Chance Encounters, Edition 59
The Ashcan School: Art for Life's Sake
Freedom is necessary for the development of all art: freedom to create and freedom to show. – George Bellows
A decrepit pier juts toward us from the darkness, crowded with naked boys seeking relief from the summer heat in the dirty water of the East River. Forty-two Kids, painted by George Bellows (American, 1882-1925) in 1907, appears innocuous to a 21st century viewer, but at the time of its creation, its subject, style, and even its title would have been shocking. The term “kid” had recently gained currency, through the character The Yellow Kid in the comic strip Hogan’s Alley. A kid was a slum-dwelling youth, perceived to be a troublemaker or hooligan, so the artist’s application of the term would have alarmed contemporary viewers. The jury for the important Lippincott Prize, given annually by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts denied Bellows the award, fearful that the prize donor would be offended by both the title and the subject.
These boys aren’t misbehaving, however; they’re simply enjoying themselves. The varied skin tones and skinny bodies identify their origins in the impoverished immigrant communities of the Lower East Side of New York City. These kids play in this neglected section of the riverfront because they have nowhere else to go. The artist’s choices in this work: the subject, the painterly form (streaks and patches of color), and the dark color scheme, mark this painting as part of a new American approach to art. Originating in the first two decades of the 20th century, today we call this the Ashcan School, though the artists never saw themselves as forming a conscious artistic movement. The name was not coined until 1916, when the artists were already moving in new directions. A critic complained of “too many ashcans” in art and the term Ashcan School was used by curators Alfred H. Barr and Holfer Cahill for a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1934, enshrining it in art history.
The Ashcan School formed around Robert Henri (pronounced hen-rye; American, 1865-1929), who mentored or taught nearly all of the artists of the group. In the 1880s, Henri traveled several times to Europe where discovered artists whose works inspired him, especially the 19th century French painter Édouard Manet (see Chance Encounters 5) and the 17th century Dutch portraitist Frans Hals (learn more about this artist here). Henri began teaching at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women in the 1890s and it was in Philadelphia that Henri befriended and began to mentor a group of younger artists. John Sloan, Everett Shinn, George Luks, and William Glackens, all of whom are included in this edition, were working as newspaper illustrators and with Henri, would form the core of the Ashcan School. (Bellows was younger still, and joined the group later.)
What we need is art that expresses the spirit of the people of today. – Robert Henri
IIn 1900, Henri relocated to New York City,, where he renewed his connections with his friends from their Philadelphia days. Henri had developed the goal of painting real subjects as seen in United States, without sentimentality or idealization. His slogan was “Art for Life’s Sake” instead of “Art for Art’s Sake.” At the time, American painting was dominated by idealization and gentility. In paintings like Street Scene with Snow (57th Street, NYC), Henri depicted urban grittiness, snow mixed with mud and soot and dark skies marred by smoke. Dark row houses frame the street and the artist contrasts the horse-drawn carriage near the center of the composition with the elevated train crossing above the street in the distance. The artist and his colleagues were interested in capturing a sense of immediacy, both in the subject and in the way the painting was executed, as can be seen in both of these first two examples.
John Sloan (American, 1871-1951) taught himself to draw by copying posters in the bookstore where he worked. He studied for a couple of years at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia where he met Robert Henri. He grew frustrated with academic restrictions and left to pursue a career in illustration. He loved working in illustration, describing the camaraderie of the illustrators as “all the fun and none of the exams” of college. Sloan executed more than 900 illustrations for books and magazines between 1902 and 1916. At the same time he embarked on his painting career, joining his Philadelphia friends, Henri, Shinn, Luks, and Glackens in New York City in 1904.
Hairdresser’s Window was inspired by Sloan encountering a crowd that had gathered to watch a woman working in her shop window. The artist would walk the city streets sketching and he depicts this scene as if he has joined the spectators. As a result, we feel as if we are part of this momentary community of strangers. The crowd shows varied reactions. Men seem transfixed by their opportunity to watch activities often restricted from view, with differing styles of hat suggesting different types of men. The woman in the flowered hat glances up in passing but the three hatless younger women seem to be giggling at the scene. In addition to the action in the window and the crowd, Sloan shows us the many advertising signs covering the wall, including the hairdresser’s own sign, one for manicures, and a Chop Suey restaurant. In this painting, Sloan provides a snapshot of urban life, filled with details to interest and amuse the viewer.
Sloan and Henri led a determined effort to break the power of the National Academy of Design over artistic taste and whose work could be exhibited. The NAD was conservative, and following European Academic traditions, utilized a jury system in determining what art was to be approved. Henri strongly objected to juried exhibitions, viewing them as destructive to creativity, a “cemetery of art.” In 1908, the artists helped to organize an exhibition at Macbeth Gallery with their friends from Philadelphia. They were joined by three artists whose styles were quite unlike the urban realism of Henri and friends. Edwin Lawson (Canadian-American, 1873-1939) was an Impressionist and Maurice Prendergast (American, 1858-1924) painted in a Post-Impressionist style influenced by pointillism, while Arthur B. Davies (American, 1862-1928) was creating fantasy scenes in a somewhat Romantic style. In spite of these stylistic differences, they shared deep opposition to the AND. The group was termed “The Eight” but the Macbeth Gallery exhibition was the only time they exhibited together.
It takes courage to be independent. – John Sloan
Sloan was also instrumental in producing the next independent exhibition in the United States, the 1910 Exhibition of Independent Artists. Sloan and Henri were joined as organizers by Davies (who had participated in the Macbeth show) and Walt Kuhn. This time they extended invitations to many more artists, ending with 100 exhibitors and over 500 works. There was no jury and artists were presented alphabetically, in order to be completely democratic. The exhibition was a media sensation and thousands visited, but there were few sales. Nevertheless, their efforts weakened the NAD and demonstrated that there was an audience for such exhibitions. Sloan went on to help found the Society of Independent Artists in 1916, for which he served as president from 1918 until his death in 1951.
Sloan focused on what might be called the theater of the streets, but others from the Ashcan School moved indoors to explore the growing entertainment industry, vaudeville and movie theaters, restaurants and nightclubs. Everett Shinn (American, 1876-1953) depicts a trapeze artist swinging above the balcony crowd at The Hippodrome, London. This building was constructed in 1900 for circus and variety shows and even had a 100,000 gallon water tank for aquatic shows. The restored and expanded structure survives today as the Hippodrome Casino. As with so many of his colleagues, Shinn got his start as a newspaper illustrator, a job which taught artists how to capture a lively scene quickly. As a painter, he focused on vaudeville and theater subjects on the one hand and scenes of street violence and disasters on the other. His connections to the theater became so close that he produced interior decoration and stage sets; Shinn’s murals in the Belasco Theater, painted in 1907, still survive.
Shinn visited Europe in 1900 as he was making the transition from illustrator to painter. As his preference for theatrical subjects might suggest, he was strongly influenced by Edgar Degas’ circus, ballet, and café paintings. (Click here for an example of Degas’ circus paintings.) This painting, with its brightly colored details appearing out of the darkness, reflects Shinn’s affinities to Henri and the other Ashcan artists. Included in the 1908 exhibition of “The Eight,” The Hippodrome is the artist’s best known and most frequently reproduced work.
William Glackens (American, 1870-1938) captures one of the most popular New York venues of the day in Hammerstein’s Roof Garden. Located atop two adjacent theaters, the Roof Garden was especially popular in the summer when the conventional theaters were unpleasantly warm. The roof could be opened and closed to accommodate the weather. The venue was built by Oscar Hammerstein, a businessman and theater impresario (grandfather of the playwright and lyricist) and though it was actually called the Palace Roof Garden, it was generally known as Hammerstein’s.
Glackens places us among the audience seated on the ground level and looking up at the acrobats performing in front of a range of private boxes. The nearest figures are almost all women, fashionably dressed and appearing comfortable in their surroundings. Unaccompanied women partaking of such public entertainment would have been seen as very Modern by contemporary viewers. The painting is presented in mostly neutral tones with the exception of the bright blue and red of the performers. The artist uses these colors to pull our attention upward where he shows off the ornate décor of the setting. Hammerstein’s Roof Garden was Glackens’ first painting to gain public acclaim.
With Allen Street by George Luks (American, 1867-1933), we return to the theater of the streets. The artist got his start drawing for newspapers and was one of the group of young Philadelphia artists mentored by Robert Henri. Like his mentor, Luks traveled to Europe and was drawn to the art of Manet and Hals. He relocated to New York in 1896 where he took over drawing The Yellow Kid comic Hogan’s Alley. Like some of his colleagues, Luks frequently visited the immigrant neighborhoods of the Lower East Side in search of subjects. He made quick sketches on site which he developed into finished paintings in his studio. In many paintings Luks celebrates the idea of the American melting pot, in contrast to contemporaries like the author Henry James whose writings expressed fear of the influx of immigrants as and the potential dilution of the “true” American people. In Allen Street, women, many in ethic dress, buy and sell goods as evening falls. They are seen in light spilling from open doors and second floor windows. A pile of brightly colored furnishings, perhaps second-hand, usher the viewer into the scene and the brightly light sidewalk draws on. Like Sloan’s Hairdresser’s Window, Luks shows us the interaction between the busy streets and the interiors of commercial spaces.
Glackens’ Shoppers depicts a different Modern commercial experience, fashionable women perusing goods in the lingerie section of a department store. One of the artist’s largest paintings at five feet square, this work raises an unimportant event to a major artistic statement, that all of contemporary life was a fit subject for the artist. This was one of the most important influences of the Ashcan artists – directing the attention of American artists to themes of Modern life, instead of the genteel, idyllic scenes which had dominated before they appeared on the scene.
The models for Shoppers were the artist’s wife and her friends. The central figure in the fur coat is the artist’s wife Edith while the model for the seated figure was one of her friends. The figure in the golden coat was modeled by Everett Shinn’s wife Florence; she looks out at the artist as if to object to his intrusion into this feminine space. A humbly dressed clerk, far left, displays merchandise to the seated woman whose elaborate blue hat identifies her as an equal to the woman in fur. Glackens’ celebration of contemporary life fit with his Ashcan colleagues, but in his later career, his style veered more toward Impressionism, earning the nickname “the American Renoir.”
The last painting in this edition, The Haymarket, Sixth Avenue by John Sloan, shows yet another type of contemporary woman – as we observe several unaccompanied women entering the Haymarket dance hall. That the women’s behavior might be considered scandalous is suggested by the vignette of the woman and young girl carrying bundles as they walk away to the left. The girl looks back toward the fancy white dresses and hats while her mother looks down at her, as if to discourage her interest. The artist, though, records the scene without judging its participants. Sloan was a socialist and political activist, working to support striking workers among other progressive and radical causes. He said: "While I am a Socialist, I never allowed social propaganda into my paintings.” Instead his works suggest a kind of detached fascination with his subjects.
Most of the Ashcan School artists participated in the most famous independent exhibition in American art history, the 1913 Armory Show. Davies and Kuhn, who had worked on the 1910 exhibition took control of the planning for the Armory Show and expanded it to include avant garde European painting. The startling appearance of the most advanced European art, from Post-Impressionism to Cubism, cast the American artists into the shadows. Even their most innovative works looked old-fashioned compared to Henri Matisse’s Blue Nude and Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending the Staircase, No. 2.
Though short-lived, the Ashcan School had an important impact on American art of the early 20th century. Coinciding with the rise of Realism in American fiction and with muckraking journalists and photographers, these artist showed that the realities of urban life – the rapidly changing city, and all its people, even immigrants, and the working class, were worthy of an artist’s attention. At the same time they showed that each artist could express his individual vision, expressing the authenticity of the artist’s experience. Finally, the Ashcan School artists were almost solely responsible for breaking the power of the conservative National Academy of Design, freeing artists to seek their own vision of what art could be.
It is an artist’s job to find some order in life and leave a record of what interested him – not what he thinks he ought to be interested in. – John Sloan
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Love this compendium on the Ashcan School. Hard to pick a favorite, but if pressed, I’d choose Sloan’s Hairdresser’s Window. There is so much packed into that scene! Enjoy your summer break!