Société Anonyme Inc.

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The Société Anonyme, Inc. was an artist organization founded in 1920 by Katherine S. Dreier , Man Ray, and Marcel Duchamp in New York City . The group organized numerous exhibitions, readings, concerts and symposia on modernism and published numerous publications on them. From 1920 to 1939 the group held 84 exhibitions, including the important International Exhibition of Modern Art in 1926 at the Brooklyn Museum of Art .

history

The Société Anonyme, Inc. was founded on April 30, 1920 by Katherine S. Dreier, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray in Dreier's apartment in Manhattan . Planned as the “first experimental museum for modern art”, the SAI should be a center for studying and promoting the international avant-garde and contribute to the perception and establishment of modern art in the public. The influential Gallery 291 by Alfred Stieglitz , which was closed in 1917 and had left a void in the New York art world, served as a model . Dreier and Duchamp knew each other from Stieglitz's gallery, Duchamp was a friend of Man Ray. As another artist, Joseph Stella joined the organization.

As the name of three had initially The Modern Ark (The Modern Ark) in mind, the transport of works of art from Europe to overseas to symbolize by sea; However, the three decided in favor of a suggestion from Man Ray, who had discovered the term Société Anonyme in a French magazine. Because of his inadequate knowledge of French, Man Ray associated the term, which is actually a business form, with a secret society (" anonymous society"). Duchamp also found the ambiguity original and added the addition Inc. (incorporated = society) to give the word combination a meaningless Dadaist redundancy (Incorporated Inc.).

Man Ray was temporarily responsible for the presentation and made numerous photo postcards for the company. After Duchamp and Man Ray increasingly turned to their own artistic projects - Man Ray left New York in 1921 for Paris to join the Dadaists there - Katherine Dreier led the organization largely in a kind of personal union. She ran her own small gallery space, curated exhibitions and wrote numerous essays in which she promoted the acceptance of new art movements.

Dreier probably based the organization of the association on the Sturm -galerie founded in 1912 by Herwarth Walden in Berlin . Instead of a “traditional” salon or gallery, Société Anonyme, Inc. saw itself primarily as an experimental exhibition organizer and podium. An important aspect here was the mediation between artists, collectors and gallery owners. Throughout the 1920s, the Société Anonyme, Inc. presented a wide range of international artists, such as Alexander Archipenko , Constantin Brâncuși , Heinrich Campendonk , Wassily Kandinsky , Paul Klee , Fernand Léger and Piet Mondrian, and promoted the “most progressive artistic experiments in the United States at that time. "(William Clark)

In the long term, however, Dreier failed because of her magnum opus , which was to accommodate the Société's extensive collection together with her private collection in her own, state-subsidized museum. In 1941 she donated the collection, a total of over 1,000 works of art, to the Yale University Art Gallery .

In view of the new art movements that emerged at the end of the Second World War and in view of established institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art , Société Anonyme, Inc. finally appeared obsolete. On the 30th anniversary of its founding, on April 30, 1950, the association dissolved informally at a meal for the two founding members Dreier and Duchamp in the New Haven Lawn Club, New Haven .

literature

  • Ruth L. Bolan: The Societe Anonyme: Modernism for America (Yale University Art Gallery) . Yale University Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-300-10921-4
  • Werner Hofmann: The Modern in the Rearview Mirror: Main Paths in Art History . CH Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-43540-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jennifer Gross: About the Société Anonyme . Accessed September 22, 2009.
  2. ^ William Clark: Katherine Dreier and the Société Anonyme ( Memento of March 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) . Accessed September 22, 2009.
  3. ^ Sarah Greenough in Modern Art and America . Little, Brown and Company, 2001, ISBN 0-8212-2728-9 , p. 300