The Cubies' ABC by Mary Lyall

The Cubies' ABC by Mary Lyall

Cleverly disguised as a children's book, The Cubies' ABC is a satirical take on Cubism and the literature and art of the day. The Cubies' ABC was versed by Mary Chase Mills Lyall (1879-1963) and pictured by Earl Harvey Lyall (1877-1932). Not much is known about the authors. This was their only book. Like any normal ABC book, each letter of the alphabet is accompanied by a verse and a drawing.

This unusual book was published in the fall of 1913 by G.P. Putnam's Sons in New York, six months after the International Exhibition of Modern Art, more commonly known as the Armory Show, held earlier in late winter at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York. The Armory Show, the first-ever large-scale exhibition of modern art in America, was organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, for whom this book was dedicated by its wickedly clever wife-and-husband creators.

The book must be seen and read to be appreciated.

-The Dial, 1913

The Cubies are three figures of uncertain sex.they moon over anything Cubist and scorn objectivity.

-The New Yorker, 2013