerned about the stewardship of the collection. In 1936 she envisioned a country museum in her West Redding, Connecticut, home that would feature the works assembled by her and Duchamp. Her hopes to raise financial support for the venture foundered, however, and in 1941 Dreier and Duchamp donated a portion of the collection to Yale University. At this time, Dreier and Duchamp actively sought additional gifts to round out the Société Anonyme Collection. Their efforts prompted donations from numerous artists including Jean Arp, John Graham, Jean Crotti, and one of the organization’s cofounders, Man Ray. When the group formally dissolved in 1950, the collection assembled by the Société Anonyme constituted one of the foremost assemblages of modern art in America, paralleled only by The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York.
The Inaugural Exhibition
The startlingly eclectic first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., opened on April 30, 1920, at the Société Anonyme gallery on East 47th Street in New York City. The works shown at the exhibition established the stylistically democratic and international tenor of the group’s curatorial enterprise for the next thirty years. In contrast to the nonjuried breadth of the Society of independent Artists exhibition that brought Dreier and Duchamp together on its planning board in 1916, the Société Anonyme’s first exhibition included artists who they believed exemplified modernist zeal and creative vision.
The installation was remarkable in the eyes of the critics and visitors of the day. As Duchamp’s first exhibition design, the aesthetic was distinctly modern, with cool white oilcloth walls that captured the blue reflected light cast from neighboring skyscrapers and the electrolier lights contributed by Man Ray. The domestic scale and feel of the traditional brownstone architecture was further mediated by Duchamp’s placement of industrial gray, ribbed rubber matting over the wooden floors and a spare hanging of the artworks. Duchamp then humorously undermined his stylish presentation by placing lace paper doilies around the paintings’ frames—an imposition readily approved by his fellow artists, in true Dada spirit. Henry McBride, the art critic for the New York Herald, wrote, “One must mount two steep flights of stairs and then pay 26 cents to obtain admission to the first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., but even those to whom an outlay of 25 cents for any purpose whatever is a serious matter will probably not regret the investment. Many a movie at twice the price gives one less to remember.”
1926 Brooklyn International Exhibition
Composed of over three hundred works by 106 artists from nineteen countries, the Société Anonyme’s 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art was the most significant presentation of modern art in America since the 1913 Armory Show. Dreier, with several collaborators including Duchamp, Léger, Kandinsky, Campendonk, Kurt and Helma Schwitters, Alfred Stieglitz, and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, organized the exhibition, which opened in November at the Brooklyn Museum. More than 52,000 people saw the exhibition before it traveled nationally to three additional venues.
The original exhibition was remarkably broad in scope. Visitors progressed from a display of works by familiar, largely figurative American modernists toward paintings and sculpture by European abstractionists. From Miró to Mondrian, many of these artists made their American debuts at the Brooklyn International. With so much new visual material to assimilate, many visitors found the minimally structured presentation and variety of artistic styles overwhelming—even chaotic.
Educational Initiatives
One of the founding principles of the Société Anonyme was its commitment as an educational organization. In their minds, modern art was not a silent entity to be enshrined in a museum but an experience mediated by the multiple voices of artists, critics, poets, and musicians, not only in the Société’s original gallery space on East 47th Street, but also in workers’ clubs, community centers, and art schools. Between the wars, the organization hosted talks and symposia based on the experimental exhibitions at its New York gallery, while Dreier also took art objects on the road for lectures and exhibitions. The Société Anonyme also published numerous catalogues and books on the artists they exhibited, hosted dance and music recitals, and sponsored lectures and programs that included experimental media such as Lotte Reiniger’s animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
One of the earliest of these events was held on April 30, 1921, for the Société Anonyme’s first birthday party. This, “An Evening with Gertrude Stein,” was when friends of the Société read from Stein’s unpublished works. The first musical event at the Société Anonyme was a concert of “Modern Russian Music and Dances,” heralding the opening of Burliuk’s one-artist exhibition in 1924. One year later, Dreier, who was particularly influenced by Kandinsky’s music-inspired expressionism, delivered her first talk on “Modern Art in Relation to Modern Music” at a benefit event in her home. As she explained in Western Art and the New Era (1923), Dreier considered music, like visual art, an “international language,” constructed on the same formal principles as abstract painting and sculpture. The International Symphony of the Société Anonyme, a short-lived enterprise founded in 1930 under Russian conductor Wassily Savadsky, was a natural outgrowth of this idea.
Building a Collection
John Covert’s gift of four works to the Société Anonyme in 1923 introduced the idea of establishing a collection as a permanent expression of the group’s endeavors. Dreier had already generated significant momentum in building a corpus of cutting-edge modern art works in 1922, through the purchase of major paintings by Kasimir Malevich, Konstantin Medunetsky, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Marthe Donas from the Der Sturm and van Diemen galleries in Berlin. Over the next thirty years, Dreier and Duchamp continued to supplement this core with purchases and solicited gifts. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dreier purchased major sculptural works by Naum Gabo and Kurt Schwitters, as well as paintings by Josef Albers and Heinrich Campendonk, among others; important gifts, meanwhile, came from Max Ernst and Piet Mondrian.
As Dreier advanced in age, she became concerned about the stewardship of the collection. In 1936 she envisioned a country museum in her West Redding, Connecticut, home that would feature the works assembled by her and Duchamp. Her hopes to raise financial support for the venture foundered, however, and in 1941 Dreier and Duchamp donated a portion of the collection to Yale University. At this time, Dreier and Duchamp actively sought additional gifts to round out the Société Anonyme Collection. Their efforts prompted donations from numerous artists including Jean Arp, John Graham, Jean Crotti, and one of the organization’s cofounders, Man Ray. When the group formally dissolved in 1950, the collection assembled by the Société Anonyme constituted one of the foremost assemblages of modern art in America, paralleled only by The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York.
The startlingly eclectic first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., opened on April 30, 1920, at the Société Anonyme gallery on East 47th Street in New York City. The works shown at the exhibition established the stylistically democratic and international tenor of the group’s curatorial enterprise for the next thirty years. In contrast to the nonjuried breadth of the Society of independent Artists exhibition that brought Dreier and Duchamp together on its planning board in 1916, the Société Anonyme’s first exhibition included artists who they believed exemplified modernist zeal and creative vision.
The installation was remarkable in the eyes of the critics and visitors of the day. As Duchamp’s first exhibition design, the aesthetic was distinctly modern, with cool white oilcloth walls that captured the blue reflected light cast from neighboring skyscrapers and the electrolier lights contributed by Man Ray. The domestic scale and feel of the traditional brownstone architecture was further mediated by Duchamp’s placement of industrial gray, ribbed rubber matting over the wooden floors and a spare hanging of the artworks. Duchamp then humorously undermined his stylish presentation by placing lace paper doilies around the paintings’ frames—an imposition readily approved by his fellow artists, in true Dada spirit. Henry McBride, the art critic for the New York Herald, wrote, “One must mount two steep flights of stairs and then pay 26 cents to obtain admission to the first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., but even those to whom an outlay of 25 cents for any purpose whatever is a serious matter will probably not regret the investment. Many a movie at twice the price gives one less to remember.”
1926 Brooklyn International Exhibition
Composed of over three hundred works by 106 artists from nineteen countries, the Société Anonyme’s 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art was the most significant presentation of modern art in America since the 1913 Armory Show. Dreier, with several collaborators including Duchamp, Léger, Kandinsky, Campendonk, Kurt and Helma Schwitters, Alfred Stieglitz, and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, organized the exhibition, which opened in November at the Brooklyn Museum. More than 52,000 people saw the exhibition before it traveled nationally to three additional venues.
The original exhibition was remarkably broad in scope. Visitors progressed from a display of works by familiar, largely figurative American modernists toward paintings and sculpture by European abstractionists. From Miró to Mondrian, many of these artists made their American debuts at the Brooklyn International. With so much new visual material to assimilate, many visitors found the minimally structured presentation and variety of artistic styles overwhelming—even chaotic.
Educational Initiatives
One of the founding principles of the Société Anonyme was its commitment as an educational organization. In their minds, modern art was not a silent entity to be enshrined in a museum but an experience mediated by the multiple voices of artists, critics, poets, and musicians, not only in the Société’s original gallery space on East 47th Street, but also in workers’ clubs, community centers, and art schools. Between the wars, the organization hosted talks and symposia based on the experimental exhibitions at its New York gallery, while Dreier also took art objects on the road for lectures and exhibitions. The Société Anonyme also published numerous catalogues and books on the artists they exhibited, hosted dance and music recitals, and sponsored lectures and programs that included experimental media such as Lotte Reiniger’s animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
One of the earliest of these events was held on April 30, 1921, for the Société Anonyme’s first birthday party. This, “An Evening with Gertrude Stein,” was when friends of the Société read from Stein’s unpublished works. The first musical event at the Société Anonyme was a concert of “Modern Russian Music and Dances,” heralding the opening of Burliuk’s one-artist exhibition in 1924. One year later, Dreier, who was particularly influenced by Kandinsky’s music-inspired expressionism, delivered her first talk on “Modern Art in Relation to Modern Music” at a benefit event in her home. As she explained in Western Art and the New Era (1923), Dreier considered music, like visual art, an “international language,” constructed on the same formal principles as abstract painting and sculpture. The International Symphony of the Société Anonyme, a short-lived enterprise founded in 1930 under Russian conductor Wassily Savadsky, was a natural outgrowth of this idea.
Building a Collection
John Covert’s gift of four works to the Société Anonyme in 1923 introduced the idea of establishing a collection as a permanent expression of the group’s endeavors. Dreier had already generated significant momentum in building a corpus of cutting-edge modern art works in 1922, through the purchase of major paintings by Kasimir Malevich, Konstantin Medunetsky, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Marthe Donas from the Der Sturm and van Diemen galleries in Berlin. Over the next thirty years, Dreier and Duchamp continued to supplement this core with purchases and solicited gifts. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dreier purchased major sculptural works by Naum Gabo and Kurt Schwitters, as well as paintings by Josef Albers and Heinrich Campendonk, among others; important gifts, meanwhile, came from Max Ernst and Piet Mondrian.
As Dreier advanced in age, she became concerned about the stewardship of the collection. In 1936 she envisioned a country museum in her West Redding, Connecticut, home that would feature the works assembled by her and Duchamp. Her hopes to raise financial support for the venture foundered, however, and in 1941 Dreier and Duchamp donated a portion of the collection to Yale University. At this time, Dreier and Duchamp actively sought additional gifts to round out the Société Anonyme Collection. Their efforts prompted donations from numerous artists including Jean Arp, John Graham, Jean Crotti, and one of the organization’s cofounders, Man Ray. When the group formally dissolved in 1950, the collection assembled by the Société Anonyme constituted one of the foremost assemblages of modern art in America, paralleled only by The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York.
The Inaugural Exhibition
The startlingly eclectic first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., opened on April 30, 1920, at the Société Anonyme gallery on East 47th Street in New York City. The works shown at the exhibition established the stylistically democratic and international tenor of the group’s curatorial enterprise for the next thirty years. In contrast to the nonjuried breadth of the Society of independent Artists exhibition that brought Dreier and Duchamp together on its planning board in 1916, the Société Anonyme’s first exhibition included artists who they believed exemplified modernist zeal and creative vision.
The installation was remarkable in the eyes of the critics and visitors of the day. As Duchamp’s first exhibition design, the aesthetic was distinctly modern, with cool white oilcloth walls that captured the blue reflected light cast from neighboring skyscrapers and the electrolier lights contributed by Man Ray. The domestic scale and feel of the traditional brownstone architecture was further mediated by Duchamp’s placement of industrial gray, ribbed rubber matting over the wooden floors and a spare hanging of the artworks. Duchamp then humorously undermined his stylish presentation by placing lace paper doilies around the paintings’ frames—an imposition readily approved by his fellow artists, in true Dada spirit. Henry McBride, the art critic for the New York Herald, wrote, “One must mount two steep flights of stairs and then pay 26 cents to obtain admission to the first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., but even those to whom an outlay of 25 cents for any purpose whatever is a serious matter will probably not regret the investment. Many a movie at twice the price gives one less to remember.”
1926 Brooklyn International Exhibition
Composed of over three hundred works by 106 artists from nineteen countries, the Société Anonyme’s 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art was the most significant presentation of modern art in America since the 1913 Armory Show. Dreier, with several collaborators including Duchamp, Léger, Kandinsky, Campendonk, Kurt and Helma Schwitters, Alfred Stieglitz, and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, organized the exhibition, which opened in November at the Brooklyn Museum. More than 52,000 people saw the exhibition before it traveled nationally to three additional venues.
The original exhibition was remarkably broad in scope. Visitors progressed from a display of works by familiar, largely figurative American modernists toward paintings and sculpture by European abstractionists. From Miró to Mondrian, many of these artists made their American debuts at the Brooklyn International. With so much new visual material to assimilate, many visitors found the minimally structured presentation and variety of artistic styles overwhelming—even chaotic.
Educational Initiatives
One of the founding principles of the Société Anonyme was its commitment as an educational organization. In their minds, modern art was not a silent entity to be enshrined in a museum but an experience mediated by the multiple voices of artists, critics, poets, and musicians, not only in the Société’s original gallery space on East 47th Street, but also in workers’ clubs, community centers, and art schools. Between the wars, the organization hosted talks and symposia based on the experimental exhibitions at its New York gallery, while Dreier also took art objects on the road for lectures and exhibitions. The Société Anonyme also published numerous catalogues and books on the artists they exhibited, hosted dance and music recitals, and sponsored lectures and programs that included experimental media such as Lotte Reiniger’s animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
One of the earliest of these events was held on April 30, 1921, for the Société Anonyme’s first birthday party. This, “An Evening with Gertrude Stein,” was when friends of the Société read from Stein’s unpublished works. The first musical event at the Société Anonyme was a concert of “Modern Russian Music and Dances,” heralding the opening of Burliuk’s one-artist exhibition in 1924. One year later, Dreier, who was particularly influenced by Kandinsky’s music-inspired expressionism, delivered her first talk on “Modern Art in Relation to Modern Music” at a benefit event in her home. As she explained in Western Art and the New Era (1923), Dreier considered music, like visual art, an “international language,” constructed on the same formal principles as abstract painting and sculpture. The International Symphony of the Société Anonyme, a short-lived enterprise founded in 1930 under Russian conductor Wassily Savadsky, was a natural outgrowth of this idea.
Building a Collection
John Covert’s gift of four works to the Société Anonyme in 1923 introduced the idea of establishing a collection as a permanent expression of the group’s endeavors. Dreier had already generated significant momentum in building a corpus of cutting-edge modern art works in 1922, through the purchase of major paintings by Kasimir Malevich, Konstantin Medunetsky, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Marthe Donas from the Der Sturm and van Diemen galleries in Berlin. Over the next thirty years, Dreier and Duchamp continued to supplement this core with purchases and solicited gifts. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dreier purchased major sculptural works by Naum Gabo and Kurt Schwitters, as well as paintings by Josef Albers and Heinrich Campendonk, among others; important gifts, meanwhile, came from Max Ernst and Piet Mondrian.
As Dreier advanced in age, she became concerned about the stewardship of the collection. In 1936 she envisioned a country museum in her West Redding, Connecticut, home that would feature the works assembled by her and Duchamp. Her hopes to raise financial support for the venture foundered, however, and in 1941 Dreier and Duchamp donated a portion of the collection to Yale University. At this time, Dreier and Duchamp actively sought additional gifts to round out the Société Anonyme Collection. Their efforts prompted donations from numerous artists including Jean Arp, John Graham, Jean Crotti, and one of the organization’s cofounders, Man Ray. When the group formally dissolved in 1950, the collection assembled by the Société Anonyme constituted one of the foremost assemblages of modern art in America, paralleled only by The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York.
The startlingly eclectic first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., opened on April 30, 1920, at the Société Anonyme gallery on East 47th Street in New York City. The works shown at the exhibition established the stylistically democratic and international tenor of the group’s curatorial enterprise for the next thirty years. In contrast to the nonjuried breadth of the Society of independent Artists exhibition that brought Dreier and Duchamp together on its planning board in 1916, the Société Anonyme’s first exhibition included artists who they believed exemplified modernist zeal and creative vision.
The installation was remarkable in the eyes of the critics and visitors of the day. As Duchamp’s first exhibition design, the aesthetic was distinctly modern, with cool white oilcloth walls that captured the blue reflected light cast from neighboring skyscrapers and the electrolier lights contributed by Man Ray. The domestic scale and feel of the traditional brownstone architecture was further mediated by Duchamp’s placement of industrial gray, ribbed rubber matting over the wooden floors and a spare hanging of the artworks. Duchamp then humorously undermined his stylish presentation by placing lace paper doilies around the paintings’ frames—an imposition readily approved by his fellow artists, in true Dada spirit. Henry McBride, the art critic for the New York Herald, wrote, “One must mount two steep flights of stairs and then pay 26 cents to obtain admission to the first exhibition of the Société Anonyme, Inc., but even those to whom an outlay of 25 cents for any purpose whatever is a serious matter will probably not regret the investment. Many a movie at twice the price gives one less to remember.”
1926 Brooklyn International Exhibition
Composed of over three hundred works by 106 artists from nineteen countries, the Société Anonyme’s 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art was the most significant presentation of modern art in America since the 1913 Armory Show. Dreier, with several collaborators including Duchamp, Léger, Kandinsky, Campendonk, Kurt and Helma Schwitters, Alfred Stieglitz, and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, organized the exhibition, which opened in November at the Brooklyn Museum. More than 52,000 people saw the exhibition before it traveled nationally to three additional venues.
The original exhibition was remarkably broad in scope. Visitors progressed from a display of works by familiar, largely figurative American modernists toward paintings and sculpture by European abstractionists. From Miró to Mondrian, many of these artists made their American debuts at the Brooklyn International. With so much new visual material to assimilate, many visitors found the minimally structured presentation and variety of artistic styles overwhelming—even chaotic.
Educational Initiatives
One of the founding principles of the Société Anonyme was its commitment as an educational organization. In their minds, modern art was not a silent entity to be enshrined in a museum but an experience mediated by the multiple voices of artists, critics, poets, and musicians, not only in the Société’s original gallery space on East 47th Street, but also in workers’ clubs, community centers, and art schools. Between the wars, the organization hosted talks and symposia based on the experimental exhibitions at its New York gallery, while Dreier also took art objects on the road for lectures and exhibitions. The Société Anonyme also published numerous catalogues and books on the artists they exhibited, hosted dance and music recitals, and sponsored lectures and programs that included experimental media such as Lotte Reiniger’s animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
One of the earliest of these events was held on April 30, 1921, for the Société Anonyme’s first birthday party. This, “An Evening with Gertrude Stein,” was when friends of the Société read from Stein’s unpublished works. The first musical event at the Société Anonyme was a concert of “Modern Russian Music and Dances,” heralding the opening of Burliuk’s one-artist exhibition in 1924. One year later, Dreier, who was particularly influenced by Kandinsky’s music-inspired expressionism, delivered her first talk on “Modern Art in Relation to Modern Music” at a benefit event in her home. As she explained in Western Art and the New Era (1923), Dreier considered music, like visual art, an “international language,” constructed on the same formal principles as abstract painting and sculpture. The International Symphony of the Société Anonyme, a short-lived enterprise founded in 1930 under Russian conductor Wassily Savadsky, was a natural outgrowth of this idea.
Building a Collection
John Covert’s gift of four works to the Société Anonyme in 1923 introduced the idea of establishing a collection as a permanent expression of the group’s endeavors. Dreier had already generated significant momentum in building a corpus of cutting-edge modern art works in 1922, through the purchase of major paintings by Kasimir Malevich, Konstantin Medunetsky, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Marthe Donas from the Der Sturm and van Diemen galleries in Berlin. Over the next thirty years, Dreier and Duchamp continued to supplement this core with purchases and solicited gifts. In the 1920s and 1930s, Dreier purchased major sculptural works by Naum Gabo and Kurt Schwitters, as well as paintings by Josef Albers and Heinrich Campendonk, among others; important gifts, meanwhile, came from Max Ernst and Piet Mondrian.
As Dreier advanced in age, she became concerned about the stewardship of the collection. In 1936 she envisioned a country museum in her West Redding, Connecticut, home that would feature the works assembled by her and Duchamp. Her hopes to raise financial support for the venture foundered, however, and in 1941 Dreier and Duchamp donated a portion of the collection to Yale University. At this time, Dreier and Duchamp actively sought additional gifts to round out the Société Anonyme Collection. Their efforts prompted donations from numerous artists including Jean Arp, John Graham, Jean Crotti, and one of the organization’s cofounders, Man Ray. When the group formally dissolved in 1950, the collection assembled by the Société Anonyme constituted one of the foremost assemblages of modern art in America, paralleled only by The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York.
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