25 February 2013
Jerry Saltz on the 1913 Armory Show
[...]Matisse came in for especially harsh criticism. (More, even, than Duchamp's sensation-causing Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2.) When the show reached Chicago, art students tried Matisse in absentia for "artistic murder, pictorial arson ... criminal misuse of line," and burned copies of his paintings. They tried to burn him in effigy, too, but were thwarted by local authorities.
What is the modern day version of this? Chris Ofili getting getting shouted at by Giuliani during the 1999 Sensation show?. There's plenty of "shocking" art out there. But are we, as a culture, still able to be shocked by pure technique?