[A-List] Money, Power, and Modern Art 3, by Henry C K Liu

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

MONEY, POWER and MODERN ART
Part 3: The year of contradictions
By Henry C K Liu
Asia Times, December 18 2004

The year the US Federal Reserve System came into existence, 1913, was also
the year the Armory Show in New York introduced modern art to the United
States. American painter Arthur B Davies (1862-1928) was the principal
organizer of the Armory Show, which revolutionized American art by
introducing Modernism to the viewing public. In 1911, Davies and others,
concerned that their increasingly modern works were becoming unacceptable to
the conservative mainstream National Academy of Design in New York, formed
the Association of American Painters and Sculptors. They planned to launch a
large independent show devoted to contemporary works. Davies, with fellow
artist Walt Kuhn and critic Walter Pach, were determined that the exhibition
should include the European avant-garde as well as the American
independents. The result of their efforts was the International Exhibition
of Modern Art, better known as the Armory Show, which opened in New York on
February 12, 1913, in the 69th Regiment Armory at 25th Street and Lexington
Avenue, in the midst of frenzy maneuvering by the money trust to bring about
the birth of a central bank.

With about 1,600 works, the show transformed New York's and perhaps
America's attitude toward modern art from apathy to excited contention. Most
critics at the time found the works "insane" and "degenerate". The New York
Times warned that the show could "disrupt, degrade, if not destroy not only
art but literature and society as well". A Chicago newspaper
"light-heartedly" suggested that visitors to the show "smoke two pipefuls of
'hop' and sniff cocaine". However, it aroused the curiosity if not interest
of the public, 70,000 of whom came to see it in New York, Chicago and
Boston.

By the time the Armory Show was being organized, Davies and Lillie P Bliss
had become good friends. Six weeks before the show opened, and probably at
the suggestion of Davies, Bliss purchased a painting and a pastel by Edgar
Degas and an oil by Jean Renoir from the New York branch of the Durand-Ruel
Galleries. All three works would be exhibited in the Armory Show. The Degas
painting, Jockeys on Horseback Before Distant Hills, formerly called
Racecourse, a small oil of 1884 for which Bliss paid US$20,000, was the work
the Museum of Modern Art would eventually exchange to acquire Pablo
Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

Born Lizzie Plummer Bliss in Fall River, Massachusetts, on April 11, 1864,
she used the name Lizzie only when signing checks and her will and was known
to her friends as Lillie. She was the younger of two daughters and the
second of four children of Cornelius Newton Bliss (1833-1911) of Fall River
and Mary Plummer Bliss (1836-1923) of Boston. Her father, a successful
textile merchant, moved the family to a six-story house at 29 East 37th
Street in the Murray Hill section of New York when Lillie was two. The
Blisses were comfortably affluent and politically influential. However,
despite their prominence, the family lived outside the public eye, as Boston
Brahmins tended to do. Cornelius Bliss was one of a coterie of Republican
leaders who were in the forefront of party affairs for over a generation. He
was treasurer of the Republican National Committee from 1892 to 1908, served
as chairman of the New York State Republican Party, represented New York at
Republican conventions, and refused offers to run for governor and mayor of
New York on several occasions. He was interior secretary in president
William McKinley's first cabinet, serving from 1897 to 1899, but rejected an
offer to be McKinley's vice-presidential running mate in 1900 and supported
Theodore Roosevelt, who became president when McKinley was assassinated by
an anarchist. During the time that her father worked in Washington, Lillie
often acted as his hostess at his infrequent but lavish parties.

In New York, Lillie regularly attended concerts, went to the theater and
frequented art galleries. Throughout her youth the emphasis at home was on
music, and her love of music, both classical and contemporary, led her to
support young pianists and opera singers and to help found the Juilliard
Music Foundation (now the Juilliard School). When she believed in someone's
career or talent she supported them unequivocally and often anonymously. An
avid reader, she was fluent in French and an accomplished pianist.

One of Lillie's early connections with the visual arts was probably related
to her father's membership in the Union League Club, which still functions
today as a prestigious conservative club, of which Mr Bliss was president
from 1902 to 1906. It organized exhibitions of works by living artists, lent
by members, artists and galleries such as Durand-Ruel and Knoedler; for
example, in 1891, 34 works by Claude Monet were shown. These shows were
publicly advertised, open to all and well attended.

However, it was her friendship with Dr Christian Archibald Herter
(1865-1910) that bridged the gap between music and art for Lillie. She and
Herter shared a serious interest in music; he was as accomplished a cellist
as she was a pianist, but additionally, Herter was educated and interested
in art, having been brought up in an art-conscious home. Herter, a physician
and distinguished biochemist, was credited with helping to establish the
study of biochemistry as a separate discipline in the United States. Through
his friendship with John D Rockefeller Jr, Herter in 1901 became a charter
member of the board of directors of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical
Research (now Rockefeller University) in New York. Lillie's closeness to the
Herter family resulted in her meeting Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. Adele
Herter, Christian Archibald's sister-in-law, was a painter and friend of
Abby's, whose portrait she painted during the summer of 1907. In March 1911,
Abby Rockefeller and Adele Herter were two of seven women who signed the
certificate of incorporation for the Women's Cosmopolitan Club in New York,
and in 1911-12 Lillie was listed as a member. In 1929, Abby and Lillie were
among the founders of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Lillie's life changed dramatically when she met Davies. Over the next two
decades she became his faithful and principal patron and confidante. Davies
was a romantic artist who was widely admired during his lifetime for his
symbolic pictures of female nudes in idyllic landscapes. He was handsome,
charismatic, articulate and persuasive, and he seems to have especially
appealed to women. Through his travels abroad from 1893, he knew about
contemporary artistic trends in Europe. He was a galvanizing force in New
York, and his advice was sought by dealers, collectors and artists. He was
also a confident collector in his own right: from a Cezanne exhibition held
at Alfred Stieglitz' gallery in 1911, he bought the only picture that was
sold.

By 1916, Lillie began to see and buy with the eye of a connoisseur. Her
increasing self-confidence as a collector is evident in her purchase of bold
works by Paul Cezanne, the artist she especially admired. At the time of her
death, she owned 26 of his works, many of them now considered pivotal to an
understanding of his oeuvre. In January 1916, she acquired eight of the 17
watercolors in the Montross Gallery's Cezanne exhibition, in addition to an
oil painting, Bottle of Liqueur, previously known as Fruit and Wine (circa
1890). The works in this show, which attracted the favorable attention of
artists, were selected by French critic Felix Feneon. Among the watercolors
on view, Lillie bought the magnificent House Among Trees (circa 1900) and
Foliage (1895). Lillie was unconcerned that the reviews were less than
sympathetic during the time it was on display since reviews, positive or
negative, did not influence her purchases.

Lillie's enthusiasm for Cezanne's work never wavered. Between 1920 and 1926,
she purchased six more of his paintings through Marius de Zayas, a Mexican
artist turned dealer who had learned the art business as a protege of
Stieglitz: the large and important Bather (circa 1885); Pines and Rocks
(circa 1896-1900); Still Life with Ginger Jar, Sugar Bowl, and Oranges
(1902-06); Dominique Aubert, the Artist's Uncle, formerly called Man in a
Blue Cap (Uncle Dominic) (circa 1866); and two small gems, Pears and Knife
(1877-78) and Carafe, Milk Can, Bowl and Orange, formerly called The Water
Can (1879-80).

Two notable Cezannes in Lillie's collection were purchased at the 1922
auction of privately owned modern paintings at New York's Plaza Hotel. Many
of the bids were disappointing, and owners had to buy back a number of the
offerings. Lillie paid $21,000 for Still Life with Apples (1895-98), the
highest price paid at the sale. It was her most expensive purchase to date,
and Lillie was adventurous to buy it, since it was considered to be
unfinished. This painting was one of her favorite works, and is today a
major work of the Museum of Modern Art. She also purchased Cezanne's
Portrait of Madame Cezanne (1883-85). Both were originally owned by Ambroise
Vollard, an eminent French art dealer, publisher and entrepreneur, and had
been lent anonymously to the 1921 Metropolitan Museum exhibition. Both have
impeccable provenances; Lillie bought what she loved but was mindful of the
good taste of respected prior owners.

In 1921, John Quinn and Bliss were among the collectors who urged Bryson
Burroughs, the curator of paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to
organize a loan exhibition of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art,
which opened to the public in September. The protests were scathing, and the
fury, of the press and of a self-appointed Committee of Citizens and
Supporters of the museum, was widely reported in New York. Quinn lent 26
works to the show, and Lillie, anonymously, lent 12, including five
Cezannes. The show was criticized as "dangerous", and Quinn was accused of
masterminding the exhibition. In response to the uproar, Quinn denounced
these criticisms as the Ku Klux Klan-inspired ravings of ignorant
"lunatics". The Quinn collection made such a profound impression on the
young Alfred H Barr Jr when he saw it at the memorial exhibition in January
1926 that, during his tenure at the Museum of Modern Art, where he would
become the founding director in 1929, he sought to acquire important Quinn
pictures when they became available. Bliss also acquired works by other
artists of Cezanne's generation. Some time before 1926, she bought Paul
Gauguin's The Moon and the Earth (Hino Te Fatou, 1893). This painting was so
reviled by critics of the 1921 Metropolitan Museum show that it was
illustrated in The World as typical of the "vile, Bolshevist" work included.

Arthur B Davies died suddenly in Italy on October 23, 1928. Commemorative
exhibitions were held during the next two years in several venues, and
Lillie Bliss lent generously to all of them. In April 1929, Davies'
collection was sold at auction, Lillie Bliss and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
being among the buyers, and Abby had a Davies show in her new private
gallery in her house. Abby had known Davies for only a few years, but she
credited him with encouraging her to acquire modern art, from 1924 on.
Davies' death, and the sale of his collections not long after the dispersal
of the Quinn collection, combined with the steadfast reluctance of the
Metropolitan Museum regularly to show and support late-19th- and
20th-century art, made the time ripe seriously to consider establishing an
institution dedicated to exhibiting modern art in New York.

At the end of May 1929, Abby invited Lillie, their mutual friend Mary Quinn
Sullivan (no relation to John Quinn) and A Conger Goodyear to her home to
discuss founding a museum for modern art in New York. Mary Sullivan was an
art teacher, dealer and collector. Goodyear was a collector of modern art
and a former board member at the Albright Gallery in Buffalo, New York; he
agreed to head the venture and became chairman. His presence at the meeting
was apparently due to Walt Kuhn, who, in a letter of July 9, 1929, to his
wife, Vera, took credit for the fact that Goodyear was made chairman of this
exploratory committee. Lillie, the leading collector among them, became vice
president; Abby, the truly wealthy one, was appointed treasurer. A short
time later three more persons were asked to join them: Paul J Sachs, an
eminent art history professor at Harvard and scion of the investment firm
Goldman, Sachs, also a collector and an acquaintance of Abby; Frank
Crowninshield, a publisher and friend of Lillie; and Mrs W Murray Crane, a
friend of both women. As a group, they had the knowledge, resources,
dedication, status and efficiency that would result in the museum's opening
to the public five months later.

Ill with cancer, Lillie visited the museum's Toulouse-Lautrec/Redon
exhibition on the day it closed, March 2, 1931. The then 29-year-old Alfred
Barr, the defining director of the Modern, and Bliss saw each other often
during the short time they were acquainted, and they had much in common.
Like her, he deeply loved music; they went to the movies and attended
concerts together. Lillie must have greatly respected Barr's brilliance and
enthusiasm; after all, she planned to leave her collection in his charge.
Unfortunately, however, their relationship would never mature, as did that
of Barr and Abby Rockefeller, on March 12, 1931, Lillie died. Lillie Bliss
could not afford to support the museum financially in the same way as Abby
Rockefeller. However, in bequeathing her collection to the museum three
months before its first anniversary, she had quietly and secretly decided
what form her support would take. Her will stipulated that the Museum of
Modern Art would have to raise an endowment to make her gift a reality.

Specifically, the will stated that the works cited in her bequest would
become "the absolute property" of the museum once it had been established
"to the full and complete satisfaction" of the trustees of her estate that
the museum was "sufficiently endowed ... on a firm financial basis and in
the hands of a competent board". She also stipulated that two of her
Cezannes - Still Life with Ginger Jar, Sugar Bowl, and Oranges and Still
Life with Apples - and her The Laundress (Honore Daumier) could never be
sold or otherwise disposed of, and that if the Modern did not want them,
they "would become the property of the Metropolitan Museum of Art". The
Cezannes remain at the Modern and the Daumier went to the Met in 1947.

Two months after her death, the 12th exhibition held by the Museum of Modern
Art, from May 13 to October 6, 1931, was a "Memorial Exhibition: The
Collection of the Late Miss Lizzie P Bliss, Vice President of the Museum".
Works by 24 artists were selected, and a small catalogue was issued. By the
time the show closed, 32,144 people bad seen it. The public opening was
preceded by a memorial service held in the galleries and attended by 300
guests.

In March 1934, the trustees met the financial terms of the Bliss will, her
bequest was accessioned and a Museum of Modern Art with a permanent
collection became a reality. In order for the museum to secure the bequest,
the estate required that the museum raise $1 million. However, because of
the difficulty of raising funds during the Depression, this initial sum was
reduced to $600,000. The money came from several sources: Abby Aldrich
Rockefeller, $200,000 (given to her by her husband for this purpose); the
Carnegie Foundation, $100,000; the other trustees, $200,000; and an
anonymous donor, $100,000. The anonymous donor was Abby's son, Nelson A
Rockefeller, who would later become very active in the museum. He made the
donation because he wanted his mother to know that someone in the family
besides herself was deeply supportive of the new museum. He told his mother
of his gift two months later.

Two years after the museum had moved to its new quarters, a limestone
townhouse at 11 West 53rd Street, the Bliss bequest was shown in its
entirety. From May 14 to September 12, 1934, the exhibition was seen by
30,445 people.

The Lillie P Bliss bequest ensured that the museum had a foundation upon
which to build its future. Her action reflected her confidence in her
friends to secure the endowment and in Alfred Barr to make her dream come
true. Her courage and intelligence are reflected in the paintings she left
to the public. The most important works in her collection are the French
paintings and drawings from the latter part of the 19th century by artists
whose present fame has overcome the neglect or derision they often endured
during their lifetimes: Cezanne, Degas, Gauguin, Odilon Redon, Georges
Seurat and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Mabel Dodge also helped organize the 1913 Armory Show, which introduced
Picasso, Henri Matisse, Cubism and Dada to the American scene. The rich
hostess and journalist ran her salon at 23 Fifth Avenue, where left-wing
intellectuals and activists met. This included John Reed; Louise Bryant;
investigative reporter Lincoln Steffens (The Shame of the Cities, 1904);
poet Max Eastman, editor of The Masses; artist John Sloan; Walter Lippmann,
who as an influential columnist would oppose the Korean and Vietnam Wars as
well as McCarthyism; Margaret Sanger; Bill Haywood; and Emma Goldman. Three
months after the armory Show, Dodge was among those who supported 1,200
striking textile workers from Paterson, New Jersey, who staged a pageant in
New York's Madison Square Garden to dramatize their demands. Paterson was
known as the Silk City of America. More than one-third of its 73,000 workers
held jobs in silk factories where high-speed automatic looms were introduced
at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1911 silk manufacturers in Paterson
decided that workers, who had previously run two looms, were now required to
operate four simultaneously. Workers complained that this would cause
unemployment and consequently would bring down wages.

On January 27, 1913, 800 employees of the Doherty Silk Mill went on strike
when four members of the workers' committee were fired for trying to
organize a meeting with the company's management to discuss the four-loom
system. Within a week, all silk workers were on strike and the 300 mills in
the town were forced to close. During the dispute more than 3,000 pickets
were arrested, most of them receiving a 10-day sentence in local jails. Two
workers were killed by private detectives hired by the mill workers. These
men were arrested but were never brought to trial. However, the strike fund
was unable to raise enough money and, in July 1913, the workers were starved
into submission.

Bill Haywood of the American Socialist Party and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a
founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union who was active in the
campaign against the conviction of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti,
arrived in Paterson and took over the running of the strike for the
Industrial Workers of the Work (IWW). John Reed, a well-known socialist
journalist, arrived in the town to report the strike. He was soon arrested
and imprisoned in Paterson County Jail. Other left-wing journalists such as
Walter Lippmann and Mabel Dodge arrived to show solidarity with Reed and to
support the demand that reporters should be free to report industrial
disputes. After World War I, Dodge married Tony Lujan, a native American,
and established an artist colony in Taos, New Mexico. In 1922, D H Lawrence
stayed at Taos, where he wrote The Plumed Serpent (1926). The main character
in his short story "The Woman Who Rode Away" was based on Dodge.

Martin Green, a writer attuned to cultural juxtapositions, links the Armory
Show and the Paterson Strike Pageant with the argument that modern art and
revolutionary politics share a spiritual, transcendental goal. Green
detailed the scene inside the salon of Mabel Dodge, who was ensconced in
respectability yet actively subverted it, as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller did in
a more obtuse manner. He also reported vividly the scene at Wobblies union
halls where people of any race or nationality were welcome and workers'
poems were composed on the spot.

Reed, who wrote Ten Days That Shook the World, and who was the only American
to be buried inside the Kremlin, wrote: "All I know is that my happiness is
built on the misery of others ... and that fact poisons me, disturbs my
serenity, makes me write propaganda when I would rather play." He put down
his beloved Louise Bryant (1885-1936) for writing a glowing review about the
Armory Show while the world was on the edge of war and the possibility of
changing the world was imminent. Reed had this deep sense of social
responsibility to inform and radicalize readers and he was irritated with
Bryant for her lack of interest in, passion for, and commitment to the
ideals of the workers' movement, for being interested in stale bourgeois
ideas about nothing and which would do nothing.

Green argues that these two events were the last manifestations of pre-World
War I radicalism. They were linked by some of the same personalities: John
Reed, Louise Bryant, Emma Goldman, Isadora Duncan, Marcel Duchamp, Gertrude
Stein, and more. There was a touch of the aristocratic salon in the opulent
antique furniture and the sumptuous buffets. Yet Dodge's passion was not
cultivated conversation but free speech, the left-wing political cause of
the moment that was also the left-wing cultural cause. Because the
censorship laws of the time were tied up with the repression of radicalism
in both politics and art, the battle for bold, honest, forthright
truth-telling allied soapbox rabble rousers to birth-control advocates to
modern artists. Walter Lippmann came from the Olympian precincts of The New
Republic to partake of the free-speech evenings, and so did anarchist leader
Emma Goldman, birth-control activist Margaret Sanger, and French painter
Jean Crotti (newly arrived from a Europe being ravaged by World War I and,
like many fellow Parisian expatriates, besotted with the energy of
Manhattan).

In 1913, a leftist radicalism burst forth with revolution in art and revolt
by labor. Simultaneously, a rightist radicalism quietly took form through a
monetary coup d'etat, the establishment of a central bank. It was a year of
deep contradictions.