ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the negotiation of the aesthetic discourse through a particular and highly contested event: the 1913 Armory Show. The original concept behind the Armory Show was to stage a large and comprehensive exhibition of what the association believed to be the most progressive painters and sculptors working in the United States. The critic as interpreter owes his existence to the alienation and antipathy, and not to the sympathy, which most people bring to the great works of art. The evaluative history of a work becomes an integral element in both contemporary and future reception: each viewer approaches a work through a filter of earlier evaluation. This history constructs a unique discourse that locates the work within the particular aesthetic, social, and political concerns of its audience and becomes a critical factor in our perception. Legitimization of a formal discourse and the necessity of mediation require a highly defined code, inaccessible without education and exposure.
