In March 1914, after much preparation, the Rebel Art Centre was finally opened and ready, “by public discussion, lectures, and gatherings of people,” to fulfill an important mission – to “familiarize those who are interested with the ideas of the great modern revolution.” Revolutionaries soon did gather at this Centre. According to one account, they included “women with bare feet in black silver-latcheted shoes; women with hair cut like sixteenth-century pages; women with hats once worn apparently by their less sophisticated Quaker great-grandparents; men with lilac-coloured trousers … very baggy over the ankle; men in green collars, with ebony walking sticks.” They listened to lectures held in rooms in which “the doors and chairs are painted a bright vermilion red … the walls are lemon-coloured, and on the walls hang Cubist puzzles.”

The revolution that the Rebel Art Centre was promoting, of course, was one of aesthetics. In particular it supported the new visual art movement known as Post-Impressionism.