American Realism

American realism was a turn of the century idea in art, music and literature that showed through these different types of work, reflections of the time period. Whether it was a cultural portrayal, or a scenic view of downtown New York City, these images and works of literature, music and painting depicted a contemporary view of what was happening; an attempt at defining what was real.

Introduction

During the late 19th century, and into the 20th century artists and musicians contributed to the idea of realism in the American setting. Each though slightly different in concept or subject was defining what was going on in front of his or her eyes, without imagining a past or a future. While it has been stated that American Realism was a Neoclassical movement borrowing from ancient classical interpretations of art and architecture, this statement is false. American Realism was actually the opposite; instead of reflecting back to antiquities, artists and musicians were concerned with the grit and the reality of the early 20th century in America.

Ashcan School

The Ashcan School was a group of New York City artists who sought to capture the feel of turn-of-the-century New York City, through realistic and unglamorized portraits of everyday life. These artists were not only depicting the rich and promising Fifth Avenue socialites, but the lower class richly and culturally textured immigrants. One critic of the time did not like their choice of subjects, which included alleys, tenements, slum dwellers, and in the case of John Sloan, taverns frequented by the working class. They became known as the revolutionary black gang and apostles of ugliness. What this critic didn't realize was that these artists were setting the foundation for modernism, one of the most important artistic movements since the Renaissance.

John Sloan

John Sloan (1871-1951), was an Early 20th Century Realist, who believed in the idea of socialism. He contributed to the radical socialist monthly titled, The Masses before World War I. For The Masses he made mostly graphic images. However, in his paintings there weren't any political or social commentaries. His paintings focused on the leisure of the working class with an emphasis on female conditions. Some of his works include, The Picnic Grounds and Sunday Commoner as well as Sunday, Women Drying their Hair. He was annoyed with art historians who labeled his paintings as socially conscious. He was not interested in propaganda in his paintings and instead focused on the everyday life of people depicting their emotions. Originally from Philadelphia, he worked in New York as a member of the Ashcan School.

Robert Henri

Robert Henri, (1865-1921) was an important American Realist and a member of The Ashcan School. Henri was interested in the spectacle of common life. He focused on individuals, strangers, quickly passing in the streets in towns and cities. He had a sympathetic portrayal rather that a comic portrayal of people, often using a dark background to add to the warmth of the person portrayed. His works have a heavy impasto which stressed the materiality of the paint and the painter. He influenced Glackens, Luks, Shinn and Sloan. In 1906, he was elected to the National Academy of Design, but when painters in his circle were rejected for the Academy's 1907 exhibition, he accused fellow jurors of bias and walked off the jury, resolving to organize a show of his own. He would later refer to the Academy as a cemetery of art.

Everett Shinn

Everett Shinn (1876-1953), a member of the Ashcan School, painted theater scenes from London, Paris and New York. He found interest in the urban spectacle of life, drawing parallels between the theater and crowded seats and life. Unlike an artist like Degas, Shinn depicted interaction between the audience and performer.

George Benjamin Luks

(1866-1933) George B. Luks is another Ashcan school artist whom lived on the lower east side of manhattan. In Luks painting,Hester Street 1905 he shows children being entertained by a man with a toy while a woman and shopkeeper have a conversation in the background. In this painting the viewer is among the crowd rather than above it. He put a positive spin on the lower east showing two young girls dancing in his paintings The Spielers which is a type of dance that working glass immigrants would engage in. Despite the poverty, children remained to dance on the street. He looks for the joy and beauty in the life of the poor rather than the tragedy. (Pohl, 310) In the Steerage, 1900, by George Benjamin Luks From the Elizabeth Gibson Taylor and Walter Frank Taylor Fund and the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest)

William Glackens

(1870-1938) William Glackens painted the neighborhood surrounding his studio in Washington Square Park. Instead of using strangers Glackens got his friends to pose in their finest clothes as café goes and shoppers. His work can be related to Manet in that they both convey the glitter, fashion, spectacle and isolation of urban nightlife. In The Shoppers Glackens depicts consumerism which was a rising central activity for women in the lives of Urban areas. Department stores in NYC had restaurants, reading rooms, and ladies lounges to create shopping into a full day event geared towards respectable women. (Pohl 308-9) The Shoppers, 1907 by William Glackens 1870-1938, a gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.

George Bellows

(1882-1925) George Bellows painted city life in New York City. His paintings had an expressionistic boldness and a willingness to take risks.He also had a fascination with violence as seen in his painting, Both Members of this Club which depicts a rather gory boxing scene. It was a fight between a white man and a black man where the black man won. This was to symbolize many white mans fear: the defeat of white men by black men. In his painting titled New York we find city-scape that is not one particular view but a composition of many views. This attribute of his paintings is its only criticism to being related to Realism in that it doesn’t portray a real scene or sitiuation. ( Pohl 311-12) New York, 1911,by George Bellows, 1882-1925, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon From 1860 to 1914, the United States was transformed from a small, young, agricultural ex-colony to a huge, modern, industrial nation. A debtor nation in 1860, by 1914 it had become the world's wealthiest state, with a population that had more than doubled, rising from 31 million in 1860 to 76 million in 1900. (see "American Literature") By World War I, the United States had become a major world power. As industrialization grew, so did alienation. Characteristic American novels of the period Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Jack London's Martin Eden, and later Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy depict the damage of economic forces and alienation on the weak or vulnerable individual. Survivors, like Twain's Huck Finn, Humphrey Vanderveyden in London's The Sea-Wolf, and Dreiser's opportunistic Sister Carrie, endure through inner strength involving kindness, flexibility, and, above all, individuality.

Mark Twain

(1835-1910) Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name of Mark Twain, grew up in the Mississippi River frontier town of Hannibal, Missouri. Early 19th-century American writers tended to be too flowery, sentimental, or ostentatious -- partially because they were still trying to prove that they could write as elegantly as the English. (see" American Literature") Twain's style, based on vigorous, realistic, colloquial American speech, gave American writers a new appreciation of their national voice. Twain was the first major author to come from the interior of the country, and he captured its distinctive, humorous slang and iconoclasm.For Twain and other American writers of the late 19th century, realism was not merely a literary technique: It was a way of speaking truth and exploding worn-out conventions. Twain is best known for his work titled The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Stephen Crane

(1871-1900) Stephen Crane, born in New Jersey, had roots going back to Revolutionary War soldiers, clergymen, sheriffs, judges, and farmers who had lived a century earlier. Primarily a journalist who also wrote fiction, essays, poetry, and plays, Crane saw life at its rawest, in slums and on battlefields. His haunting Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, was published to great acclaim in 1895, but he barely had time to bask in the attention before he died, at 29, having neglected his health. He has enjoyed continued success ever since -- as a champion of the common man, a realist, and a symbolist. Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) is one of the best, if not the earliest, naturalistic American novels. It is the harrowing story of a poor, sensitive young girl whose uneducated, alcoholic parents utterly fail her. In love and eager to escape her violent home life, she allows herself to be seduced into living with a young man, who soon deserts her. When her self-righteous mother rejects her, Maggie becomes a prostitute to survive, but soon commits suicide out of despair. Crane's earthy subject matter and his objective, scientific style, devoid of moralizing, earmark Maggie as a naturalist work. (see: "American Literature")

William Dean Howells

(1837-1920) William Dean Howells, wrote fiction and essays in the 'realistic' mode. His ideas about realism in literature developed in parallel with his socialist attitudes. In his role as editor of the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Magazine, and as the author of books such as A Modern Instance and The Rise of Silas Lapham, Howells exerted a strong influence to establish his theories.

James A. Bland

(1854-1919) James Allen Bland was the first prominent African American Songwriter known for his ballad titled “ Carry me Back to Old Virginny." "In the Evening by the Moonlight," and "Golden Slippers" are still well known. Other songs of his that were major hits during the period are "In the Morning by the Bright Light" and "De Golden Wedding." Bland wrote most of his songs from 1879 to 1882; in 1881 he left America for England with Haverly's Genuine Colored Minstrels. Bland found England more rewarding than the United States and stayed there until 1890; either he stopped writing songs during this period or he was unable to find an English publisher. (See "New Genereations")

C.A. White

(1829-1892) C.A. White 's hit of 1869, "Put Me in My Little Bed," established him as a major songwriter. White was a songwriter of serious aspirations: many of his songs are written for vocal quartet throughout. He even made several attempts at opera As half-owner of the music publishing firm White-Smith and Co., he had a ready outlet for his songs: but it was his songs that supported the publishing firm and not the other way around. White did not scorn writing for the popular stage--indeed he wrote a song for the pioneering African-American stage production Out of Bondage--but his principal audience was the parlor singer. Art and expression expands through all mediums including literature and music. American Realism was an attempt to portray the exhaustion and cultural exhuberance of the American landscape and home. The artists of this time used the texture of the city to influence the texture in their paintings. Musicians noticed the quick and faced paced nature of the early 20th century and responded with a fresh and new tempo. Writers and authors told us a story about Americans; boys and girls Americans could have grown up with. Pulling away from fantasy and focusing on "the now", American Realism was a gateway and breakthrough—introducing modernism and what it means to be in the present.

Works Cited

• Hills. Reading American Art ed. By Marianne Doezma and Elizabeth Milroy. Yale University Press: New Haven. 1998 ( pps. 311)
• Pohl, Frances K. Framing America. Thames and Hudson: 2002. (page 302-312)

Names and images were pulled from US Government Historical Websites that include:

• Music: New Generations of Songwriters: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/smhtml/smessay1.html
• Literatue: American Realism: http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/oal/lit5.htm