EAST HAMPTON, NY.- Vered Gallery opened Celebrating 100 years of American Modernism 1913 – 2013, Saturday, August 10. Highlights include major oils by John Graham, Marsden Hartley, Milton Avery, and works on paper by Oscar Bluemner, Charles Sheeler, Alvin Langdon Coburn and vintage photography by Alvin Langdon Coburn, Man Ray and Alexander Rodchencko, and furniture by Carlo Bugatti.

The show is curated by Janet Lehr – co-owner of Vered Gallery, who has worked extensively with the Library of Congress, The Cleveland Museum, Detroit Art Institute, National Gallery Australia, The Getty Museum, The Amon Carter Museum, The Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, in building their permanent photography collections.

In Celebrating 100 Years of American Modernism 1913-2013 attention is focused on the photographic roots of Modernism for had photography not been invented, doubtless painting would have continued on it classic trajectory based on Renaissance perspective. Jan 7. 1839, Daguerre demonstrated the first photographic process to the French Academy of Sciences. The minor painter De La Roche said, “From Today, Painting is DEAD’. First, the artist was assaulted by the ‘truthful’ photographic portrait. Then followed a trick of the lens – the flattening of the landscape-giving artists another way of seeing. Finally, the last bastion of the classical artist collapsed with the ability to print halftone photographs in the newspapers, where once artist’s rendering were needed to picture events thru the medium of woodcuts or engravings. Painting didn’t die, Modernism evolved, not in one gigantic leap, but by many baby steps being felt in Europe, but not until the ARMORY SHOW OF 1913 ‘blew’ the cover off the ‘new’ to Americans, did modernism come to America’s shores. Alvin Langdon Coburn, protégé of George Bernard Shaw, conduit of the ‘isms’ creeping thru Europe’s most avant garde art circles, member of Alfred Stieglitz’ Photo-Secessionists, frequent exhibitor at Alfred Stieglitz’ Gallery 291, which showed the works of American’s John Marin and Marsden Hartley and Europeans Auguste Rodin, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse; all before 1913. For Americans, the 1913 Armory show was a breakout moment. The exhibition closes with a heavy emphasis on the works of Milton Avery, the last American Modernist.

The final jolt to art was film. One single filmmaker stands out, MAN RAY. Along with the most progressive modernist works, Vered Gallery will have regular showing of Man Rays experimental films along with a small exhibition of Man Ray photographs.