“A vivid, compelling portrait of the Armory Show and its lasting influence on American art.” – Kirkus Reviews
"It is not often that writings on art serve to pump up readers the way a locker room speech might, leaving them primed to charge back out into the world ready to topple the old and usher in the new. But so it goes with The Modern Art Invasion...Lunday has a strong narrative at her back here, and she wisely lets this rip-snorting tale have its head... - The Boston Globe
“The Modern Art Invasion ultimately uses the famous 193 exhibition as a lens through which to view art history going back more than a century. The author has fit into this trim volume a world of insight, interesting life stories and plenty of art history. It’s a fun read and essential to anyone interested in learning how American art of the 20th century came to be.” - The Patriot Ledger
“Brilliantly chronicles the American art world's fateful collision with European Modernism and the game-changing innovations of Picasso, Matisse, and Duchamp at the famed Armory Show of 1913. Following the lives of Walt Kuhn, Arthur B. Davies, and the show's other organizers, Lunday captures the sights and sounds of the era as well as the intellectual and social background behind the Armory Show's genesis in this must-read account of a truly pivotal moment in art history." - Jonathan Lopez, author of The Man who Made Vermeers
"Elizabeth Lunday gives a lively and often humorous introduction to the world of modern art through the lives, ambitions and rivalries of the outsized personalities involved in the landmark Armory Show. She also offers a fascinating assessment of the legacies of the exhibition that caused such a seismic shift in American culture - one whose shocks, she shows, are still being felt and absorbed a century later." - Ross King, author of Leonardo and the Last Supper and Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling
"A lusciously detailed, highly readable account of the dazzling visual explosion that confronted the American world at the first modern art exhibition in New York in 1913. Peopled by fascinating personalities like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin and the hostile critics who greeted their masterpieces as ‘sheer insanity.’ This powerfully told story reveals why art matters." -- Anne-Marie O'Connor, author of The Lady in Gold, the Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer
“Combing through vast research and archival materials, the author has managed to distill the essence of the 1913 Armory Show and presents her findings in a style and manner that is very accessible. Not only well researched and well written, it is also a splendid romp across the art world of the twentieth century…Lunday captures it all in a succinct and, at times, witty voice.“ - Laurette McCarthy, Art historian and author of Walter Pach (1883-1958): The Armory Show and the Untold Story of Modern Art in America
Modern Art Invasion
Picasso, Duchamp, and the 1913 Armory Show That Scandalized America