Beyond Genealogy: American Modernism in Retrospect

Abstract

Judith Zilczer In June 1946, American painter Ad Reinhardt published a parody of genealogy of in vanguard journal PM. His cartoon How to Look at Modern (fig. 1) represents a genealogical model for what is often called the art historical canon-a roster of artists deemed historically significant. In Reinhardt's scheme, abstraction is prized over realism. While Arthur Dove and his fellow modernist Arthur Caries flutter from same abstract branch as Jackson Pollock and Hans Hofmann, Charles Burchfield is relegated to precarious limb of realism along with likes of Edward Hopper and Abraham Walkowitz, who are subordinated, in turn, to Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, and Joseph Stella. With its lineal classification of artists, Reinhardt's family tree of contemporary art is symptomatic of hierarchical thinking that has shaped our understanding of for much of twentieth century. The definition of seems to be inseparable from its genealogy: Where and how did it originate? Who were its progenitors and who are its legitimate heirs? Such questions arose at very inception of modern art in years of twentieth century. At time of Armory Show in 1913, for example, Arthur B. Davies devised a chart (fig. 2) to chronicle evolution of contemporary painting and sculpture on display at armory in New York. Such diagrams were considered essential in campaign to validate avant-garde in face of hostile criticism that branded all modern art as incompetent, illegitimate, subversive, or worse. The formation of collections of modern art in United States helped to validate and thereby shape historical perspective through which American has been assessed. In 1921, Duncan Phillips founded Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., as a museum of modern art and its sources. His collection was meant to exemplify genealogy of itself. By time Museum of Modern Art opened its doors in New York in 1929, genealogy of had been institutionalized. In 1936, museum's founding director, Alfred H. Barr Jr., organized landmark exhibition Cubism andAbstractArt. The show embodied genealogical model of modernism. The jacket for original catalogue (fig. 3) featured another complex time line of development of modern art. Barr virtually excluded American art from that distinguished history. From mid-1 930s until 1970s, what we now call early American modernism hardly figured in history of modern art. Many of its practitioners