In March, the Detroit Institute of Arts hosted a 4-day symposium organized by Initiatives in Art and Culture to celebrate its re-opening after a long renovation project. The symposium was entitled “Circa 1900 Celebrating American Turn-of-the-Century Arts,” and, happily, the subject was the Arts and Crafts Movement in Detroit. It was an intense four days and was very well done.

The first day was dedicated to the Ashcan artists. The DIA had recently mounted an exhibition called "Life’s Pleasures: The Ashcan Artist's Brush with Leisure". We toured the exhibit and attended presentations which provided an in-depth look at the artists and tied the school to the Arts and Crafts movement.

The Ashcan School of Art

What it was:

• A group of artists who gathered around influential artist and teacher Robert Henri (pronounced Hen-rye) during the early 20th century, including: George Luks, William Glackens, John Sloan, Everett Shinn, George Wesley Bellows, Arthur B. Dawes, Maurice Prendergast, Ernest Lawson, Guy Pen du Bois. They launched American Realism, and as is often the case with new art movements, the artists were unappreciated and misunderstood by many, even called "apostles of ugliness"¹ by some critics, who were more comfortable with the prevailing American Impressionism.
  
• They were known for portraying the grittier side of New York life, and yet, as shown in the DIA exhibition, they depicted many aspects of life, including people at play from all walks of life.
  
• The Ashcan term was first used in 1916, by a critic who was referring to an illustration by George Bellows in the Philadelphia Record on April 25, 1915, entitled Disappointments of the Ash Can, where down-on-their-luck men are looking for tidbits in a trash can.²
  

Ties to the A&C Movement:

• The Craftsman
  • o Mary Fanton Roberts, editor of The Craftsman from 1906 to 1916 was a great friend of the Ashcan artists and wrote about them often in the magazine, both under her own name and as Giles Edgerton. We found two such articles, written by Giles Edgerton, while looking through our collection:
    
    • Edgerton, Giles - "Is America selling her birthright in art for a mess of pottage? Significance of this year's exhibit at the Pennsylvania Academy"
    • Edgerton, Giles - "The younger American painters: are they creating a national art?"
  • Robert Henri, the leader of the movement, contributed two articles to The Craftsman, “Individuality and Freedom of Art” in January 1909 and "The New York Exhibition of Independent Artists” in May 1910.

• Related Themes
  • Social conscience – Captured the gritty social conditions of the lower classes. One of the recurring themes of the Arts and Crafts movement was the living conditions of the working classes – dignity, health, ability to earn a decent living.
  • Democratic – Depicted all walks of life and different ethic types. Arts and Crafts movement leaders talked a lot about democratic ideals.
  • Women – Recorded the emergence of the modern woman, socializing freely in mixed company without chaperones, participating in sports. One of the many progressive aspects of the Arts and Crafts movement was the prominence of women artists/craftsmen and entrepreneurs.
  • Promoted an American art much like Gustav Stickley and Frank Lloyd Wright promoted the development of an American architecture suitable for a democratic nation and Jens Jensen an American landscape.
  • Honesty – Portrayed life as they saw it, seeing beauty in every day life, not just copying the themes promoted by the European art schools. In much the same way, the Arts and Crafts movement promoted honesty in construction, where superb craftsmanship and excellent design are of equal importance, where structural elements become the ornamentation, and where simple lines allow the beauty of the materials to show through.

Check out the DIA's exhibition Life’s Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists’ Brush with Leisure (through May 25, 2008) and its related exhibition
Give it a Rest: People at Play in American Prints and Drawings, 1980 – 1945 (through August 30, 2008).

Check back again soon for more articles on the DIA symposium.

¹Ashcan School
²Life’s Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists’ Brush with Leisure, 1895-1925, Tottis, James W.