Modern American Art
Urban Modernity in NY (1908) and Ash Can artists
General: The thrills of technology, such as coney island, city of wonders, also had the nitty gritty, more poverty and realistic side of the city with the ash can artists
• Song Slide: nickelodeon o Diversity, adults children white black o Let the audience feel as a presence w/in performance o Act of watching was also entertainment
• Coney Island at Night- film frame o Electricity changing what nighttime meant in urban setting
• Before it was to be avoided and now it is not. Led to growth of nightlife
• Footlight flirtation o Vaudeville established itself from burlesque/cheap entertainment
• Create a form of entertainment that could be viewed by all, no vulgarity
• Movies: five cents o Films mixed with live acts, broadened nighttime environment (attended by unescorted women, creating unsupervised encounters b/w men and women)
• Started consumer culture- break down Victorian gender
• Mixed audience represented experience of urban life (black/white, men/women)
Exciting, instability, city new visual experience
• Lone Tenement (George Bellows) o Wanted to facec the ugly in city as well as beautiful o Worked against Whistler (avoided aesheticism)
• Rawness of city, depicted vaudeville (which is like mixture of acts such as burlesque, comedians, music, etc) o Liked to show economic conditions of urban poor
• Ash Can painting style: thick and messy, meant to look like it was applied slap-dash manner, jittery o Ash can artists started as illustrationalists o Borrowed from manet but were more interested in giving subjects agency
• Called insufficiently modern
• Whistler’s work is about distancing us, Bellows is about confronting the difficult world, the real world, gritty grimy
The Stieglitz Circle & Transatlantic Modernism
General: Cubism, Italian Futurists, Fauvism, abstraction, NY Dada
• Six O’Clock, Winter, John Sloane, 1912 o Display Discontinuity of urban life
General: The thrills of technology, such as coney island, city of wonders, also had the nitty gritty, more poverty and realistic side of the city with the ash can artists
• Song Slide: nickelodeon o Diversity, adults children white black o Let the audience feel as a presence w/in performance o Act of watching was also entertainment
• Coney Island at Night- film frame o Electricity changing what nighttime meant in urban setting
• Before it was to be avoided and now it is not. Led to growth of nightlife
• Footlight flirtation o Vaudeville established itself from burlesque/cheap entertainment
• Create a form of entertainment that could be viewed by all, no vulgarity
• Movies: five cents o Films mixed with live acts, broadened nighttime environment (attended by unescorted women, creating unsupervised encounters b/w men and women)
• Started consumer culture- break down Victorian gender
• Mixed audience represented experience of urban life (black/white, men/women)
Exciting, instability, city new visual experience
• Lone Tenement (George Bellows) o Wanted to facec the ugly in city as well as beautiful o Worked against Whistler (avoided aesheticism)
• Rawness of city, depicted vaudeville (which is like mixture of acts such as burlesque, comedians, music, etc) o Liked to show economic conditions of urban poor
• Ash Can painting style: thick and messy, meant to look like it was applied slap-dash manner, jittery o Ash can artists started as illustrationalists o Borrowed from manet but were more interested in giving subjects agency
• Called insufficiently modern
• Whistler’s work is about distancing us, Bellows is about confronting the difficult world, the real world, gritty grimy
The Stieglitz Circle & Transatlantic Modernism
General: Cubism, Italian Futurists, Fauvism, abstraction, NY Dada
• Six O’Clock, Winter, John Sloane, 1912 o Display Discontinuity of urban life