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How and Why Was the Art Produced by the Ashcan School Different From That of the Gilded Age?

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Crocker Art Museum

Sacramento, CA

916-264-5423

http://www.crockerartmuseum.org/

American Revolutions: The Other Side of Modern, 1900-1945

by Scott A. Shields

T he history of twentieth-century art in the United States is usually discussed every bit a serial of revolutions. These revolutions are manifest in changing attitudes about the goals and purposes of art, definitions of what art is and should be and, most importantly, the development of abstraction. The primacy given to these changes by art historians, especially the development of abstraction, has relegated the consideration of subject-based painting, with the traditional themes like landscape, still-life, figure, portrait and genre painting, to a secondary role. Withal, for artists on both the E and West Coasts, it was precisely through these themes that American modernism primarily developed. This exhibition seeks to explore the evolution of early twentieth-century painting non through abstraction, but through representational art.

Until the generation of the Abstract Expressionists, virtually American artists were never entirely comfortable with relinquishing the hard-earned drawing skills they learned through rigorous academic training. This is particularly evident in the work of American Impressionist artists who, unlike their European counterparts, were never quite willing to dissolve their subjects in a flurry of brushstrokes and lite. Mostly, American artists utilized only the Impressionists' vocabulary of color and brushwork, just retained the underlying solidity and structure of the forms they were portraying. American Impressionist Childe Hassam (1859-1935) [fig. 1] took his nationalism one pace farther. Descended from old New England lineage, Hassam not but retained the solidity of the subjects he portrayed, merely identified himself as an American creative person seeking to invest Impressionism with an American spirit. Many local artists followed accommodate, and sought to make their impressionist paintings not but distinctly American, but distinctly Californian. (left: fig. one Childe Hassam (1859-1935), An Outdoor Portrait of Miss Weir, 1909. Oil on canvass, 38 x 38 in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of Mr. And Mrs. Vern C. Jones and other donors)

Other artists in the offset decades of the century pursued different paths. Painters of the Boston schoolhouse, for example, chose to concentrate less on style than on subject, depicting the wealthy, refined sitters reminiscent of America's Gilded Historic period. Others, like the Urban Realists, also called the "Ashcan School," produced darker, grittier scenes of the more seamy aspects of urban center life. This group of artists, led past Robert Henri (1865-1929), broke with the academic traditions of the final century and exhibited together as "The Eight." Their styles and subjects varied widely, and in addition to metropolis views included rural landscapes, genre scenes, and portraits of children, frequently drawn from the urban poor. Henri himself was particularly dedicated to portraiture, and the artist'south portraits of children, frequently representing different indigenous groups, manifest his autonomous view of humanity [fig. 2]. ( left: fig. 2 Robert Henri (1865-1929), The Romany Girl, north.d.. Oil on sheet, 24 10 30 in. Crocker Fine art Museum, gift of the Museum Purchase Fund; right: fig. 3 Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), March, Greenland, 1932-33. Oil on canvass mounted on board, 34 x 44 in. Crocker Museum Buy)

In contrast, other painters, particularly those who worked outside the Due east'south artistic centers, depicted landscape scenes nearly devoid of human being presence. Creative person Rockwell Kent's (1882-1971) northern snow-clad landscapes, for example, present nature as a sublime force imbued with transcendental and symbolic meaning, continuing the traditions of the nineteenth-century Hudson River School [fig. 3]. California artist Maynard Dixon (1875-1946), by contrast, focused on the Westward, depicting the frontier landscape and the Native Americans and vaqueros who lived in that location [fig. 4]. Other Californians depicted scenes of pure landscape-from mountain to coastal views-while some portrayed California as an Arcadia, a place where nymphs might bathe in pastoral settings [fig. 5]. (left: fig. iv Maynard Dixon (1875-1946), Indian on a Horse, 1907. Watercolor, ten i/2 x thirteen 3/8 in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of Dr. Herzl Friedlander)

Afterward San Francisco's Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915, California artists began to strike out in new directions, moving from Tonalism, which was so the dominant aesthetic in the San Francisco Bay Expanse, to Impressionism and beyond. Even when applying more modern methods such as Post-impressionist paint application, cubist composition, and Fauvist color, Californians continued to focus on the state'southward natural settings and were reluctant to abandon their subject area matter completely. This would not alter until the mid-twentieth century.

In New York, the core group of artists championed past Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), which included Arthur Pigeon (1880-1946), Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), and John Marin (1870-1953), as well as the closely associated Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), were pioneers in the development of abstraction in the United States betwixt 1910 and 1920. However, fifty-fifty these artists chose representation as their chief mode of expression. Hartley's cubist-inspired abstractions, for instance, although highly significant in his oeuvre, were a brief foray in his career, and for Pigeon, O'Keeffe and Marin, not-referential abstraction was attempted only rarely. Theirs was a relative abstraction, a means for communicating the underlying essence and spirit of their subjects. Georgia O'Keeffe'southward still life from 1942 entitled Information technology Was a Human being and a Pot [fig. 6] combines a recognizable subject with an abstract composition. Characterized by a combination of formal power and romantic mystery, the painting is an elegiac meditation on mortality through the broken shards of a ceramic vessel and a human skull. (left: fig. six Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), It Was a Human being and a Pot, 1942. Oil on canvas, 16 ten xx in. Crocker Art Museum Association purchase with matching funds from the National Endowment for the Arts)

As America came of age in the early twentieth century, and equally the United states of america began to assume a more than global position of world leadership, American artists generally were attempting to define the native qualities of their art. In the years following World War I, writers such as Van Wyck Brooks and Waldo Frank urged artists to render their own distinctly American perception of place, arguing that past rendering the item they could achieve the universal. With American isolationist tendencies and attitudes strong in the wake of the War, concentration on people and places American became particularly pronounced.

American scene painting and the Golden Country variant, California scene painting, are labels broadly practical to many artists, particularly the Regionalists, Social Realists, and artists under government employ during the Great Depression. These artists turned to local subjects, depicting the people, manmade environments, and landscapes they establish close at hand. Their art sought to express nationalistic sentiments and an explicitly American experience through topicality, local custom, and chestnut. By depicting the bailiwick matter they knew best, these artists sought to develop a autonomous art attainable to the ordinary person. They employed recognizable themes, hands readable styles, and occasionally nostalgia and sentiment. In technique, they sought to avert or decline foreign influences and to create American art in an American style. Works of this period include the Midwestern regionalism of artists like Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) [fig. 7], figurative artists such as Moses Soyer (1899-1974) and Guy Pène du Bois (1884-1958), and local California scene paintings and prints by Millard Sheets (1907-1989), Chiura Obata (1885-1975) [fig. 8], Otis Oldfield (1890-1969), and others. (left: fig. eight Chiura Obata (1885-1975), Evening Moon: Yosemite, ca. 1928. Color woodblock print, 17 3/iv x 13 ane/4 in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Kodani)

In the bridge of forty years, these American paintings, although based on visual reality, could not, and did not, remain stagnant, but responded to forces of change and evolving conceptions of modernity. During this flow, artists' interpretations of the American experience were widely divergent, and the diversity present in their fine art was greater than in any previous flow of American art history and has since merely connected to aggrandize. Information technology is this individuality of experience, this tenacity of purpose, that near characterize the American vision.

Captions

fig. one Childe Hassam (1859-1935), An Outdoor Portrait of Miss Weir, 1909. Oil on canvas, 38 ten 38 in. Crocker Art Museum, souvenir of Mr. And Mrs. Vern C. Jones and other donors.

fig. 2 Robert Henri (1865-1929), The Romany Girl, due north.d.. Oil on sail, 24 x 30 in. Crocker Fine art Museum, gift of the Museum Purchase Fund.

fig. 3 Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), March, Greenland, 1932-33. Oil on canvas mounted on board, 34 x 44 in. Crocker Museum Purchase.

fig. 4 Maynard Dixon (1875-1946), Indian on a Horse, 1907. Watercolor, 10 1/2 10 xiii 3/8 in. Crocker Fine art Museum, souvenir of Dr. Herzl Friedlander.

fig. 5 Xavier Martinez (1869-1943), The Bathers, n.d. Oil on sheet, 16 ten 13 in. Crocker Art Museum, gift of William C. Wright.

fig. vi Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), It Was a Human and a Pot, 1942. Oil on canvas, 16 x 20 in. Crocker Art Museum Association purchase with matching funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

fig. vii Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), Planting, 1939. Lithograph, 11 iii/viii x 15 3/four in. Crocker Fine art Museum, gift of James Grand. Stephens.

fig. 8 Chiura Obata (1885-1975), Evening Moon: Yosemite, ca. 1928. Color woodblock impress, 17 three/4 ten 13 ane/4 in. Crocker Art Museum, souvenir of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Kodani.

Almost the Curator: Scott A. Shields

Formerly the Curator of Fine Arts at the California Historical Society, Scott A. Shields has extensive feel working with California art in various media. He became specially interested in California painting while serving every bit the National Endowment for the Arts Intern in American Paintings at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and subsequently selected a California-based dissertation topic dealing with the artists' colony of Monterey and Carmel. His undergraduate degrees are in art education and graphic design, both from the University of Nebraska, and he holds an M.A. in fine art history from the Academy of Kansas. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in American Art at this same establishment. (left: Scott A. Shields)

Shields has curated numerous exhibitions including The Exoticized Woman and Her Allure in American Art, Feminine and Floral Imagery of the Art Nouveau, Stay East Beau: California Golden Rush Alphabetic character Sheets, Interpreting California: The Art of History, and California 1900. He is currently at piece of work on an exhibition featuring California's French painters, entitled Splendide Californie: French Artists Impressions of the Golden State, 1786-1900. Shields has written articles for various scholarly journals, including the Smithsonian's journal American Art and, near recently, was one of the contributing authors to a volume on artist Percy Gray, published by the Carmel Fine art Association.

American Revolutions: The Other Side of Modern, 1900 - 1945 is on showroom Feb 2 - April 29, 2001

Checklist of the Exhibition

Milton Avery, American, 1893 - 1965, Drawbridge, 1936, Drypoint, Souvenir of Bruce Brook in memory of Philip S. Tow 1986.10

Gifford Beal, American, 1879 - 1956, Bareback Act, Quondam Hippodrome, Not dated, Lithograph, Gift of Associated American Artists, 1967.12

Thomas Hart Benton, American, 1889 - 1975, Planting (also titled Bound Plowing), 1939, Lithograph, Gift of James M. Stephens, 1966.21

Thomas Hart Benton, American, 1889 - 1975, Loading Corn (also titled Shucking Corn), 1945, Lithograph, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Michael J. Heller 1968.32

Ray Bertrand, American, 1909 - 1960, Study for Hermit Valley, Not dated, Carbon watercolor wash on newspaper, Crocker Art Museum Association, 1885.547

Rex Brandt, American, 1914 - 2000, Junction at Julian, c. 1939, Watercolor on paper, Fine art Conquering Fund 1959 ,1959.8

Giuseppe Leone Cadenasso, American, 1854 - 1918, Seminary Avenue, Mills College, Non dated, Oil on canvas, Souvenir of Dr. and Mrs. Ralph W. Schaffarzick in memory of their son, Jon, 1991.13

Jennie Vennerstrom Cannon, American, 1869 - 1952, San Francisco, Not dated, Lithograph, Gift of Jennie Crocker Fassett, 1925.three.148e

Colin Campbell Cooper, American, 1856 -1937, Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, c. 1915, Oil on sail, Souvenir of Helene Seeley in memory of Mr. and Mrs. C.C. Cooper, Conserved with funds provided by Gerald Gordon through the Gifts to Share program, 1940.24

Tom Craig, American, 1907 - 1969, City of Elk, Not dated, Watercolor on newspaper, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. A. Alan Mail, 1973.three

Arthur Bowen Davies, American, 1862 - 1928, Woodland Spring, Non dated, Lithograph, Gift of Jennie Crocker Fassett, 1925.three.148j

Maynard Dixon American, 1875 - 1946, Indian on Horse, Sept. 12, 1907, Watercolor on paper, Gift of Dr. Herzl Friedlander, 1980.77

Guy Péne du Bois, American, 1884 - 1958, Girl Reading a Book, 1929, Oil on canvas, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Herzl Friedlander, 1972.xiii

Frederick Carl Frieseke, American, 1874 - 1939, Adult female in Her Boudoir, Non dated, Oil on sheet, Gift of Anne and Malcolm McHenry, 1994.xviii.ane

John Marshall Gamble, American, 1863 - 1957, Wild Lilac and Poppies, Non dated, Oil on canvas, Gift of the California Museum Clan, 1948.five

Percy Gray, American, 1869 - 1952, Cypress Trees nigh Pt. Lobos, 1924, Watercolor on paper laminated to cardboard, Gift of the California Museum Association, 1948.3

Marion Greenwood, American, 1909 - 1970, Fringed Scarf, Not dated, Lithograph, Gift of Associated American Artists, 1925.iii.148g

Marsden Hartley, American, 1877 - 1943, Fisherman'due south Family unit, Not dated, Oil on sheet, Souvenir of Dr. and Mrs. Herzl Friedlander, 1976.15

Childe Hassam American, 1859 - 1935, An Outdoor Portrait of Miss Weir, 1909, Oil on sail, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Vern C. Jones and other donors, 1980.23

Childe Hassam, American, 1859 - 1935, On the Palisades, 1916, Watercolor on paper, Purchased with funds from the Crocker Fine art Gallery Association and the Art Acquisition Fund 1975, 1975.53

Robert Henri, American, 1865 - 1929, The Romany Girl, Not dated, Oil on canvas, Museum Purchase Fund 1965, 1965.38

Herman G. Herkomer, American, 1863 - 1935, The Creative person's Wife and Son, 1904, Oil on canvas, Gift of Mrs. Blanche Herkomer, 1950.12

Clarence Kaiser Hinkle, American, 1880 - 1960, Palm Canyon, Not dated, Oil on sheet, Museum Purchase, 1939.77

Maryn Hunzeker, American, 1907 - 1972, Due south.P. [Southern Pacific] Yards, Roseville, Not dated, Watercolor on newspaper, Gift in retentivity of Mary Hunzeker, 1974.33

William Franklin Jackson, American, 1850 - 1936, Suisun Marshes, Not dated, Oil on canvas, Bearding gift, 1948.i

Rockwell Kent, American, 1882 - 1971, March, Greenland,1932 - 33, Oil on sail mounted on board, Crocker Art Museum Clan, 1975.25

Dong Kingman, American, b. 1911, Bay at Sunrise, Not dated, Lithograph, Donor unknown, 1885.351

Gene (Alice Geneva) Kloss, American, 1903 - 1996, From Telegraph Hill, Not dated, Engraving, Gift of the Kingsley Art Club, 1974.25.17

Mary Amanda Lewis, American, 1877 - 1953, Sketching, c. 1914, Oil on canvas, Souvenir of the artist, 1950.19

Erle Loran, American, 1905 - 1999, San Francisco Bay, 1940, Lithograph, Crocker Art Museum Association, 1925.3.148c

Peppino Mangravite, American, 1896 - 1978, Untitled, Not dated, Lithograph, Crocker Fine art Museum Clan, 1885.353

Xavier Timoteo Martinez, American, 1869 - 1943, The Bathers, Non dated, Oil on canvass, Gift of William C. Wright, 1962.22

Gertrude Mihsfeldt, American, 1903 - 1989, The Dancing Lesson, 1940, Lithograph, Crocker Art Museum Association, 1885.489

Barse Miller, American, 1904 - 1973, Along the Sacramento, 1941, Watercolor on newspaper, Gift of Mrs. Barse Miller, 1975.71

Perham Wilhelm Nahl, American, 1869 - 1935, Fifteenth Goblin: The Fairy Prince Deject-Chariot and the Serpent Shell-Crest. Which is the more self-sacrificing?, c. 1916, Watercolor and chalk on paper backed by board, Souvenir of Mrs. Helen Crawford, 1943.4

Karl Eugen Neuhaus, American, 1879 - 1963, Mouth of the Navarro River, c. 1920, Oil on canvas, Gift of Robert Neuhaus, 1979.nineteen

Chiura Obata, American (b. Japan), 1885 - 1975, Evening Moon: Yosemite, c. 1928, Color woodblock on newspaper, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Eugen Kodani, 1994.25.two

Georgia O'Keeffe, American, 1887 - 1986, It was a Human and a Pot, 1942, Oil on canvas, Souvenir of California Art Gallery Association with matching funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, 1973.23

Otis William Oldfield, American, 1890 - 1969, Mountain Flag Stop, Not dated, Watercolor on newspaper, Donor unknown, 1885.470

George Booth Post, American, b. 1906, Piedmont Hills, 1966, Watercolor on paper, Gift of the Crocker Art Gallery Clan, 1967.17

William Frederick Ritschel, American, 1864 - 1949, The In-Stealing Fog, 1916, Oil on canvas, Gift of Mrs. Charles Alexander, 1939.61.1

Millard Sheets, American, 1907 - 1989, Beyond the Approach, 1937, Watercolor on newspaper, Souvenir of Dr. and Mrs. Herzl Friedlander, 1972.29

John Sloan, American, 1871 - 1951, Brainerd'southward Part, Not dated, Black wax crayon on paper, Gift of Maude T. Pook, 1965.6

John Sloan, American, 1871 - 1951, Salvation Dinners, 1909, Etching, Crocker Art Museum Association, 1966.ix.1

Moses Soyer, American, 1898 - 1974, Ballerina, Not dated, Oil on sheet, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Herzl Friedlander, 1979.49

Maurice H. Sterne, American (b. Russia), 1877 - 1957, Italian Summer - Shepherdess Sleeping, 1925 - 36, Oil on board, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Herzl Friedlander, 1973.5

Charles Frederick Surendorf, American, 1906 - 1979, Old Burn down Firm-Columbia, Not dated, Lithograph, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Herzl Friedlander, 1972.12.4

Edmund C. Tarbell, American, 1862 - 1934, In the Station Waiting Room, Boston, ca. 1915, Oil on sheet, Gift of Dr. Joseph R. Fazzano, 1956.seven

Theodore Wores, American, 1860 - 1939, Sand Dunes and Wild Flowers, Non dated, Oil on canvas, Gift of Dr. Ben Shenson and Dr. A. Jess Shenson, 1970.19

Harry Wickey, American, 1892 - 1968, Tertiary Avenue El, Not dated, Etching, Museum Purchase Fund,. 1967.35

Read more well-nigh the Crocker Art Museum in Resource Library Magazine

Delight click on thumbnail images bordered past a carmine line to come across enlargements.

For further biographical information on selected artists cited higher up please see America's Distinguished Artists, a national registry of historic artists.

This page was originally published in Resource Library Magazine. Delight see Resources Library'south Overview section for more than information. rev. 5/23/11

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