The Ashcan School, also called the Ash Can School, was an artistic movement in the United States during the late 19th-early 20th century[1] that produced works portraying scenes of daily life in New York, often in the city's poorer neighborhoods.
The movement, which took some inspiration from Walt Whitman's epic poem Leaves of Grass, has been seen as emblematic of the spirit of political rebellion of the period.[2]
Origin and development
Ashcan School artists and friends at John French Sloan's Philadelphia Studio, 1898
The Ashcan School was not an organized movement. The artists who worked in this style did not issue manifestos or even see themselves as a unified group with identical intentions or career goals. Some of the artists were politically minded, and others were apolitical. Their unity consisted of a desire to tell certain truths about the city and modern life they felt had been ignored by the suffocating influence of the Genteel Tradition in the visual arts. Robert Henri, in some ways the spiritual father of this school, "wanted art to be akin to journalism... he wanted paint to be as real as mud, as the clods of horse-shit and snow, that froze on Broadway in the winter."[3] He urged his younger friends and students to paint in the robust, unfettered, ungenteel spirit of his favorite poet, Walt Whitman, and to be unafraid of offending contemporary taste. He believed that working-class and middle-class urban settings would provide better material for modern painters than drawing rooms and salons. Having been to Paris and admired the works of Édouard Manet, Henri also urged his students to ‘’paint the everyday world in America just as it had been done in France.’’[4]
The name "Ashcan school" is a tongue-in-cheek reference to other "schools of art". Its origin is in a complaint found in a publication called The Masses alleging that there were too many "pictures of ashcans and girls hitching up their skirts on Horatio Street." That particular reference was published in The Masses at a point at which the artists had already been working together for about 8 years. They were amused by the reference and the name stuck.[5] (For examples of other "schools of art" see Category:Italian art movements e.g. Lucchese School and for instance School of Paris.) The Ashcan School of artists had also been known as "The Apostles of Ugliness".[6] The term Ashcan School was originally applied in derision. The school is not so much known for innovations in technique but more for its subject matter. Common subjects were prostitutes and street urchins. The work of the Ashcan painters links them to such documentary photographers as Jacob Riis and Lewis W. Hine. Several Ashcan School painters derived from the area of print publication at a time before photography replaced hand-drawn illustrations in newspapers. They were involved in journalistic pictorial reportage before concentrating their energies on painting. George Luks once proclaimed "I can paint with a shoestring dipped in pitch and lard." In the mid-1890s Robert Henri returned to Philadelphia from Paris very unimpressed by the work of the late Impressionists and with a determination to create a type of art that engaged with life.[6] He attempted to imbue several other artists with this passion. The school has even been referred to as "the revolutionary black gang", a reference to the artists' dark palette. The group was subject to attacks in the press and one of their earliest exhibitions, in 1908 at New York's Macbeth Gallery, was a success.[6]
Many of the most famous Ashcan works were painted in the first decade of the century at the same time in which the realist fiction of Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Frank Norris was finding its audience and the muckraking journalists were calling attention to slum conditions.[7] The first known use of the term "ash can art" is credited to artist Art Young in 1916.[8] The term by that time was applied to a large number of painters beyond the original "Philadelphia Five," including George Bellows, Glenn O. Coleman, Jerome Myers, Gifford Beal, Eugene Higgins, Carl Springchorn and Edward Hopper. (Despite his inclusion in the group by some critics, Hopper rejected their focus and never embraced the label; his depictions of city streets were painted in a different spirit, "with not a single incidental ashcan in sight.")[9] Photographers like Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine were also discussed as Ashcan artists. Like many art-historical terms, "Ashcan art" has sometimes been applied to so many different artists that its meaning has become diluted.
The artists of the Ashcan School rebelled against both American Impressionism and academic realism, the two most respected and commercially successful styles in the US at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. In contrast to the highly polished work of artists like John Singer Sargent, William Merritt Chase, Kenyon Cox, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, and Abbott Thayer, Ashcan works were generally darker in tone and more roughly painted. Many captured the harsher moments of modern life, portraying street kids (e.g., Henri's Willie Gee and Bellows' Paddy Flannagan), prostitutes (e.g., Sloan's The Haymarket and Three A.M.), alcoholics (e.g., Luks' The Old Duchess), indecorous animals (e.g., Luks' Feeding the Pigs and Woman with Goose), subways (e.g., Shinn's Sixth Avenue Elevated After Midnight), crowded tenements (e.g., Bellows' Cliff Dwellers), washing hung out to dry (Shinn's The Laundress), boisterous theaters (e.g., Glackens' Hammerstein's Roof Garden and Shinn's London Hippodrome), bloodied boxers (e.g., Bellows' Both Members of This Club), and wrestlers on the mat (e.g., Luks' The Wrestlers). It was their frequent, although not exclusive, focus upon poverty and the gritty realities of urban life that prompted some critics and curators to consider them too unsettling for mainstream audiences and collections.
The advent of modernism in the United States spelled the end of the Ashcan school's provocative reputation. With the Armory Show of 1913 and the opening of more galleries in the 1910s promoting the work of Cubists, Fauves, and Expressionists, Henri and his circle began to appear tame to a younger generation. Their rebellion was over not long after it began. It was the fate of the Ashcan realists to be seen by many art lovers as too radical in 1910 and, by many more, as old-fashioned by 1920.
The Ashcan school is sometimes linked to the group known as "The Eight", though in fact only five members of that group (Henri, Sloan, Glackens, Luks, and Shinn) were Ashcan artists.[10] The other three – Arthur B. Davies, Ernest Lawson, and Maurice Prendergast – painted in a very different style, and the exhibition that brought "The Eight" to national attention took place in 1908, several years after the beginning of the Ashcan style. However, the attention accorded the group's well-publicized exhibition at the Macbeth Galleries in New York 1908 was such that Ashcan art gained wider exposure and greater sales and critical attention than it had known before.
The Macbeth Galleries exhibition was held to protest the restrictive exhibition policies of the powerful, conservative National Academy of Design and to broadcast the need for wider opportunities to display new art of a more diverse, adventurous quality than the Academy generally permitted. When the exhibition closed in New York, where it attracted considerable attention, it toured Chicago, Toledo, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Bridgeport, and Newark in a traveling show organized by John Sloan.[11] Reviews were mixed, but interest was high. ("Big Sensation at the Art Museum, Visitors Join Throng Museum and Join Hot Discussion," one Ohio newspaper noted.)[12] As art historian Judith Zilczer summarized the venture, "In taking their art directly to the American public, The Eight demonstrated that cultural provincialism in the United States was less pervasive than contemporary and subsequent accounts of the period had inferred."[13] Sales and exhibition opportunities for these painters increased significantly in the ensuing years.
Thomas Pollock Anshutz, The Farmer and His Son at Harvesting, 1879. Five members of the Ashcan School studied with him, but went on to create quite different styles.
George Bellows, Both Members of This Club, 1909, National Gallery of Art. Bellows was a close associate of the Ashcan school and had studied under Robert Henri.
Jacob Riis, Bandit's Roost, 1888, (photo), considered the most crime-ridden, dangerous part of New York City.
1 2 3 Art in the modern era: A guide to styles, schools, & movements, Amy Dempsey, Abrams, 2002. (U.S. edition of Styles, Schools and Movements) ISBN978-0810941724
↑ Sam Hunter, Modern American Painting and Sculpture (New York: Dell, 1959), 28–40.
↑ John Loughery, John Sloan: Painter and Rebel (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), pp. 218–219
↑ Wells, Walter, Silent Theater: The Art of Edward Hopper (London/New York: Phaidon, 2007).
Hughes, Robert. American Visions: The Epic Story of Art in America. New York: Knopf, 1997.
Hunter, Sam. Modern American Painting and Sculpture. New York: Dell, 1959.
Kennedy, Elizabeth (ed.). The Eight and American Modernisms. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Loughery, John. John Sloan: Painter and Rebel. New York: Henry Holt, 1997. ISBN0-8050-5221-6
Perlman, Bennard (ed.), introduction by Mrs. John Sloan. Revolutionaries of Realism: The Letters of John Sloan and Robert Henri. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Visual art of the United States or American art is visual art made in the United States or by U.S. artists. Before colonization, there were many flourishing traditions of Native American art, and where the Spanish colonized Spanish Colonial architecture and the accompanying styles in other media were quickly in place. Early colonial art on the East Coast initially relied on artists from Europe, with John White the earliest example. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, artists primarily painted portraits, and some landscapes in a style based mainly on English painting. Furniture-makers imitating English styles and similar craftsmen were also established in the major cities, but in the English colonies, locally made pottery remained resolutely utilitarian until the 19th century, with fancy products imported.
George Benjamin Luks was an American artist, identified with the aggressively realistic Ashcan School of American painting.
John French Sloan was an American painter and etcher. He is considered to be one of the founders of the Ashcan school of American art. He was also a member of the group known as The Eight. He is best known for his urban genre scenes and ability to capture the essence of neighborhood life in New York City, often observed through his Chelsea studio window. Sloan has been called the premier artist of the Ashcan School, and also a realist painter who embraced the principles of Socialism, though he himself disassociated his art from his politics.
Maurice Brazil Prendergast was an American artist who painted in oil and watercolor, and created monotypes. His delicate landscapes and scenes of modern life, characterized by mosaic-like color, are generally associated with Post-Impressionism. Prendergast, however, was also a member of The Eight, a group of early twentieth-century American artists who, aside from Prendergast, represented the Ashcan School.
George Wesley Bellows was an American realist painter, known for his bold depictions of urban life in New York City. He became, according to the Columbus Museum of Art, "the most acclaimed American artist of his generation".
Robert Henri was an American painter and teacher.
William James Glackens was an American realist painter and one of the founders of the Ashcan School, which rejected the formal boundaries of artistic beauty laid down by the conservative National Academy of Design. He is also known for his work in helping Albert C. Barnes to acquire the European paintings that form the nucleus of the famed Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. His dark-hued, vibrantly painted street scenes and depictions of daily life in pre-WW I New York and Paris first established his reputation as a major artist. His later work was brighter in tone and showed the strong influence of Renoir. During much of his career as a painter, Glackens also worked as an illustrator for newspapers and magazines in Philadelphia and New York City.
Edward Willis Redfield was an American Impressionist landscape painter and member of the art colony at New Hope, Pennsylvania. He is best known today for his impressionist scenes of the New Hope area, often depicting the snow-covered countryside. He also spent his summers on Boothbay Harbor, Maine, where he interpreted the local coastline. He frequently painted Maine's Monhegan Island.
Ernest Lawson was a Canadian-American painter and exhibited his work at the Canadian Art Club and as a member of the American group The Eight, artists who formed a loose association in 1908 to protest the narrowness of taste and restrictive exhibition policies of the conservative, powerful National Academy of Design. Though Lawson was primarily a landscape painter, he also painted a small number of realistic urban scenes. His painting style is heavily influenced by the art of John Henry Twachtman, J. Alden Weir, and Alfred Sisley. Though considered a Canadian-American Impressionist, Lawson falls stylistically between Impressionism and realism.
Everett Shinn was an American painter and member of the urban realist Ashcan School.
American Realism was a style in art, music and literature that depicted contemporary social realities and the lives and everyday activities of ordinary people. The movement began in literature in the mid-19th century, and became an important tendency in visual art in the early 20th century. Whether a cultural portrayal or a scenic view of downtown New York City, American realist works attempted to define what was real.
Elsie Driggs was an American painter known for her contributions to Precisionism, America's one indigenous modern-art movement before Abstract Expressionism, and for her later floral and figurative watercolors, pastels, and oils. She was the only female participant in the Precisionist movement, which in the 1920s and 1930s took a Cubist-inspired approach to painting the skyscrapers and factories that had come to define the new American landscape. Her works are in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Houston Museum of the Fine Arts, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the James A. Michener Art Museum in Pennsylvania, and the Columbus Museum of Art, among others. She was married to the American abstract artist Lee Gatch.
Kraushaar Galleries is an art gallery in New York City founded in 1885 by Charles W. Kraushaar, who had previously been with the European art gallery, William Schaus, Sr.
Mary (May) Wilson Watkins Preston was an American illustrator of books and magazines and an impressionist painter. She had an interest in art beginning in her teenage years, but her parents sent her to Oberlin College hoping that she would develop another interest. After three years, and at the urging of one of her teachers, Preston's parents allowed her to return to New York and attend the Art Students League. She then studied in Paris with James Whistler and next at the New York School of Art with William Merritt Chase.
Realism was an artistic movement that emerged in France in the 1840s, around the 1848 Revolution. Realists rejected Romanticism, which had dominated French literature and art since the early 19th century. Realism revolted against the exotic subject matter and the exaggerated emotionalism and drama of the Romantic movement. Instead, it sought to portray real and typical contemporary people and situations with truth and accuracy, and not avoiding unpleasant or sordid aspects of life. The movement aimed to focus on unidealized subjects and events that were previously rejected in art work. Realist works depicted people of all classes in situations that arise in ordinary life, and often reflected the changes brought by the Industrial and Commercial Revolutions. Realism was primarily concerned with how things appeared to the eye, rather than containing ideal representations of the world. The popularity of such "realistic" works grew with the introduction of photography—a new visual source that created a desire for people to produce representations which look objectively real.
James Moore Preston (1873–1962) was an American painter and illustrator, married to fellow artist May Wilson Preston. He was one of the Ashcan School, along with his friend, William Glackens.
Men of the Docks is an oil painting on canvas completed by the American artist George Bellows in 1912. Depicting the docks of New York City, this 114.3-by-161.3-centimetre painting was sold to the National Gallery in London in 2014 for $25.5 million.
The Wrestlers is a 1905 oil painting by George Luks held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in Massachusetts, United States. The Wrestlers is Luks' best-known work. The painting depicts two nude men wrestling. He painted it in order to shock members of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts whom he called "pink-and-white idiots". The Wrestlers was displayed at the 1908 Ashcan School exhibition. A 1910 article in New York World about the Exhibition of Independent Artists included an image of Luks' The Wrestlers despite the fact that the painting did not appear in that exhibition. In a 1908 diary entry, painter John French Sloan writes that The Wrestlers is among the best paintings he ever encountered. In 1992, art critic Carol Clark identified The Wrestlers as one of Luks' best works, calling it "raw, roughly painted" and reflective of Luks' experiences in New York. In 1996, Allen Guttmann compared Luks' The Wrestlers to Thomas Eakins' Wrestlers and Max Slevogt's Wrestling School, writing that all three paintings depict pairs of nude wrestling men lying on the ground in grappling holds. In the 2009 Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art, Ian Chilvers and John Glaves-Smith write that The Wrestlers emulates the "bravura painterly technique of artists such as Manet".
Walter Elmer Schofield was an American Impressionist landscape and marine painter. Although he never lived in New Hope or Bucks County, Schofield is regarded as one of the Pennsylvania Impressionists.
The Macbeth Gallery was an art gallery in New York City that was the first to specialize in American art. Founded by William Macbeth in 1892, the gallery gained notoriety in 1908 when it put on an exhibition protesting the restrictive policies and conservative tastes of the existing art establishment in New York, exemplified by the National Academy of Design. The exhibition showcased the work of eight artists who were known for portraying gritty scenes of daily life, especially of poorer communities in New York: Robert Henri, William Glackens, George Luks, Everett Shinn, John Sloan, Arthur Bowen Davies, Ernest Lawson, and Maurice Prendergast. Though they had varying styles, the artists were later known collectively as "The Eight". Henri, Glackens, Luks, Shinn, and Sloan were associated with the Ashcan School, and the 1908 exhibition brought increased national attention to that movement and founded their reputations.
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