Picassos War: How Modern Art Came to America By Hugh Eakin

A riveting story of how dueling ambitions and the power of prodigy made America the cultural center of the world--and Picasso the most famous artist alive--in the shadow of World War II

[Eakin] has mastered this material. . . . The book soars.--The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Vanity Fair, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker

In January 1939, Pablo Picasso was renowned in Europe but disdained by many in the United States. One year later, Americans across the country were clamoring to see his art. How did the controversial leader of the Paris avant-garde break through to the heart of American culture?

The answer begins a generation earlier, when a renegade Irish American lawyer named John Quinn set out to build the greatest collection of Picassos in existence. His dream of a museum to house them died with him, until it was rediscovered by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., a cultural visionary who, at the age of twenty-seven, became the director of New York's new Museum of Modern Art.

Barr and Quinn's shared goal would be thwarted in the years to come--by popular hostility, by the Depression, by Parisian intrigues, and by Picasso himself. It would take Hitler's campaign against Jews and modern art, and Barr's fraught alliance with Paul Rosenberg, Picasso's persecuted dealer, to get Picasso's most important paintings out of Europe. Mounted in the shadow of war, the groundbreaking exhibition Picasso: Forty Years of His Art would launch Picasso in America, define MoMA as we know it, and shift the focus of the art world from Paris to New York.

Picasso's War is the never-before-told story about how a single exhibition, a decade in the making, irrevocably changed American taste, and in doing so saved dozens of the twentieth century's most enduring artworks from the Nazis. Through a deft combination of new scholarship and vivid storytelling, Hugh Eakin shows how two men and their obsession with Picasso changed the art world forever. Picassos War: How Modern Art Came to America

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Ugh. WOW. This book is what very educational for me. Damn. This was so good. I learned so much about modern art and how it came to America and about its chief champion, John Quinn. It then moved into the founding of the Museum of Modern Art and how the MoMA built up its collection and did its thang. I originally thought the title was a bit of a misnomer but I no longer do. The book follows modern arts entrance to America through the 1913 Armory Show and John Quinn’s subsequent purchasing of numerous monumental cubist and surrealist works and MANY many Picasso paintings. I originally thought it should be called John Quinn’s war but then he died halfway through. And the book went on to describe the main struggle for modern art to be accepted in the US and the MoMA to be established as reputable. And the undercurrent connecting them all, Picasso.
Note: the end portion of the book devotes a lot of the narrative to “Guernica” my favorite Picasso painting and that was so cool 480 Much as I try not to acquire more books, I have a feeling this one is going to join many others on my Picasso shelf. It's really two research studies: the first concerning American attorney and prescient art collector John Quinn and the phenomenal collection of modern art he assembled in the first decades of the 20th century, which sadly was dispersed after his death. The second focuses on the extraordinary career of Alfred Barr, mastermind of the Museum of Modern Art, from his precocious study of what was then contemporary art history in the 1920s to the opening of the iconic 53rd Street building of MOMA in November 1939 with the masterful exhibition, Picasso: Forty Years of His Art, which then toured U.S. museums for two years because the objects on loan could not return to Europe during WWII. Central to both sections are Pablo Picasso, his French dealers Kahnweiler and Rosenberg, and the two world wars. Among the strengths of the book is the author's attention to a number of women who were instrumental in the art world, including Picasso's wife Olga who is usually downplayed as a crank; Jeanne Robert Foster, an independent American journalist who was a close friend and kind of special assistant in Quinn's pursuit of art acquisitions, especially in Europe; and Margaret Scolari Barr, Alfred's accomplished art historian wife, who gave up her own career position to partner with him on his endeavors to realize his vision of a museum of modern art, design, architecture, and film. Parenthetically, I want to mention that the socio-cultural world seen here echoes that in another book I recently read that covers the same period, Toibin's The Magician, including apparently fluid sexual patterns and untraditional marital arrangements such as Thomas and Katya Mann and Alfred and Marga Barr.

Besides being fascinating in its own right, I am also especially drawn to this book for personal reasons. My mother's family frequented the Modern from the start. As a young child during WWII, I visited as often as once a week; attended Victor d'Amico's children's art class, possibly in its first year; and remember going with my parents very soon after my father returned from WWII. Subsequently my first full-time job in the 1960s was in the Registrar's Office at MOMA. I worked on traveling exhibitions, so I can understand--actually feel--what was required for the Barrs to arrange the exhibitions described in this book--although the travails they endured because of the more limited means of communications in the 1930s, no air transport and uncertain sea transport, and all the dangers and unpredictability of war, on top of Picasso's unpredictable agreements, and the fiscal limitations for programs and acquisitions imposed by the trustees, made their task immeasurably more difficult than my orderly job.

As I type this on my computer on October 1, 2022, I recall that Associate Registrar, David Vance went on to be part of the Museum Computer Network (I think that was the title) that designed the first programs for collection management. On the wall above my screen is a poster from the Robert Motherwell retrospective that took place at MOMA exactly 57 years ago, from October 1-November 28, 1965, signed and inscribed to me in pencil by the artist. 480 Very interesting and filled with details but too long. 480 I LOVE PICASSO

Learn how Picasso eventually conquered a conservative America.

America and modern art. They’ve always gone together like chocolate and peanut butter. After all, New York City is the home of Andy Warhol and Pop Art, right? Well, yes and no. The story of modern art in America is actually filled with plenty of dramatic ups and downs.

In the early twentieth century, America was hostile territory for modern art. It was typically met with hysterical reactions from critics, the press, the public, other artists, and even mental health professionals. The works were heralded as being the output of deranged minds – a threat to the very fabric of society. Rembrandt, Velázquez – the Old Masters were what they wanted to see and buy, not geometric depictions of naked brothel workers or gooey renderings of sunflowers.

This was bad news for European artists and the few people in the States that recognized the genius in the work of Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and other modern artists. This is the story of how they persisted and eventually won over the hearts and minds of America.

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A First Glimpse

In early 1911, John Quinn stood in the small New York City art space known as 291. He was staring at a charcoal sketch known as Standing Female Nude. It was part of an exhibition of works by Pablo Picasso. The gallery was little more than a 15-square-foot loft heated by an exposed wood-burning stove. But it would go down in history as hosting the very first Picasso exhibition held in the United States.

The pieces on display were only drawings, but they still came as a shock. Picasso was in his cubist phase – among the pioneers of the form – and many people couldn’t make heads or tails of the sharp angles and disorienting changes in perspective. Even Quinn was flummoxed by this first encounter.

Quinn was 41 years old. He was a successful and respected lawyer by day, but he also prided himself on being at the cutting edge of culture. An Irish-American, Quinn was a well-established cultural conduit between the US, Ireland, and England. He counted the writers W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, and T. S. Eliot among his friends. He often supported these artists by promoting their work, connecting them with American publishers.

But one thing that Quinn didn’t have access to was modern art. Sadly, most Americans were still obsessed with classical work. Even late nineteenth-century post-Impressionists like Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Paul Cézanne were largely unseen by American eyes in 1911.

So, here Quinn was, finally setting eyes on his first Picasso. And, like we said, he was flummoxed. One critic described Standing Female Nude as looking like “a fire escape, and not a good fire escape at that.” Quinn, on the other hand, wasn’t so opposed. He wasn’t fully on board yet, either, but he recognized that Picasso was doing something remarkable. Cubism wasn’t just new, it was a daring leap forward. It was also obvious to Quinn that Picasso didn’t care about public opinion. And for that reason alone, he was deeply impressed with what he saw. Now, if only he could see more.

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Protests and Taxes

If you’ve ever been a collector of anything, you probably know how it goes. What starts as a fun hobby can soon turn into an all-consuming passion. Collecting modern art quickly became just that for John Quinn, as every penny he made through his law practice got funneled into this new pursuit.

There was a practical reason behind Quinn’s collection. Simply put, someone had to do it. In his opinion, the Metropolitan Museum had hardly anything good from the nineteenth century at all. Quinn felt like he had to take the initiative. Maybe, one day, his collection could serve as the foundation for a real modern museum of art.

So, in 1913, Quinn helped to take the movement two monumental steps forward – both being prime examples of just how influential he could be. First was the landmark event known as the Armory Show.

The Armory Show earned its name by taking place at the headquarters of an Irish American infantry regiment, on Lexington Avenue in New York City. Within this vast space were six galleries that charted the progression of modern art. It began with Impressionists like Monet and Renoir and reached a climactic grand finale with Cubist work from Francis Picabia, a shockingly modern sculpture of a female head by Constantin Brâncuși, and Marcel Duchamp’s radical Nude Descending a Staircase – a work that superimposed six different figures, rendered with geometric shapes, to represent precisely what the title suggests.

Quinn gave a rousing speech to open the exhibition, and in some nostalgic narratives, the Armory Show was a huge success that marked the beginning of America’s embrace of modern art. But that’s far from the truth. Yes, thousands of people flocked to see the show every day, but the artworks were generally received with laughter and scorn, if not outright hostility. Even the former president Theodore Roosevelt, who’d known Quinn for years, cited the artworks as examples of the “lunatic fringe.” This was, more or less, the general consensus. “Ridiculous” and “poisonous” were words that art critics used. The New York Times ran an op-ed that called modern art a movement meant to “disrupt, degrade, if not destroy” society.

Part of Quinn’s aim with the Armory Show was to kick-start the overseas market for modern paintings and sculptures. This too was a bust. But there was a bigger problem in this regard.

For decades, America had imposed prohibitive import taxes on foreign art that had been created in the past 20 years. In theory, this was meant to support the buying of new American art, but in practice, it had the harmful effect of sealing the US art scene off from outside influences. Who’d want to show Cézannes and Van Goghs if no one wanted to buy them and they’d cost the dealer hundreds of dollars in excess fees just to get them into the US?

Quinn was, of course, one of the few who did want to buy. But he also saw the law as being largely responsible for keeping the American art scene some 50 years behind Europe. Such was his status as a respected lawyer, that in 1913 he successfully lobbied the government to put an end to the punitive law. It was a major victory for Quinn and for modern art. It changed everything, both for American buyers and for European dealers eager to expand the marketplace.

In the next section, we’ll look at a couple of the most prominent European dealers, and the role they played in the career of Pablo Picasso – the one modern artist who could truly conquer America.

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Dealing with Picasso

It was July 1907, when Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler knocked on the door of a dilapidated building in the Montmartre district of Paris. When the door finally opened, Kahnweiler was greeted by a short, bedraggled young man standing in his underwear. He welcomed Kahnweiler in, and while the strange man put on some pants, Kahnweiler took in the scene. The place was a mess. Wallpaper was peeling off the walls. Junk was strewn everywhere. What little furniture there was had a layer of cigarette ash covering it. The place reeked of dog and paint. This was Pablo Picasso’s studio.

Kahnweiler was an ambitious and inexperienced art dealer in his early twenties. He was a German-Jewish man who’d recently borrowed some money from his uncle to start his own gallery in Paris. He had no connections, knew very few artists, but he loved modern art and had good taste.

So here he was, amidst the squalor, looking at the insane amount of art that Picasso had recently produced in his studio. And from there, Kahnweiler and Picasso quickly agreed to a contract. They had a lot in common when it came to the business of art. Neither cared for exhibitions or promoting. Kahnweiler would hang the art in his spartan gallery and people would either recognize the genius and want to buy it or not.

One person who did want to buy was Sergei Shchukin, a Russian textile baron who, in the years leading up to the First World War, amassed one of the world’s most impressive collections of Picassos and Matisses, as well as Van Goghs, Monets, Cézannes, and Gauguins. Shchukin would open his collection to the public on Sundays, and as a result, many in Moscow fell in love with even the most radical modern art. Within a decade, clients like Shchukin helped turn Picasso into a major name. Other leading artists also signed contracts with Kahnweiler, including Georges Braque, André Derain, Juan Gris, and Maurice de Vlaminck – making Kahnweiler the top dealer in Paris. But in the days leading up to the First World War, competition was brewing.

As far as personality and approach, Kahnweiler had his counterpoint in Paul Rosenberg. Rosenberg was born in Paris, but also came from a similar middle-to-upper-class Jewish background. But whereas Kahnweiler liked to keep things low-key, Rosenberg enjoyed putting on big openings in his gallery, where he’d decorate the place with modernist furniture and play the role of gracious host.

Kahnweiler and Rosenberg maintained a professional relationship, but then war broke out in 1914. Being German, Kahnweiler knew he had to leave France. But he underestimated the situation. He thought the war would be over quickly and that his collection would be safe in storage. Instead, all of his assets were frozen and his massive collection – which included 132 Picassos, 135 Braques, and hundreds more from his other artists – was confiscated and put up for auction. To add insult to injury, the auction was conducted by none other than Rosenberg’s brother.

Without access to his bank account, Kahnweiler was unable to send Picasso the money that he owed him, nor could he grant him access to retrieve his paintings before they were confiscated. The whole situation ruined their friendship, at least for a while. It also resulted in Picasso turning to Rosenberg for representation. Unlike Kahnweiler, Rosenberg would do everything he could to promote Picasso, both in Europe and abroad.

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Untimely Ends

Back in New York, John Quinn wasn’t feeling so well. For years, Quinn had known something was wrong, but in 1919, he received a grim diagnosis that he had cancer, and likely had only six years left to live. By this time, Quinn had already amassed what was likely the biggest collection of modern art in America. His Upper-West Side apartment had rows of paintings stacked against the wall in every possible location. The only thing holding him back was space and money. He’d developed strong relationships with European dealers like Rosenberg. He’d even visited Picasso at his home.

The American press, however, continued to refer to modern art as dangerous and degenerate “bolshevik” art, the work of “madmen'' whose visions could only serve to corrupt wholesome American minds. And when Quinn finally passed away in 1924, the Metropolitan Museum still failed to own a single Van Gogh, Gauguin, or Toulouse-Lautrec – never mind a Picasso or a Matisse.

Upon Quinn’s death, he’d accumulated over 2,500 works of art. It was a staggering collection. His taste was so good that nearly all of them would be considered masterpieces today. But in 1924, they were of little discernible value to the lawyers dealing with his estate. He had no wife and no kids. And since no US museums were interested in modern art, he could only donate works to European museums like the Louvre. Still, many of them would end up on the auction block, being dispersed around the world.

Lillie P. Bliss, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and Mary Sullivan were three New York high society women who’d all been close to Quinn and appreciated modern art. They were rightfully dismayed at how the collection couldn’t remain intact, and in New York, as Quinn had hoped. It was shameful, and Bliss, Sullivan, and Rockefeller decided to do something about it by creating the Museum of Modern Art in 1929. A public home for modern art in America.

When searching for a director, they chose 27-year-old Alfred Barr, who’d developed one of America’s first undergraduate courses devoted to modern art. Once offered the job, Barr jumped at the opportunity. Together with his wife, Margaret Scolari, Barr proceeded to revolutionize the art world and take the Museum of Modern Art from the 12th floor of the Heckscher Building to a sleek, ultra-modern work of architectural art on 53rd Street.

Perhaps something in the air had changed, because the museum’s very first show was not only a hit with audiences, it succeeded with the critics as well. A sort of founding-fathers-of-modern-art show, it featured nearly a hundred paintings from four artists: Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, and Seurat. It was a true blockbuster. Every day, the line to get in stretched around the corner onto Fifth Avenue.

There were a few things that made Barr’s exhibitions different. First, he didn’t do European “salon style,” which involved stacking pictures on the wall from floor to ceiling. His walls were white, and all paintings were spaced apart and displayed at eye level. This was completely new at the time.

Also, Barr still wanted to teach, to contextualize. So all of his shows came with texts and booklets that guided the viewer along and explained how the art they were seeing fit into the bigger picture of art history. You know those little descriptions on the wall next to the paintings? That was Barr’s idea.

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Modern Art Takes a Victory Lap

In the 1930s other cultural and political changes were happening too, which, in the long run, would make modern art look like a bold signifier of democracy and freedom.

When the Nazi party took over in Germany, modern art exhibitions began to get shut down, galleries were closed, and works were being taken off the walls in museums. A similar thing was happening in Stalin’s Russia, but in Germany, the term “degenerate art” was being used exactly the same way the term had been used in America. Only now, the works were being forcibly taken away by Gestapo agents.

As things got worse, and the Second World War spread across Europe, more and more artists fled to America. This too helped change the general conception of modern art in the US. All of a sudden, America was a safe haven for bold and daring artists, and people began to take pride in this idea.

The Museum of Modern Art was certainly helping as well. In particular, there was a landmark exhibition that focused solely on Vincent van Gogh. It was another huge accomplishment for Barr. As the text for the show, he only used quotes from Vincent’s letters to his brother Theo, and they guided the viewer through the tragic trajectory of his life. It was a genuinely moving experience and another huge success.

From early on, though, Barr wanted one artist in particular: Picasso. Like Quinn, Barr saw Picasso as a kind of Rosetta Stone for modern art. Picasso had worked in neoclassical, surrealism, cubism, and beyond. If the exhibition was properly curated, rather than seeing modern art as being madness, viewers would be able to chart the evolution and recognize how it was all directly connected to what came before.

But it wasn’t so easy. Not only was Picasso always going through some personal crisis – often involving his mistress or his wife, or both – Rosenberg was also a strict and demanding gatekeeper. After years of trying unsuccessfully to crack the American market for Picasso, Rosenberg wasn’t so eager to send another boatload of paintings across the Atlantic.

So, for practically ten years, Barr’s dream of a Picasso exhibition was postponed again and again. But in November 1939, the museum was planning to open a magnificent new headquarters on 53rd Street, and Barr was determined to make Picasso his grand opening exhibition.

This time, however, there was an even bigger complication: World War II. This dramatically changed Rosenberg’s plans. Not only did he need to get his family out of France, sending his most prized artworks to Barr’s museum was the perfect way to keep them safe.

As a result, Picasso: Forty Years of His Art was one of the greatest exhibitions the nation had ever seen. Picasso, Rosenberg, and many other European collectors and dealers came through and filled Barr’s exhibition with over 360 works from throughout Picasso’s career. It broke every attendance record. After New York, the show toured around the country. By 1943, it had reached 22 cities before it took a victory lap back in New York. In Boston, one conservative critic even had to admit, after seeing the Picasso show, everything else seemed boring.

The show wasn’t just a hit with the public and the press, it changed American culture. Fashion shops across the country were using Picasso imagery to spice up window displays, and designers were using the artist as inspiration for their next season’s look. For the next generation of artists, like Roy Lichtenstein and Jackson Pollock, seeing the Picasso show was foundational to their own artistic development.

It took decades, and many converging forces, but Picasso’s groundbreaking modern art eventually won over American audiences. Things haven’t been the same since.

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New York lawyer John Quinn was one of the first champions of modern art in America. He helped launch the first comprehensive modern art exhibition and was responsible for removing the prohibitive tax on the import of modern art. When Quinn passed away, his immense collection inspired others to create the Museum of Modern Art. The museum’s first director, Alfred Barr, educated the public on the value and lineage of modern art and helped win over new viewers. His exhibitions on Van Gogh and Picasso won over the nation and helped set the stage for a new generation of modern artists. 480 I was fascinated with the background information on how slow America was to embrace the post-impressionists as well as the influence of just a handful of people who eventually brought it to our attention. The research in this book is impressive and detailed without getting bogged down. I thought I had a fair understanding of modern art but learned just how little of the history I really knew. The author provides us with an even more passionate respect for the work of these early 20th century groundbreakers! 480

I'll keep this review short. If you have an interest in 20th Century art or artists, Picasso's War by Hugh Eakin is amazing. It's full of rich history about the post modern art movements and how the art and the artists were received around the world.

Obviously, from the title, the main focus is Picasso and the attempts by the artist, his financial backers, and his dealers to get his art accepted and shown in the United States. It took a world war to make that happen!

The book also gives a detailed history of New York's Museum of Modern Art and its struggles getting started throughout the same time period.

Ok, I said I was going to keep this short. I guess I had a bit more to say than I realized! In conclusion, I am happy to give Picasso's War 4 out of 5 stars. It takes some good writing to keep me fully engaged in a 400-plus page nonfiction book. This one did that and more! 480 Thoroughly enjoyable and informative work not so much on Picasso (despite the title) but about the fitful journey of modernism from Europe to America. Through two world wars, the Great Depression and countless movements, advocates, dealers, collectors, patrons and aficionados it went before finally being embraced by Americans. Oddly Picasso is mostly an off-stage presence albeit a crucial one but that takes nothing away from the story or the way Eakin tells it. 480 This excellent book covers the story of the struggle to gain interest and acceptance of modern art in the United States. The title is somewhat misleading, as much of the focus is on two key figures who were not artists. John Quinn, a New York lawyer, amassed a robust collection of post impressionist paintings in the early 20th century, before there was any recognition of its merits in the U.S. At his death, Quinn's collection was sold at auction and much of the work went back to Europe, as there were no American buyers. Years later, Alfred H. Barr is designated as the director of a modern art museum which is struggling to get space and content in New York. His insight and persistence in acquiring great modern art works, for loan or purchase, is detailed in engrossing prose. Many of the works he pursues were part of Quinn's original collection. Eakin also covers the famous Armory show of 1913 and corrects some misperceptions about its reception and impact. He also follows art dealers in Europe who handled works by the intractable Picasso and faced danger and ruin as the Nazis invaded France in World War II. It is a great story, well told and well researched, filled with colorful characters. You learn the complex logistical histories of some of the greatest paintings in MOMA, including Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and The Sleeping Gypsy. Anyone who has admired the masterpieces in NY's MOMA will love this book. It is a gem. 480 It’s rare for me to give 5 stars to a book, and I generally read fiction, but this book is outstanding. It chronicles the modern art movement from the 1913 Armory Show through the Nazi occupation of Paris. It paints vivid portraits of John Quinn, Paul Rosenberg, Henry Kahnweiler, Albert Barr and Picasso. 480 Simply fascinating book. The title is a pun, covering both the war to get Picasso accepted by philistine Americans, even in NYC, and even on the board of MOMA to put up a Picasso-focused exhibition and buy his paintings, and the Spanish Civil War, which led Picasso to Guernica, which broke the ice.

The first half of the book is also a mini-bio of John Quinn, a man of whom I'd never heard before, and arguably the United States' top pre-1920 acquirer of Picasso, along with many other A-rank modern artists such as Matisse. But, I had heard of the Armory show, of which he was an organizer

There was no MOMA at this time. Quinn pushed for one, using the analogy in Paris of the Luxembourg to the Louvre as a push. Unfortunately, he died of colon cancer in his 50s, in the early 1920s. From there, the book picks up with the eventual creation of MOMA.

Among the ironies is that, 20 years before it was built, Americans were calling Picasso et al, but especially him, degenerate art, as in exactly the phrase the Nazis used. (Stalin didn't use such a phrase in calling for Soviet realism, but the idea was there, too. Pre-authoritarianism, Kaiserine and Weimar Germany, and Tsarist Russia, were actually the top two countries in the world, overall, to appreciate modern art pre-WWI, even more than France.)

That's plenty to whet the appetites of any general modern culture lover let alone art history person.

And, illustrated with many plates. 480