On March 22nd, 1913, Theodore Roosevelt's "A Layman's Views of an Art Exhibition" was published in The Outlook. Misquoting the name of Marcel Duchamp's infamous painting, Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2, he wrote:
"Take the picture which for some reason is called A naked man going down stairs. There is in my bath-room a really good Navajo rug which, on any proper interpretation of the Cubist theory, is a far more satisfactory and decorative picture. Now if, for some inscrutable reason, it suited somebody to call this rug a picture of, say, A well-dressed man going up a ladder, the name would fit the facts just about as well as in the Cubist picture of the Naked man going down stairs. From the standpoint of terminology each name would have whatever merit inheres in a rather cheap straining after effect; and from the standpoint of decorative value, of sincerity, and of artistic merit, the Navajo rug is infinitely ahead of the picture."
Former President Theodore Roosevelt had visited the Armory Show on March 4th, 1913, the day president-elect Woodrow Wilson was taking the oath of office.
Animation by Junghee Choi and Rhonda R Shearer; text complied by Thomas Girst