The Ashcan School:

A Literature Review

Chris O’Neill

History 297

April 13, 2018

Abstract The Ashcan School was a group of artists painting in turn-of-the twentieth century New York.

They painted in what was then an unconventional style known as Urban Realism. Various scholars have studied the group from various perspectives over the last century. The earliest writing is from when the artists where fresh on the American art scene. This early art critic labeled them as revolutionary. The first scholarly writing about the school would not be published until some thirty-five years after the group's pinnacle of success. Consequently, they would no longer be depicted as revolutionary. These scholars, nevertheless, write of the importance that these turn-of-the century artists had in the history of New York. Their writing reflects the different training each scholar had, their purpose, and the time that they were writing in. 1

The Ashcan School was a loosely-affiliated group of artists who painted in New York

City during the Progressive Era. The group consisted of Robert Henri (1865-1929), their leader;

George Bellows (1882-1925), William Glackens (1870-1938), George Luks (1867-1933),

Everett Shinn (1876-1953), and John Sloan (1871-1951). Glackens, Luks, Shinn, and Sloan knew one another through the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and various Philadelphia newspapers where they worked as illustrators. They met regularly with Henri at his art studio in

Philadelphia to receive advice and encouragement. After sojourns to Europe the group set up in

New York City. George Bellows joined the group after studying under Henri in New York. The

Ashcan School painted in a style known as Urban Realism, which sought to capture the realities of the city and its inhabitants, often in an unflattering way. This style was a rejection of the

European academic style of painting that held sway in America at the turn of the century. This rejection was a product of Henri’s iconoclasm combined with the journalistic training of the other members.

There have been varying approaches to writing about the Ashcan School in the last hundred-plus years that they have been written about. The first writing came when these artists were new to the American art scene, so the first writing was from an art critic. The first book was on the school was not by a historian, but a son of one of the artists. Overall, literature about the

Ashcan School has been written by art historians. But as their art often was a social commentary, social history has been applied in seeking to locate this art within the framework of society.

Studies beginning in the 1990s would incorporate visual studies, racial studies, and genders studies to further aid in understanding this complex art. Additionally, books that were companions to exhibits about the Ashcan School also began to appear in the 1990s. One book serves as an exhibition companion piece that utilizes the interdisciplinary approach. The most 2 recent work, however, is meant to reach a broader audience not targeted by the more scholarly interdisciplinary books. The literature reflects the different training of each scholar, the purposed each had, and the time they wrote in. This review will be a chronological review from the earliest writings to the most recent.

The first mentioning of the Ashcan painters as a group (before they were labeled as such) came in a 1908 article entitled “The Younger American Painters: Are They Creating a National

Art?” in the art magazine The Craftsman by art critic Giles Edgerton.1 Edgerton’s article was published a month after the famous Macbeth Gallery exhibition in New York, in which Henri,

Glackens, Luks, Shinn, Sloan, as well as three artists exhibited. Together, these artists were known as The Eight. In Edgerton’s article he sees these eight artists as being united in the mission of creating a uniquely American art. He uses this article to call for more artists to take up the challenge of revolutionizing the country’s art scene. Curiously enough, there is no scholarly writing that focuses on the Ashcan school until 1949.

Art historian Milton W. Brown’s 1949 journal article “The Ash Can School” indicates that Ashcan art had lost its revolutionary tone by 1913.2 He acknowledges, however, its importance in shaping the American art scene in the first decades of the twentieth century. The article provides a quick overview of the origin and development of the group, but it does not go into great depth. This is due to their not being a tradition of Ashcan School scholarship to draw from. Nevertheless, Brown makes an interesting comparison between the Ashcan artists and

Realist author Theodore Dreiser. Brown likens the group to Eugene Witla, hero of Theodore

1 Giles Edgerton, “The Younger American Painters: Are They Creating a National Art?” The Craftsman, March 1908, 512-532. 2 Milton W. Brown, “The Ash Can School,” American Quarterly 1, no. 2 (Summer, 1949). 3

Dreiser’s novel The Genius.3 The Ashcan artists, like Witla, “[are] iconoclastic spirit[s] fighting for recognition.”4 He uses this point to indicate that the Ashcan artists did not like the mere repetition of what had come before but wanted to stake out a new identity for the American artist. This breaking away from tradition of these artists is a central theme that will be repeated in all the literature.

In 1957, biographer Ira Glackens, who was also the son of William Glackens, published

William Glackens and the Eight: The Artists Who Freed American Art.5 It is significant, because it was the first book written on the subject. However, like Brown, Glackens does not have

(besides Brown's short article) scholarly work on the Ashcan School to draw from. His purpose for writing this book is that he wanted to know more about his famous father. This book is anecdotal, and sometimes gossipy in tone. It provides interesting insights into William Glackens’ personality and motivations. Glackens is revealed to being reserved in contrast to the more outspoken members of the group. This book is also a good source of primary and secondary information. It features many of Glackens’ paintings, illustrations, and drawings, though in black and white. The bulk of the work includes Glackens’ correspondence with his friends, family, and colleagues.

William Innes Homer, an art historian, wanted to do for Robert Henri what Ira Glackens did for William Glackens, but he wanted to apply serious scholarship to his work. His Robert

Henri and His Circle, published in 1969, highlights Henri’s role in the Ashcan School.

Eschewing Glackens' anecdotal, gossipy style, this book is written in a narrative style. There are

3 Theodore Dreiser, The Genius. (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1923). 4 Brown, 128.

5 Ira Glackens, William Glackens and the Eight: The Artists Who Freed American Art. (New York: Horizon Press, 1957) 4 a good number of Henri’s works displayed in the book, and a few even in color. What Homer does different than the previous works is show that the Ashcan School did not come out of the blue. He argues that they were an extension of a group of artists, most notably the Realist painters Thomas Eakins and Thomas Anshutz. Eakins and Anshutz taught at the prestigious

Pennsylvania School of the Fine Arts, where the Ashcanners studied. Under the leadership of

Eakins, the school became the most progressive in the country. Eakins’ disciple, Anshutz, hated formulas, so he refused to teach his students any. This is the sort of attitude that Henri adopted when advising the Ashcanners. Henri’s favorite refrain was “Don’t paint like me.”6 Homer’s book focuses on Henri’s mentorship of the various artists that sought his aid, as well as his pivotal role in setting up the exhibition that would win recognition for Ashcan art.

Art professor Bennard B. Perlman’s Painters of the Ashcan School: The Immortal Eight, published in 1979 and reprinted with corrections in 1988, says much the same about the Ashcan

School, albeit with less emphasis on Henri. But in contrast to Homer, Perlman adds more political, economic, and social context to the New York of the Ashcan School. It includes a wider variety of Ashcan art than the previous books, and its large format (8 ½” x 11 ¾”) makes looking at details easier. Perlman also adds the artistic context of turn-of-the century American art, which helps the reader better understand the Ashcan School. Perlman draws an interesting parallel between Eakins’ career and the careers of the Ashcanners that is only hinted by Homer.

The reader gets a better understanding as to why this great artist, who faced rejection himself, was so influential to artists of the Ashcan School.

6 Homer, 269. 5

Perlman describes the artistic period in America before Eakins as being one in which originality was frowned upon. Artists were reduced to being mere copyists. Eakins tried to break away from this tradition before the Ashcanners, and accordingly Perlman dedicated a chapter to him. After portraying the development of Eakins’ career, Perlman presents two chapters about the early life of Henri. He then talks about how he met each of the Ashcanners and gives brief biographical information about each. Subsequent chapters follow the development of the ideas and fight for recognition of the Ashcanners with some chapters focusing on specific noteworthy exhibitions. In the final chapters, Perlman speaks of how the avant-garde European art levelled a blow to the Ashcan School. Part of the reason, he states, is that lines of communication between

Europe and America, particularly as to art, were rather slow. Relatively few Americans were aware of how artists like Picasso, Brancusi, and Duchamp were engaging in far more innovative art forms. When they arrived at the Armory Show exhibition in 1913, the Europeans made Henri and his group look tame by comparison. The book ends on a positive tone, for as Perlman remarks, “Time cannot dim [the Ashcan artists’] unselfish acts, their lives of devotion, their deeds which will forever stand as their memorial.”7

Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York (1995), is a collaborative effort written by Rebecca Zurier, an art historian; Robert W. Snyder, a social and cultural historian, as well as a media studies expert; and Virginia M. Mecklenburg, the chief curator of the National Museum of American Art.8 The book was intended as a supplement to the exhibit of the Ashcan School entitled Metropolitan Lives, held at the National Museum of American Art in

7 Perlman, 211.

8 Rebecca Zurier, Robert W. Snyder, and Virginia M Mecklenburg, Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York, ed. Janet Wilson (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995). 6

Washington, D.C. in 1995. Unlike the previous works, it includes George Bellows as an Ashcan artist, whereas before he had been considered outside the group. Though not a Philadelphian,

George Bellows adopted the Ashcan style after being taught by Henri when Henri taught in New

York School of Art. What is different about this cross-disciplinary work is it use of other type of visual media to explain Ashcan art. It employs photographs, postcards, magazine and newspaper illustrations, maps, playbills, movie posters, and other paintings to demonstrate the visual world that the Ashcanners lived in. For example, Zurier answers the charge that the Ashcanners were guilty of racial stereotyping, such as depicting Jews with hooked noses. If they are guilty of such stereotyping, they are no guiltier than the Yiddish press who depicted the same stereotyping in their own newspapers. These artists were a product of their time. Zurier and Snyder also argue against critics that say Ashcan art offered up unrealistic images of happy people living in slums.

The photography of Jacob Riis showed people in these same slums wallowing in misery. Graphs, maps, and statistics from social scientists indicate neighborhoods with high poverty and disease.

Nevertheless, Zurier and Snyder find a good number of memoirs that indicate that despite these harsh conditions, these same people were able to find happiness. If the Ashcan school portrayed only a partial truth of New York, it was only because there was never a single truth of the city, but multiple truths.

Approaching the centennial of the 1908 exhibition of The Eight, Zurier produced another cross-disciplinary monograph of the Ashcan artists. Her 2006 Picturing the City: Urban Vision and the Ashcan School builds upon work done in Metropolitan Lives.9 In Picturing the City,

Zurier introduces her concept of “urban vision” and “urban representation.” In simple terms,

9 Rebecca Zurier. Picturing the City: Urban Vision and the Ashcan School (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). 7 urban vision is the way in which inhabitants of a city decode the visual signs that the city presents them. Not having good urban vision can lead to negative consequences for a city dweller, so it is a critical skill to sharpen. Linked to urban vision, is urban representation, which is the way in which visual cues are presented to the city dweller. The Ashcanners tried to authentically demonstrate command of urban vision and urban representation through their embrace of Realism; their employment of a sketch-like style derived from their journalistic backgrounds, and their visually referencing other forms of urban visual media. An example given, is John Sloan’s Chinese Restaurant (1909). The setting is a Chinese restaurant with a fancily dressed woman in the center of a room with men furtively observing her. Zurier notes, that turn-of-the twentieth century New Yorkers would immediately recognize this woman as a prostitute. The setting—a Chinese restaurant, which was considered a place of ill-repute and the woman’s heavy makeup and costume mark her as such. She goes on further to discuss the representational meaning of buildings in the big city, billboards, public demonstrations, spectacular entertainment, and a whole host of other ways New Yorkers could go about town and communicate in a complex visual language. Zurier’s book is an attempt to demonstrate how the

Ashcan artists absorbed and retransmitted this visually complex world.

Also published in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the 1908 exhibition is

Life’s Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists’ Brush with Leisure, 1895-1925 by James W. Tottis,

Valerie Ann Leeds, Vincent DiGirolamo, Marianne Doezema, an Suzanne Smeanton.10 This book was a companion piece to a 2007 exhibition of the same name held in Detroit and curated by Tottis, associate curator of American Art at the Detroit institute of Arts. The series of essays

10 James W. Tottis et al., Life’s Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists’ Brush with Leisure, 1895-1925, ed. Matthew Taylor (New York: Merrell Publishers, 2007). 8 contained in this book breaks away from the tendency in the previous literature to portray

Ashcan art as dealing with mainly slums and the lower class. These essays focus on people enjoying themselves. Additionally, works of sixteen other artists are included in this volume due to their similarity to the Ashcan School. The various chapters provide illustrations to display how

New Yorkers enjoyed bars and cafes, dining out, sports, and the outdoors. The work also includes a chronology of the Ashcan School as well as brief biographical information of the artists. This book is a refreshing break from the more serious subjects that the Ashcanners are usually associated with. It helps to remember that when the Ashcan artists painted the world around them, that included people enjoying themselves, too.

An American Experiment: George Bellows and the Ashcan Painters (2011) written by

David Peters Corbett, Katherine Bourguignon, and Christopher Riopelle is the third book serving as a companion to an exhibition.11 Corbett is dean of the faculty of Arts and Humanities at East

Anglia University, Bourguignon is curator of the Terra Foundation for American Art in Paris, and Riopelle is curator of Post-1800 Paintings at the National Gallery in London. This brief book was intended for a British audience unfamiliar with George Bellows and the Ashcan School.

Accordingly, it really does not offer anything new about the school in general. Its primary focus is, of course, George Bellows, but does feature works by the other Ashcanners. The reason

Bellows is chosen as the focus, according to Corbett, is that Bellows stands apart from his fellow

Ashcanners for “his willingness to push [his art] to shocking extremes.”12 These extremes are best exemplified in his paintings about boxing. Particularly brutal is his Both Members of this

11 David Peters Corbett, Katherine Bourguignon, and Christopher Riopelle, An American Experiment: George Bellows and the Ashcan Painters (London: National Gallery, 2011). 12 Corbett, “Transcendence and the Urban Scene: George Bellows and the Ashcan Painters.” In An American Experiment: George Bellows and the Ashcan Painters, 21.

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Club (1909), in which the fighter on the left is bloody, battered, and moments away from hitting the canvas. The book serves as a quick overview to those unfamiliar with Ashcanners in general, as well as to those who might want to know more about Bellows.

Ashcan Art, Whiteness, and the Unspectacular Man (2017) by Alexis L. Boylan is another interdisciplinary approach to the Ashcan School.13 Boylan is assistant professor in the

Art and Art History as well as in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Program at the University of Connecticut. In the vein of Metropolitan Lives and Picturing the City, it is a complex work.

Boylan seeks to put a fresh perspective on analyzing Ashcan art by applying Zurier’s urban vision and representation schema to themes of race, masculinity, the commodification of sexuality, and homosexuality as they appear in Ashcan art. In this bold work, Boylan seeks to show how the Ashcanners went against convention by depicting white urban men as wholly unremarkable. They never quite stand out and it is never clear exactly what they are doing. They assert no authority and they never attain fulfillment. Boylan argues that this intentional obscuring of white male figures reflects the artists themselves. The Ashcanners did not want to be categorized. For to be categorized, would mean they could be controlled. Like Zurier and Snyder before, Boylan offers comparisons between other visual media and Ashcan art to prove her thesis. The Ashcan painters effectively tear down socially constructed boundaries of how various sorts of groups are supposed to appear and act. Being thus liberated, the individual is free to be themselves. No doubt this book is a benchmark for future Ashcan studies.

13 Alexis L. Boylan, Ashcan Art, Whiteness, and the Unspectacular Man, (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017).

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The most recent monograph on the Ashcanners is Robert A. Slayton’s Beauty in the City:

The Ashcan School, published in 2017.14 Slayton, a professor of American values and traditions at Chapman University wants to bring back interest in the Ashcan school after their ignominious demise after the Armory Show in 1913. Beauty in the City is written in a somewhat informal tone and it is more targeted for a less scholarly audience than Metropolitan Lives, Picturing the City, or Ashcan Art, Whiteness and the Unspectacular Man were meant for. It is reminiscent of

Perlman’s social contextualization of the period combined with some ideas from Zurier. He adds a little to the social context of turn-of-the century New York by addressing the Social Darwinist mindset of the wealthy elite. This mindset, he argues, was responsible for preventing the poor from getting out of poverty. These poor, of course, were the subject of much of Ashcan art.

Slayton argues that the Ashcanners were as concerned with the poor as the social progressives were. Unlike the progressives, however, the Ashcan painters did not depict the poor as worthy of pity. Using Zurier’s argument, Slayton demonstrates how these artists showed impoverished people enjoying life despite their straightened circumstances. Slayton goes further than the previous literature, however, in showing how Ashcan art influenced a new generation of artists.

These artists were known as the New York Social Realists. Emerging out of the depression, these artists went further than the Ashcan artists in their more direct call for social change. The Ashcan artists did not just fall into obscurity, they simply passed the baton to a new generation.

As Beauty in the City and its predecessors clearly demonstrate, the literature on the

Ashcan School has evolved in varying ways. Different approaches have been applied, such as art history, social history, as well as visual, gender, and racial studies. Different reasons have been

14 Robert A. Slayton, Beauty in the City: The Ashcan School (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017). 11 used for publishing books such as the exhibition of Ashcan art. Sometimes authors have built upon earlier authors, and sometimes they have not. The result is a multifaceted view of the

Ashcan School. Perhaps this speaks to the openness and individuality of the Ashcan artists.

These artists did not want to be fit into a neat category. This has made them fertile ground for analysis from many perspectives.

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Bibliography

Boylan, Alexis L. Ashcan Art, Whiteness, and the Unspectacular Man (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017).

Brown, Milton W. “The Ash Can School.” American Quarterly 1, no. 2 (Summer 1949): 127-34.

Corbett, David Peters, Bourguignon, Katherine, and Riopelle, Christopher. An American Experiment: George Bellows and the Ashcan Painters. London: National Gallery, 201l.

Dreiser, Theodore. The Genius. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1923.

Edgerton, Giles. “The Younger American Painters: Are They Creating a National Art?” The Craftsman (March 1908): 512-532.

Glackens, Ira. Glackens and the Eight: The Artists Who Freed American Art. New York:

Horizon Press, 1957.

Homer, William Innes. Robert Henri and His Circle. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969.

Perlman, Bennard B. Painters of the Ashcan School: The Immortal Eight. 1979. Reprint, Westport, Ct.: Northlight Publishers, 1988.

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Slayton, Robert A. Beauty in the City: The Ashcan School. Albany: State University of New York, 2017.

James W. Tottis and others, Life’s Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists’ Brush with Leisure, 1895- 1925. Edited by Matthew Taylor (New York: Merrell Publishers, 2007.

Zurier, Rebecca. Picturing the City: Urban Vision and the Ashcan School. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

Zurier, Rebecca, Snyder Robert W, and Mecklenburg, Virginia M. Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York. Edited by Janet Wilson New York: W.W. Norton, 1995.