Blackness and the Ashcan School (virtual presentation)

Panel Chairs: Jordana Moore Saggese and Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw (University of Pennsylvania)

In the century that has passed since the New York Ashcan School rose to critical acclaim, a narrative shaping these George Bellows, George Luks, Robert Henri, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan as white male artists as painters of raw views of urban life has predominated. The story scholars tell about these artists today continues to center around their shared interest in “the real,” and their commitment to the celebration of urban humanity.

But how might we interpret these artists obsessions with observing the slums of lower Manhattan in terms of a wider Jim Crow-era cultural preoccupations with denigrating and classifying racial and ethnic types? How can we reconcile their often virulent racist beliefs with their so-called “democratic outlook?” How do we account for their near-exclusive focus on picturing white figures, even in distinctively urban settings where interracial and interethnic contact was a part of daily life?

This session is concerned with the ways in which the history of American modernism has been deeply invested in shoring up ideals of white, heteronormative masculinity —then and now – by examining how these artists’ works have been interpreted to reify rigid constructions of identity and difference in terms of race, gender, and sexuality.

Papers Will Include:

Locating Blackness in John Sloan’s Backyard Scene

Lee Ann Custer, University of Arizona

Willie Gee and Robert Henri’s Black Portraiture

Margarita Karasoulas

Bellows’s Boxers: Race and Manhood in the Gilded Age

Jordana Moore Saggese, University of Maryland, College Park

A Piece of Cake: Race, Caricature, and Performance in George Luks’s 'Cake Walk'

Meaghan Walsh