Mary Mills Lyall, Earl Harvey Lyall

A first edition, first printing copy of this children's book parody of the landmark 1913 Armory Show, which drew both fanfare and hostility.

• Mary Mills Lyall (American).
• Illustrated by Earl Harvey Lyall (American).
• New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1913.
• 62 pages.
• Illustrated in color.
• Bound in the original brown cloth boards with color pictorial onlay.

The March 1913 Armory Show fundamentally altered the direction of American art. As the New York Historical Society said when celebrating the 100th anniversary of the event: "[I]t changed the way Americans thought about modern art. It has been called the most important exhibition ever held in the United States." Organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, the show introduced American audiences to Cubist, Surrealist, and Fauvist art, and helped establish artists like Picasso and Matisse as household names. But this change was not a uniformly welcome one: "Is their work a conspicuous milestone in the progress of art? Or is it junk?" pondered The New York Times review of the show. "[M]any of [Matisse's] paintings are simply the exaltation to the walls of a gallery of the drawings of a nasty boy," artist and critic Kenyon Cox remarked in the same review.

Mary Mills and Earl Harvey Lyall were quick to respond with The Cubies' ABC. It was published the same year as the watershed exhibition, while critics continued to debate the assemblage of Modern Art featured therein. Earl, an architect and government architectural advisor, was well-placed to execute the pastiches of the Armory Show's most significant works. Dotted throughout this abecedary are clever nods to Matisse's "Blue Nude," Wilhelm Lehmbruck's "The Kneeling One," Picasso's "Woman with Mustard Pot," and more. The angular bodies of the Cubies themselves recall isolated shapes within Duchamp's iconic "Nude Descending a Staircase," the piece that became most identified with many viewers' fury at the show.