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“Migrant Mother” read: “Camped on the edge of a pea field where the crop had failed in a freeze. The tires had just been sold from the car to buy food. She was 32 years old with seven children.” The dignity and total honesty of Lange’s photographs shocked Americans into recognizing the plight of the poor. As photo historian Robert J. Doherty wrote, “This small, shy, insecure woman had a strong sense of justice which sparked a silent fury that came to light in the strong emotion of her photographs. With a camera in her hand, she became a giant.”

Lange, “Migrant Mother, California,” 1936, Library of Congress. Lange’s documentary photos of the poor brought social problems to the attention of a wide audience.

AMERICAN ART: 1908-40

While artists elsewhere moved increasingly toward abstraction, American painters kept alive the realist tradition and portrayed American life with utmost fidelity.

ASHCAN SCHOOL: TRASHY TALES. “Guts! Guts! Life! Life! That’s my technique!” said painter George Luks. “I can paint with a shoestring dipped in pitch and lard.” The prudish American public did not, however, consider “guts” and contemporary urban life suitable for art. They dismissed such “raw” scenes of real people shopping and carousing as fit only for the ash can. This insult gave the name to a group of American painters who bashed the stuffy art monopoly with the same gusto that Theodore Roosevelt busted trusts.

SLOAN: STREET LIFE. John Sloan (1871-1951) — like other Ashcanners Luks, William Glackens, and Everett Shinn — started as a newspaper sketch-artist. He was accustomed to racing to a fire or train derailment to record the scene in a straightforward but dramatic fashion. A slapdash, you-are-there approach, using broad brushstrokes to capture the tumult and verve of city life, characterizes his mature work. Because Sloan insisted on painting “low-life” subjects, his work didn’t sell until he was past 40. Sloan was such an ardent advocate of the masses that he ran for state office in 1908 as a Socialist but was defeated. Despite setbacks, Sloan remained convinced that art should be down-to-earth, rooted in daily life. “It is not necessary to paint the American flag to be an American painter,” Sloan said. “As if you didn’t see the American scene every-time you opened your eyes.”

Sloan, “Haymarket,” c.1907, Brooklyn Museum. Ashcan School pointers injected realism into American art by taking ordinary people as their subject.

FIRST ABSTRACT AMERICAN ART

Marin, “Lower Manhattan (Composition Derived from Top of the Woolworth Building),” 1922, MoMA, NY. At the same time as the Ashcan painters, another group of American artists also championed casting off tradition. But they took a radical approach to form rather than subject and helped American art catch up with Modernism. This first wove of abstract painters in the U.S. included Marsden Hartley, Max Weber, Georgia 0’Keeffe, Arthur Dove, Stuart Davis, and John Marin. The dominant force in the 1920s toward abstraction was John Marin (1870-1953). He is often called the greatest watercolorist ever. A perfectionist, Marin compared painting to golf: the fewer strokes the better. His views of skyscrapers, broken into cubistic planes and angles, explode with vitality, proving that watercolor need not be synonymous with washed-out landscapes.

ASHCAN SCHOOL, OR THE EIGHT

LOCALE: New York City,1908-13

BEST-KNOWN ARTISTS: Henri, Sloan, Bellows

STYLE: Realistic, sketchlike

SUBJECT: Urban grit and vigor

WHY CONDEMNED: “Sordid,” low-life subjects

WHY PRAISED: First uniquely American art

BELLOWS: BOXING. George Bellows (1882-1925) is perhaps the only artist who gave up stealing bases for painting faces. Although he sacrificed a career as a professional baseball player, as a painter he translated the vigor and exuberance of sport into art. “Stag at Sharkey’s” shows the dynamic energy that marked both the subject and style of the Ashcan School. Bellows portrayed the pulsating life of New York docks, gutters, and bars with a heroic vitality.