The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (453 page)

Société Anonyme, Inc
.
(or a Museum of Modern Art)
.

An association founded in 1920 by Katherine
Dreier
, Marcel
Duchamp
, and
Man Ray
for the promotion of contemporary art in America by lectures, publications, travelling exhibitions, and the formation of a permanent collection. In French the term ‘société anonyme’ means ‘limited company’, so the name—suggested by Man Ray—was intended as a tautological
Dada
jest; as Miss Dreier loved to explain, it meant ‘incorporated corporation’. However, the work of the society was serious and trail blazing. Its museum, which opened at 19 East 47th Street, New York, on 30 April 1920, was the first in the USA, and one of the earliest anywhere, to be devoted entirely to modern art. Between 1920 and 1940 the Société organized 84 exhibitions, through which such artists as
Klee
,
Malevich
,
Miro,
, and
Schwitters
were first exhibited in America. To some extent, therefore, the Société carried on the tradition that had been started by the 291 Gallery of
Stieglitz
in the years before the
Armory Show
, and to some extent also it prepared the way for the
Museum of Modern Art
, which was founded in 1929. The Museum of Modern Art soon eclipsed the Société Anonyme and Miss Dreier's finances were in any case badly hit by the Depression, but she continued officially as President (as Duchamp did as Secretary) until the Société officially closed in 1950. Nine years earlier, in 1941, they had presented the superb permanent collection that the Société had built up (over 600 works) to Yale University Art Gallery.

 
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Society of Artists
.

An association of artists formed in London in the 1750s and incorporated by Royal Charter in 1765. It emerged in response to the desire for a state-run academy that would provide public exhibitions of contemporary art, and was the main forerunner of the
Royal Academy
. Its leaders were
Hayman
and
Lambert
. It survived until 1791.

 
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Society of Independent Artists
.

An American association formed in 1916 to succeed the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, which was dissolved after the
Armory Show
. Its object was to hold annual exhibitions in rivalry with the
National Academy of Design
and to afford progressive artists an opportunity to show their works. It was organized on the model of the French
Salon des Indépendants
without jury or prizes, giving anyone the right to exhibit on payment of a modest fee. The first President was William
Glackens
, followed by John
Sloan
. The first exhibition, in the spring of 1916, comprised more than 2,000 exhibits and included both American and European artists. Although the Society continued to arrange exhibitions until the mid 1940s, subsequent exhibitions were smaller and inferior in quality and its importance diminished. It is now perhaps best remembered for an incident in 1917, when Marcel
Duchamp
, who was one of the Society's officials, resigned after the refusal to exhibit his
ready-made
in the form of a urinal signed ‘R. Mutt’. Although much recondite aesthetic theory has been read into this gesture, it is likely that the main purpose of it was to demonstrate the artistic incongruity of a Society with the professed purpose of allowing anyone to exhibit anything.

 
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(1477–1549).
Italian painter, born at Vercelli and active chiefly in and around Siena, where he settled in 1501.
Vasari
, who disliked him, explains the origin of his nickname—‘the sodomite’—in this fashion: ‘His manner of life was licentious and dishonourable, and as he always had boys and beardless youths about him of whom he was inordinately fond, this earned him the nickname of Sodoma; but instead of feeling shame, he gloried in it, writing stanzas and verses on it, and singing them to the accompaniment of the lute.’ Sodoma (who was married and had children) himself used the name in his signature, and Vasari's story has been questioned. Vasari also tells us that Sodoma kept a menagerie of strange animals ‘so that his home resembled a veritable Noah's ark’. He was a prolific painter of frescos and easel pictures, and he drew on a variety of sources that were not always fully digested; consequently his work often has incongruous juxtapositions and a general air of uncoordination, but it also possesses charm and a flair for decoration. His fresco of the
Marriage of Alexander and Roxane
(1516–17), painted for the Sienese banker Agostino Chigi in his Villa Farnesina in Rome, is often cited as his finest work. In his time Sodoma was considered the leading artist in Siena, but later critics have come to rank
Beccafumi
above him.

 
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Soft art
.

Term applied to sculpture using non-rigid materials, a vogue of the 1960s and 1970s. The materials employed have been very diverse: rope, cloth, rubber, leather, paper, canvas, vinyl—anything in fact which offers a certain persistence of form but lacks permanent shape or rigidity. Perhaps the earliest example of ‘Soft art’ in this century was the typewriter cover which Marcel
Duchamp
mounted on a stand and exhibited in 1916. But this belongs rather to the category of
ready-mades
, which he introduced. ‘Soft art’ as a movement is usually traced to Claes
Oldenburg 's
giant replicas of foodstuffs (ice-cream sundaes, hamburgers, pieces of cake, etc.) made from stuffed vinyl and canvas. Other artists who have experimented with soft materials have been many and diverse, from numerous different movements, including
Arte Povera
,
Pop art
, and
Surrealism
.