Life's Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists' Brush With Leisure

This article was originally published on December 30, 2012

Life's Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists' Brush With Leisure, 1895–1925 is recommended not only to those studying the course of American Realism, but also to anyone with an interest in the history of NYC at the turn of the twentieth century. The book was orginally compiled as a catalog to an exhibit at the NY Historical Society, but is much more readable -- perhaps due to its subject matter -- than most such volumes. Vincent DiGirolamo's essay "New York in an Age of Amusement" is particularly instructive.

The work of the Eight and the Ashcan School cannot be understood outside the class warfare that has enveloped NYC since its founding. This always was and is a city of "haves" and "have nots." NYC is where billionaires live uneasily alongside the poor, often in the same neighborhoods but belonging to a different world. Prior to the development of American Realism, the art world in NYC existed solely for the rich. The millionaires had their own artists to paint their portraits and their social milieu just as they had their boxes at the Met Opera. 

The Eight, many of them working as newspaper illustrators, were the first to turn their attention to recording the lives of NYC's working class and their own entertainments, which generally were much more lively and fun than those of the wealthy. Some of the Ashcan School were socialists and deeply concerned by the plight of the poor and unemployed in a city of unimaginable wealth. These artists presented the lives of the downtrodden as worth recording for its own sake. They painted scenes of McSorley's Ale House and tenement children at play that now provide us with a window into a period of the city's history that otherwise would have gone unrecorded.

The founding spirit of the Ashcan School was Robert Henri who developed a following while teaching at the NY School of Art and who famously wrote in 1923:

"The greatness can only come by the art spirit entering into the very life of the people, not as a thing apart, but as the greatest essential of life to each one. It is to make every life productive of light -- a spiritual influence."

Other important artists of the Ashcan School were George Bellows, William Glackens, George Luks and John Sloan. All tirelessly painted the street life of NYC underneath its "el's" as well as Manhattan's drinking places, music hall entertainments, and small Greenwich Village restaurants where artists regularly congregated. We should be forever grateful for the rich legacy they have left to us.