Picabia: The Forgotten Artist in America

Abstract

An ephemeral event can influence generation after generation, but as time passes, history begins to record itself with less and less detail. February 17, 1913, is often marked as the date where the American art world was revolutionized–– the International Exhibition of Modern Art, also known as the Armory Show. However, what if it was actually one day prior? The New York Times published an article on February 16, 1913 entitled, “Picabia, Art Rebel, Here to Teach New Movement.” The opening line states “to have outfutured the Futurists, to have outcubed the Cubists–– that is the achievement of Picabia, the latest ‘Thing’ in modern French art” and included five paintings by Francis Picabia. How did an artist begin to get written out of a historical event when he was the one forming a link between the European and American movements? How does one person overshadow the other? How are artists’ works viewed in different cultures and how did language play a role in this transnational event? This essay hopes to reinvigorate the importance of Picabia to the historical event and speak to the complexity of an artist’s divided feelings about a culture he believed was dying and a culture he believed was the future.