1. The Ashcan School American Modernism

2. William Harnett The Faithful Colt 1890
William Harnett T hOeledd Violin

3. John Peto Reminiscences of 1865 1897

4. Robert Henri (hen-rye) is considered the father of an important group of American artists that came to be known as the Ashcan School. Henri was a teacher at the New York School of Art (1902) and taught his students that art should advocate the “strenuous life”—ordinary people in all aspects of their life, including harsh realities.

5. Robert Henri
Snow in New York
1902

6. The accepted art of this time (remember this was the time of the American Renaissance and the Gilded age) emphasized the beautiful, the ideal and the genteel.
In 1907 the Academy of Art excluded a group of artists affiliated with Henri from its annual exhibition. Henri resigned from the Academy in protest, and they staged their own exhibition. (Sound familiar?)

7. John Sloan McSorley’s Bar 1912

8. The Eight included Arthur B
The Eight included Arthur B. Davies, William Glackens, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson, George Luks, Maurice B. Prendergast, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan. This group led to the better-known Ashcan School.
They put on a show in 1908, and again in Both shows, but especially the one in 1910, paved the way for popular acceptance of modernist art.

9. Using oil pastels, sketch theis Robert Henri portrait of a working-class child. Look at how bold and rough he keeps his brushstrokes.

10. Even though he was a photographer and not a painter, you can’t understand the birth of modernism in America without knowing about Alfred Stieglitz and his Gallery 291.
291 became the first venue in America to show Auguste Rodin and Henri Matisse in 1908, Paul Cezanne in 1910, and Pablo Picasso in 1911.

12. Picasso/Braque show Gallery 291 1915

13. For today’s slide, draw the photograph of this hugely influential man.

14. Alfred Stieglitz
1915
I was born in Hoboken. I am an American. Photography is my passion. The search for Truth my obsession. PLEASE NOTE: In the above STATEMENT the following, fast becoming “obsolete” terms do not appear: ART, SCIENCE, BEAUTY, RELIGION, every ISM … The term TRUTH did creep in but may be kicked out by anyone.

15. From 1907 to 1913, Stieglitz's 291 gallery was one of the only places to see the work of avant garde European modern artists. A number of young American artists became inspired by the new ideas they saw at Stieglitz’s.
One of the American artist that Stieglitz encouraged was Arthur Dove. He is generally considered to be the first real American abstract painter.

16. Arthur Dove Fog Horns 1929 Oil on canvas

17. Arthur Dove Me and the Moon 1937. Wax emulsion on canvas

18. Sketch his 1911 painting titled Nature Symbolized No.2

19. Stieglitz’s exhibitions at Gallery 291 helped pave the way for the famous Armory Show in New York in The Armory Show exhibited nearly 1,300 paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures from Europe and America in an astounding display of modern art.
For many Americans, it was their first glimpse of what was happening in the avant garde in Europe. The general public was horrified, but many artists were completely electrified.

20. Handbill for the Armory Show

21. Entrance to the Armory Show

22. Partial interior of the Armory Show

23. Out of all the “shocking” paintings in the show, one was singled out for the most public abuse. It wasn’t a work by Picasso, or even Matisse, but one by Marcel Duchamp. He hadn’t made his “Urinal” piece yet, but one of his paintings, titled “Nude Descending the Staircase”

24. Here it is! To our modern eyes, it’s hard to see what all the fuss was about.

25. Duchamp expressed motion with successive superimposed images, as in motion pictures. Julian Street, an art critic, wrote that the work resembled "an explosion in a shingle factory" and cartoonists satirized the piece. J. F. Griswold, a writer for the New York Evening Sun, entitled it The rude descending a staircase (Rush hour in the subway).

26. A cartoon of “The Rude Descending the Staircase”.
If you are interested in seeing more of the paintings that were in the Armory show, go to

27. Using whatever medium you want, recreate Duchamp’s last painting (after this, he would create ready-mades and assemblages, but didn’t paint another picture).