The Ashcan Artists focused on daily joys and struggles of working class people, usually in crowded urban environments. Using fast, rough strokes and mostly dark colors, they captured the essence of life in the streets in the early 1900s.
At a time when the rich were growing richer, the Ashcan Artists turned their focus away from the elite. Instead, their work portrayed poverty, expanding slums and the increasing presence of technology in daily life. They celebrated the lives of millions of European immigrants who entered New York in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
A New Focus Emerged From Crowded Streets
Although they were trailblazers in American art, the Ashcan artists were more a group of like-minded people than an organized school. While their individual styles were unique, all were urban realists.
They coalesced against the popular styles of American Impressionism and academic realism.
Farisa Kahlidin writes:
“In the spring of 1907, the Philadelphia-trained painter Robert Henri rallied his friends, John Sloan, Everett Shin, Arthur Davies, Ernest Lawson, Maurice Prendergast, William Glackens, and George Luks when Luks’ painting, Man with Dyed Mustachios, was rejected by the conservative National Academy for their Spring Exhibition.” (Center For Public Art History)
They held their first major exhibition, Eight American Painters, at The Macbeth Gallery in February 1908. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney purchased four paintings from the show which are now held in the Whitney Museum of American Art.
John Sloan, Robert Henri, and George Bellows were also illustrators for the socialist magazine, The Masses. In 1916 a member of the editorial staff complained about the abundance of pictures with ash cans and prostitutes. Amused by the comment, they adopted the moniker Ashcan Artists.
A Prime Example Of The New American Trend
Among the many subjects of the Ashcan Artists were the immigrants from Europe who became a crucial part of working class America. Paintings celebrated laundry women, bartenders, longshoreman, boxers, waiters, street cleaners, entertainers and many more.
Election Night (1907) by John Sloan (1871-1951) offers an excellent example from the Ashcan Artists.
Daniel Cassady of Art News writes that Election Day at the turn of the century triggered raucous, but hopeful celebrations in metropolitan cities like New York. Election Night “shows us just how exciting casting a vote and waiting for results could be at the turn of the century.”
Like jazz musicians, Ashcan Artists were singularly American as they drew from urban life.
“Robert Henri (1865–1929), considered to be the Ashcan’s paterfamilias and a mentor to many of its artists, once said he ‘wanted art to be akin to journalism. . . . paint to be as real as mud, as the clods of horse-shit and snow that froze on Broadway in the winter.’” (Cassady/ArtNews)
Some Were Not Impressed By The National Armory Exhibit
The Ashcan Artists presented their works in several important New York exhibitions in the early 1900s. One of the most significant was a group show held at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City in 1913.
According to Barbara Weinberg of the Metropolitan Museum of Art the Ashcan Artists defined the avant-garde in America at this show. It also “introduced to the American public the works of true modernists Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, and others.” (Barbara Weinberg)
But many were not impressed by the modernist trend.
The New York Tribune wrote on February 17, 1913:
“It is a fine and stirring exhibition that the association of American Painters and Sculptors will open with a formal reception at the 69th Regiment Armory tonight. This international show of about a thousand examples of modern art includes some of the most stupidly ugly pictures in the world…”
When the show was in Chicago, authorities launched a formal investigation.
The headline in the Ottumwa Tri-Weekly Courier, Iowa, April 3, 1913 read:
Cubist Art Will be Investigated; Illinois Legislative Investigators to Probe the Moral Tone of the Much Touted Art
“Charges that the international exhibition of cubist and futurist pictures, now being displayed here at the art institute, contains many indecent canvasses and sculptures will be investigated at once by the Illinois legislature white slave commission.”
A visit of an investigator to the show and his report on the pictures caused Lieutenant Governor Barratt O’Hara to order an immediate examination of the entire exhibition. Mr. O’Hara sent the investigator to look over the pictures after he had received many complaints of the character of the show.
Then President Theodore Roosevelt reflected the sentiment of many people at the time, commenting, “That’s not art!”
Nellie Bly Focused On Slums In the 1880s
The trend toward populist, documentary-style realism embodied by the Ashcan Artists had been evolving in disciplines including photography, journalism and literature.
Farisa Khalid writes:
“The poetry of Walt Whitman, the prose of Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser, the plays of Eugene O’Neill, and the music of ragtime and Tin Pan Alley comprised their emotional and spiritual soundtrack. “ (Center For Public Art History)
Photojournalist Jacob Riis (1849-1914) triggered urban reforms with his book How the Other Half Lives (1890).
Like the Ashcan Artists, Nellie Bly (1864-1922) did her best work reporting from the streets of the New York slums. Her name became known when she went undercover in an insane asylum. Her series of articles published on the front page of the New York World was later published as a book Ten Days In A Mad-House(1897).
Alice Austen became known for her photo-journalism of immigrant life in the streets of New York Her portfolio “Street Types of New York,” was published in 1896.
Elizabeth Nourse (October 26, 1859 – October 8, 1938) became known both for her technical skill and the vision she brought to her subjects, whether landscape or human. As a forerunner of Social Realism, Nourse portrayed the poor with unflinching attention to the challenges of their daily lives. defied all odds by carving out a successful full-time career as a female painter in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At a time when women were broadly considered inferior artists, Nourse achieved significant honors working in a man’s world.
Racing Nellie Bly
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