Ashcan School - Part II

Arthur Bowen Davies
Children Playing, ca. 1896
Oil on canvas, 18 x 22 in, Lisa N. Peters
Controversy and question: so . . . where did the term “Ashcan School” originate from? Most scholars seem to agree that it appeared long after the heyday of the group, surfacing first in the 1934 book Art in America in Modern Times by art dealer Holger Cahill and art historian Alfred H. Barr, who used it to describe the derision with which the Eight’s 1908 Macbeth Galleries show was received. Cahill and Barr wrote that “in retrospect [the Eight’s] program seems moderate enough, but when they first showed as a group in New York in 1908, they were anathematized as ‘the Ashcan School’ and ‘the Revolutionary Black Gang.’” William Innes Homer in Robert Henri and His Circle (1969, Cornell University Press) says that it was Cahill who probably came up with the term, having heard it in a derisive statement made around the time by the cartoonist Art Young toward the earlier works of Sloan and others, which Young was contrasting negatively with the more socially conscious art of the then contemporary Regionalists. However, and a big however . . . not only does it seem that the term “Ashcan” (defined by the dictionary as “a large metal barrel, can, or similar receptacle for ashes, garbage, or refuse”) never did appear in reviews of the 1908 exhibition (please correct me if I’m wrong), but the press reviews of the show were mixed, with many critics praising the animated and distinctively national qualities of the works. The negative comments were directed toward what one said was the painters’ “unhealthy nay even coarse and vulgar point of view,” while other members of the press honed in on what they saw as the poor drawing in the works. None of the reviews appear to have referred to ash cans, garbage, or rubbish, etc., so why did the term Ashcan stick? Perhaps the reason is that it seems to fit this work, both its “ashy” tones and the painting of subjects then considered ugly or seamy, portraying the some of the undersides of urban life. The artists who created these works were the first to see beauty in this phenomena, however, and we often have ever since—perhaps because they allowed us a means to do so.

Robert Henri
The Strollers Sketch, ca. 1917
Pastel on paper laid on board
12 1/2 x 20 in. One alternative, proposed in American Impressionism and Realism, the 1994 catalogue that accompanied an exhibition organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and written by H. Barbara Weinberg, Doreen Bolger, and David Park Curry is to use “New York Realists,” presumably as a replacement for “Ashcan School.” This makes some sense, but is it too bland?, lacking the character of a term ingrained in our minds and implanted in scholarship.

If you have a chance, please do let us know what you think. Does it make sense to keep using Ashcan School as a term or not? Should we replace it with “New York Realists?”

In the next and last post, I will consider what we might say distinguishes an Ashcan School work.

(See Ashcan School-Part I)