Status Updates From Modern Art Invasion: Picass...

Contemporary art also makes audiences work harder. Museum&gallery-goers can't just walk in &expect to "get"
Artists&critics, would argue that art should require more than a cursory glance. The current mode of art instruction nourishes creativity &promotes artistic freedom. Artists fill an important social role w/taboo-pushing conceptual works—they expose our prejudices &expand our narrow-minded patterns of thinking

the pressure that the demand for originality places on artists. When the new and novel is so highly valued, novelty becomes an end in itself. Desire for genuine confrontation can turn into the pursuit of shock for shock's sake. Individualism can become the new conformity.

the "cult of the individual." The danger is that the
"artist of the present is urged to cultivate that originality which is only the prerogative of the great." reflecting a common academic attitude about individuality and creativity. In 1908, academic artist William Ordway Partridge declared "Originality is the bane of art. Art is a matter of evolution; a new note is not struck more than once in a thousand years

Some of the most antagonistic reviewers rejected the show out of deeply held conservative beliefs about what defines art in the first place. Artist &critic Kenyon Cox realized that art since Impressionism was becoming increasingly abstract, it was moving away fr being about the depiction of things (landscapes, people, or flowers) &becoming about the composition itself (lines, colors, &shapes).

Change was everywhere Americans looked. In the spring of 1913, grand central terminal opened as the world’s largest railroad station, the 16th amendment was ratified authorizing the federal government to collect income tax, & the woman suffrage parade brought more than 5k women trooping thru DC demanding the vote.

Historically, painters emphasized art's ability to record an instant. Cubists argued a camera could capture an instant of time better than any painter ever could. Art should offer a more insightful representation of realty by combining multiple viewpoints of a subject-assembling a portrait fr a variety of snapshots taken fr different angles. The painter's vision weaves together varied glimpses into a meaningful whole

Many ppl in Picasso's circle disliked Cubism, Gertrude embraced the movement. She even saw a way to mirror it in her prose w/Cubist word portraits,
In her portrait of Picasso, she described his art as "a clear thing, a complicated thing, an interesting thing, a disturbing thing, a repellant thing, a very pretty thing.
" Only Gertrude would have dared to call Picasso's
paintings "pretty."