Review of reviews: Art

Life’s Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists’ Brush With Leisure, 1895–1925

Detroit Institute of Arts

Through May 25

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A 1908 exhibition in a Manhattan gallery announced a revolution in American art, said Mark Stryker in the Detroit Free Press. The brooding, brushy canvases on display there captured “the blunt lives of the working poor” in unprecedented ways. But they also depicted the new pastimes of rising middle classes. These painters—soon to be known as the Ashcan school—didn’t sit in their studios; they traveled into taverns, theaters, and stadiums. Artists such as Robert Henri, John Sloan, William Glackens, and Maurice Prendergast “loved the manly sweat of a prizefight but also the freshly mowed scent of a polo match.” The Detroit Institute of Art’s display of 80 works, drawn from its own collections and those of New York museums, celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Ashcan artists’ explosion onto the scene. It’s a tribute to an innovative group of artists who “for a New York minute represented the cutting edge of American art.”

The Ashcan artists didn’t stay cutting-edge for long, though, said Michael H. Hodges in The Detroit News. The rise of abstract art swept away their manly, American-bred realism. By the 1930s American artists were imitating Europeans such as Picasso and Matisse, rather than Henri and Sloan. Still, the best Ashcan paintings hold up next to anything being painted at the time. “There’s a fascinating variety to the brushwork,” and the subject matter is invariably interesting. Henri’s Portrait of Miss Leora M. Dryer in Riding Costume reflects the changing status of women. George Bellows’ Dempsey and Firpo renders a famous sporting event. In both cases, the Ashcan artists capture “the first stirrings” of an America we recognize as our own.