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American collecting--10

with searing color by Matisse and the other ¨Wild Beasts,¨ cascades of black-grey-brown rectangles by Picasso and the other Cubists, abstractions by Picabia and Delaunay, and the famous "Nude Descending a Staircase" by Marcel Duchamp brought a record-breaking 129,000 in to the Armory during the one month's display. The public laughed and derided. They cheered and defended, too. And so did the press. The important thing was that news of modern art had been spread across America and a new group of collectors was there to buy some of it. 

Among these was John Quinn, a man from Ohio who had become a lawyer. He began to appreciate art through his acquaintance with the writers and artists of the Irish Renaissance. But he was an ardent supporter of the Armory Show, and the largest single purchaser from it. He became ultimately patron as well as collector, with a fearless and astoundingly good collection. 

Arthur Jerome Eddy, a lawyer from Chicago who had bought Manets before Manet was known in America even to such brave collectors as the Havemeyers, bought some of the most controversial Cubist pictures from the Armory Show. Lillie Bliss bought Cezannes and Redons that later became the nucleus of the Museum of Modern Art's collection in New York. Walter Arensberg began buying at the Armory Show and went on collecting especially the Cubist and Surrealist and Dad art by such men as Duchamp, Klee, Brancusi, and Picasso in which intellectuality was the touchstone. A little Later, Katherine Driier entered the field. She approached art almost as her sisters ap-roached social work, for she made a crusade or rescuing artists from obscurity and bringing them recognition and economic support. She brought surrealist art at Duchamp's urging; she virtually discovered the abstract art of Gabo and Pevsner and Kandinsky and Mondrian. She propagandized for the art of the German expressionists and poetic fantasies of Paul Klee. Her collection, now at yale University is astounding still.