|
America's first and only National Movement
Robert Henri (left) and John Sloan (right) draw while Mrs. Henri reads aloud and Dolly Sloan listens. Etching by John Sloan. The opening years of this century were boom years for American cities. Filled with office and factory workers, shopkeepers and immigrants, cities bulged and spread. By legislation, New York City had absorbed surrounding areas to become Greater New York- three times as vast and almost twice as populous as had been, "little old New York". To speed the travel of millions, literal armies of workers dug tunnels five stories deep into the bedrock of Manhattan Island for the subway system, flung massive bridges across the encircling waters and erected splendiferous railroad terminals.
Ernest Lawson, detail ,"Old Grand Central" The city's vigor and variety attracted a band of artists
who were to revolutionize American Art. These men were "The Eight"- Arthur
Davies, Robert Henri, William Glackens, Ernest Lawson, George Luks, Maurice Prendergast,
John Sloan and Everett Shinn. Their group exhibition in 1908, a couple of years before the
Armory Show, both shocked and educated contemporary taste. Spurning the safe road of
genteel society portraiture, for which they were all trained, The Eight painted men and
machines at work, women at leisure. In time their brand of personalized realism earned
them the nickname, "The Ashcan School". Robert Henri, who had taught four of the
eight, insisted that artists should "make pictures from life", and the city life
these artists saw was not fixed in one stiff pose. It was, by turns, both rough and
tender, somber and jubilant. For them the city was, as John Sloan said, "a
cosmopolitan palette where the spectrum changed in every side street."
Ernest Lawson "Queensborough Bridge" 1909 "Forget about art!" Robert Henri told his classes, "and paint pictures of what interests you in life." His best students did not forget about art, but they did portray life with a new boldness and vision. For their subject matter they took to the streets. John Sloan preferred the seamy side of town over the elegant fifth avenue style, He enjoyed the "drab, shabby, happy, sad and human" life he found there.
The Eight have been followed by a whole lot of would be Europeanism, and foreign inspired romanticism. Even Pop art has it's start in England. To find what is truly American in art, one has only to re-examine the Ashcan School. It is the true legacy of every American Painter.
|
