Over the next few days, as we inch closer and closer to the opening of our great new exhibition, Auspicious Vision: Edward Wales Root and American Modernism, we want to spend some time talking about the different schools/styles of art that make up this show.
First up...The Ashcan School
The Ashcan School, also called the Ash Can School, is defined as a realist artistic movement that came into prominence in the United States during the early twentieth century, best known for works portraying scenes of daily life in New York's poorer neighborhoods. The movement is most associated with a group known as The Eight, whose members included five painters associated with the Ashcan school: William Glackens (1870-1938), Robert Henri (1865-1929), George Luks (1867-1933), Everett Shinn (1876-1953) and John French Sloan (1871-1951), along with Arthur B. Davies (1862-1928), Ernest Lawson (1873-1939) and Maurice Prendergast (1859-1924). -From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Several of these artists are featured in the show. And not only that, Edward Wales Root actually studied with Robert Henri and George Luks, though he never showed his art publicly.
Q: Why was it referred to as Ashcan?
A: Because art could be found in the "ashcans" of dirty cities.
One member of The Eight, Arthur Davies, was the driving creative force behind the legendary 1913 Armory Show. Aside from the Ashcan crowd, the show also featured the likes of Picasso, Cezanne, Matisse, and others. It was this show that popularized the term "modern art".
Q: How many Americans are said to have seen The Armory show?
A: Over 300,000
The central location for The Eight was none other than Philadelphia, PA. Quite a few of these artists were illustrators for newspapers and other local publications. It was this newspaper mentality, the realist eye of journalism, that led to the choice of topic by this group. The Eight were to early 1900's Philly what The Wire was to early 2000's Baltimore, realistic social commentary told through a visual medium.
While it's easy to look back now, a century later, and see the value in what these artists were doing, we have to remember how much they were pushing the envelope at the time. Rebelling from the tameness and lack of social relevance provided by impressionism, while paving the way for the abstract expressionists, THE EIGHT CANNOT BE FORGOTTEN.
Q: When does the Auspicious Vision exhibition begin?
A: Sunday, August 23rd
