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A review by socraticgadfly
Picasso's War: How Modern Art Came to America by Hugh Eakin
adventurous
emotional
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
5.0
Simply fascinating book. The title is a pun, covering both the "war" to get Picasso accepted by philistine Americans, even in NYC, and even on the board of MOMA to put up a Picasso-focused exhibition and buy his paintings, and the Spanish Civil War, which led Picasso to Guernica, which broke the ice.
The first half of the book is also a mini-bio of John Quinn, a man of whom I'd never heard before, and arguably the United States' top pre-1920 acquirer of Picasso, along with many other A-rank modern artists such as Matisse. But, I had heard of the Armory show, of which he was an organizer
There was no MOMA at this time. Quinn pushed for one, using the analogy in Paris of the Luxembourg to the Louvre as a push. Unfortunately, he died of colon cancer in his 50s, in the early 1920s. From there, the book picks up with the eventual creation of MOMA.
Among the ironies is that, 20 years before it was built, Americans were calling Picasso et al, but especially him, "degenerate art," as in exactly the phrase the Nazis used. (Stalin didn't use such a phrase in calling for "Soviet realism," but the idea was there, too. Pre-authoritarianism, Kaiserine and Weimar Germany, and Tsarist Russia, were actually the top two countries in the world, overall, to appreciate modern art pre-WWI, even more than France.)
That's plenty to whet the appetites of any general modern culture lover let alone art history person.
The first half of the book is also a mini-bio of John Quinn, a man of whom I'd never heard before, and arguably the United States' top pre-1920 acquirer of Picasso, along with many other A-rank modern artists such as Matisse. But, I had heard of the Armory show, of which he was an organizer
There was no MOMA at this time. Quinn pushed for one, using the analogy in Paris of the Luxembourg to the Louvre as a push. Unfortunately, he died of colon cancer in his 50s, in the early 1920s. From there, the book picks up with the eventual creation of MOMA.
Among the ironies is that, 20 years before it was built, Americans were calling Picasso et al, but especially him, "degenerate art," as in exactly the phrase the Nazis used. (Stalin didn't use such a phrase in calling for "Soviet realism," but the idea was there, too. Pre-authoritarianism, Kaiserine and Weimar Germany, and Tsarist Russia, were actually the top two countries in the world, overall, to appreciate modern art pre-WWI, even more than France.)
That's plenty to whet the appetites of any general modern culture lover let alone art history person.