ASP 1900-29

A visit to

America 20+ years of the 20th Century

Introduction to American Art and Visual Culture – Lecture 3

Defining ‘modern’

‘modernization’ – artists are reacting to dominant traditions and change occurs in reaction to industry, urbanization, technology, and nationalism.

‘ modernism’ – the culture that emerged in the 19c that includes the ideas, beliefs and modes of perception which formed a movement to reject convention.

Contemporary?

It is December 31, 1899…you can make one wish for

the 20th century.

What would you wish for if you could go back in time?

1900-10

Art Schools in 1900

Chicago Art Institute 1879

Art Student’s League NYC 1875

Harvard 1874 (Charles Elliot Norton)

National Academy of Art and Design, NYC 1825

Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia 1805

The “Eight” [Ashcan School]• unified by subject matter rather than style• 1908 exhibition

Arthur DaviesWilliam Glackens*Robert HenriErnest Lawson*George Luks*Maurice PrendergastEverett Shinn*John Sloan

The critics said:

” Apostles of Ugliness” “ pictures of [garbage] cans”

Why do art styles seem to move forward through

reaction to a previous style.

Is this strategy still possible in the 21c?

Ashcan SchoolDefining an American Style

The Ash Can School was more revolutionary in its subject matter rather than its style. The Ash Can school artists sought to paint "real life" and urban reality. These artists believed what was real and true in life was what was beautiful and what constituted "art." They painted gritty urban scenes and the poor and disenfranchised in America.

ASHCAN SCHOOL: Robert Henri

Robert Henri (1865-1929) The Art Student’s League of NYC

http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/by_artist.php?id=663For more of this artist’s work

Robert Henri (1865-1929) Laughing Child (1907)

Robert Henri The Laundress (1916)

Robert Henri (no date)Spanish Dancer

Robert Henri (1865-1929) The Laughing Gypsy

Robert Henri (1914) Chow Choy

Robert Henri (1917) Indian Girl in White Ceremonial Blanket

ASHCAN SCHOOL: John Sloan

John Sloan (1871-1951) Dust Storm on 5th Avenue (1906)

In 1906, the leading Ashcan artist Sloan moved with his wife to quarters on New York's West 23rd Street, a block and a half west of Madison Square and the renowned Fuller ("Flatiron") Building. On June 10, 1906, Sloan noted in his diary: "In the afternoon, walking on Fifth Avenue, we were on the edge of a beautiful wind storm, the air full of dust and a sort of panicky terror in all the living things in sight." A day later, he had begun to paint the scene, emphasizing the hurly-burly elicited by the swirl of dust. Sloan also tells a story about the city's growth. Indeed, it was the presence of the Flatiron Building—completed in 1902 and the only skyscraper in a low-rise neighborhood—that created the wind-tunnel effect in Madison Square that Sloan described.

John Sloan (1909) Recruiting in Union Square

John Sloan (1910) Yeats at Pettipas

John Sloan (no date) Woman’s Work

John Sloan (1914) The Ludlow Massacre

ASHCAN SCHOOL: Maurice Prendergast

Maurice Prendergast (1859-1924) Landscape with Figures

Maurice Prendergast (no date) The Stony Beach

Maurice Prendergast (1901) Central Park New York

Maurice Prendergast (1898-99) Piazza San Marco

ASHCAN SCHOOL: George Luks

George Luks (1922) Spring Morning at Houston and Division Streets

George Luks (1922) Bleeker and Carmine Streets

CinemaDefining an American Style

Edwin Porter’s The Great Train Robbery (1903)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc7wWOmEGGY

Comedy in Early Film

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvNtn3yZxDU

DW Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxSSFPuK39I

KKK

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CTG58jIlNA&feature=fvw

The Gibson Girl (1900)

• "Gibson Girl" became a model for fashion mimicked by women and admired by men, while the adventures of "Mr. Pipp" amused his audience and his satirical drawings provided social commentary. His drawings appeared in such popular magazines as Scribner's, Harpers, Collier's, and The Century. His images permeated popular culture, appearing in such non-print items as wallpaper, china plates, matchboxes and umbrella stands in much the same way that today's popular icons grace T-shirts and sweat shirts.

“Leftovers”: Art Nouveau, Arts and Crafts, etc.Defining an American Style

Nature as inspirationstayed around for a decade into the 20c.

Some Americans (like Morris, Pugin, and other Brits) reacted to industrializationby adhering to a philosophyof the handmade.

ArchitectureDefining an American Style

Louis Sullivan 1856- 1924Defining American Architecture

an American architect, who has been called the "father of modernism." He is considered by many as the creator of the modern skyscraper, was an influential architect and critic of the Chicago School, was a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, and an inspiration to the Chicago group of architects who have come to be known as the Prairie School.

Form follows function.

Louis Sullivan’s work.

Louis Sullivan’s work.

Louis Sullivan’s work.

Louis Sullivan’s work.

Louis Sullivan’s work.

Louis Sullivan’s work.

The Mass MediaDefining an American Style

94% of the world can recognize a coke logo

1910-20

The Avant-GardeDefining an American Style

George Bellows (1909) Both Members of the Club

Most Significant in Becoming “Modern” in America1913 Armory Show in NYC that brought European Avant-Garde to America

• Partial list of the artistsRobert Ingersoll Aitken, Alexander Archipenko, George Grey Barnard, Chester Beach, Gifford Beal, George Bellows, Joseph Bernard, Guy Pène du Bois, Oscar Bluemner, Pierre Bonnard, Gutzon Borglum, Antoine Bourdelle, Constantin Brancusi, Georges Braque, Patrick Henry Bruce, Paul Burlin, Charles Camoin, Arthur Carles, Mary Cassatt, Paul Cézanne, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, Henri-Edmond Cross, Leon Dabo, Andrew Dasburg, Honoré Daumier, Stuart Davis, Arthur B. Davies, Edgar Degas, Eugène Delacroix, Robert Delaunay, Maurice Denis, André Derain, Marcel Duchamp, Raoul Dufy, Jacob Epstein, Roger de La Fresnaye, Othon Friesz, Paul Gauguin, William Glackens, Albert Gleizes, Vincent van Gogh, Marsden Hartley, Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, Edward Hopper, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, James Innes, Augustus John, Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Leon Kroll, Walt Kuhn, Gaston Lachaise, Marie Laurencin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Fernand Léger, Jonas Lie, George Luks, Aristide Maillol, Édouard Manet, Henri Manguin, John Marin, Albert Marquet, Henri Matisse, Alfred Henry Maurer, Claude Monet, Adolphe Monticelli, Edward Munch, Walter Pach, Jules Pascin, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, Maurice Prendergast, Odilon Redon, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Theodore Robinson, Georges Rouault, Henri Rousseau, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Georges Seurat, Charles Sheeler, Walter Sickert, Paul Signac, Alfred Sisley, John Sloan, Joseph Stella, John Henry Twachtman, Félix Vallotton, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Jacques Villon, Édouard Vuillard, Abraham Walkowitz, J. Alden Weir, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Jack B. Yeats, William Zorach, Amadeo de Souza Cardoso ]

Most Significant in Becoming “Modern” in AmericaAlfred Stieglitz, his magazine “Camera Work,” and his exhibitions at 291 Gallery of Matisse, Picasso, Rodin, and CezanneRead more at: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_9_89/ai_78334694/

Picasso and Braque Exhibition (1915)

Most Significant in Becoming “Modern” in America Duchamp’s antics

Read more: http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/27/duchamp.php

America Absorbs EuropeDefining an American Style

Charles Sheeler

Marsden Hartley

Man Ray (Radnitsky)

Frank Stella Georgia O’Keefe

Arthur Dove

Photography had a new use…it was used to call attention to social issuesProgressive Photography

Child Labor

The 1890 census revealed that more than one million children, ten to fifteen years old, worked in America.

That number increased to two million by 1910. Industries employed children as young as five or six to work as many as eighteen to twenty hours a day.

Immigration

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EACoIbokOcc

What would YOU photograph in 2009 ?

1920-30

Art Deco and 1920sDefining an American Style

Clara Bow

Greta Garbo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn2400F3L2s&feature=related

The Chrysler Building

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQfc8YheJEA&feature=PlayList&p=C2640B3C11EE9F81&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=48

ProhibitionDefining an American Culture

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiYqFXmVAFg

To live in the 20s

http://sites.google.com/site/americanartasp/people

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Read short stories from “The Jazz Age” online

I particularly like “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

Love of InventionDefining an American Culturehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAGAeTC9fIo

1920s DanceDefining an American Culture

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGPnPHrrZeA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3svvCj4yhYc&feature=related