George Bellows, Georg Simmel, and Modernizing New York

The Ashcan School was a group of American artists that began exhibiting together in the early 20th century and advocated for total freedom in style and subject matter. Also known as Urban Realists because of their focus on urban, public spaces including trains, streets and parks, restaurants and bars, and other spaces of popular entertainment, Ashcan members included Robert Henri, John Sloan, George Luks, William Glackens, Everett Shinn, and George Bellows. "Ashcan" was initially a pejorative term applied to the group because they employed dark colors and painterly, unblended brushstrokes, which were thought to make their works appear dirty or unfinished. The Ashcan School was initially associated with a secessionist art group called The Eight, which also included postimpressionists Arthur B. Davies, Maurice Prendergast, and Ernest Lawson. The Eight rebelled against the National Academy of Design, the principal art school and host of prestigious juried exhibitions in New York, because they sought greater stylistic freedom and more control over their exhibition opportunities. Implicitly, the Ashcan painters also rebelled against The Ten, a group of American Impressionists, because they thought their predecessors’ works were too delicate in style and genteel in subject matter.

Download Full-text

THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL. By Nicholas J. Spykman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1925. xx, 297 pp. $3.00 and GUILLAUME DE GREEF. By Dorothy Wolff Douglas. New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1925. 391 pp. $4.00

Social Forces ◽

10.1093/sf/4.2.431 ◽

1925 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

pp. 431-432

Author(s):

H. E. Barnes

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Social Theory ◽

Georg Simmel ◽

University Of Chicago ◽

The Social ◽

University Of Chicago Press

Download Full-text

Anecdote and the Painting of George Bellows

Journal of American Studies ◽

10.1017/s0021875804008758 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 38 (3) ◽

pp. 473-488 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

JOHN FAGG

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

New York City ◽

York City ◽

Visual Rhetoric ◽

Small Scale ◽

Construction Work ◽

Bottom Edge ◽

Dramatic Effect ◽

New Form ◽

George Bellows

Excavation at Night (1908), George Bellows' second painting of the construction work undertaken for Pennsylvania Street Station, offers a dramatic depiction of the site that took up two full New York city-blocks. Bellows' decision to paint a nocturnal scene is vital to both the dramatic effect of the painting and its capacity to make an assertion about the ways in which the excavation could be perceived. In Electrifying America, David Nye suggests that the coming of electricity created the possibility of a new form of visual rhetoric. By making it possible to illuminate specific areas of the nocturnal city, electric light facilitated the privileging and deprivileging of certain spaces. By illuminating, and thus privileging, particular areas of the canvas, Bellows implements a similar rhetoric in Excavation at Night. Thus, illuminated by powerful electric lights, the snow covered far wall of the excavation and the row of buildings above it are placed in contrast, and possibly in opposition, with the man silhouetted by the light of the bonfire near the bottom edge of the canvas. The dramatic force of Bellows' “bravura” style raises the stakes in this contrast or opposition between the small-scale human activity around the fire and the large urban story of the excavation. In this article I intend to theorise Bellows' handling of smallness as an “anecdotal mode,” to suggest that “anecdote” may function both negatively and positively, and to show that this mode becomes particularly problematic when it is applied to city scenes.

Download Full-text

Contested Terrains: Visualizing Glocalization in Global Cities

Open House International ◽

10.1108/ohi-03-2009-b0008 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 34 (3) ◽

pp. 65-73

Author(s):

Jerome Krase

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Global Cities ◽

Georg Simmel ◽

Spatial Practices ◽

Frankfurt Am Main ◽

Global Capital ◽

Theoretical Perspectives ◽

Visual Approach ◽

Dominant Society ◽

Manuel Castells

This essay employs a visual approach to explore some of the ways that spatial practices become markers of a globalising and glocalizing world. Images are offered that reflect some of the symbolic competition created by more and less recent migrants as they lay claim to ‘contested terrains’ by changing what they look like. Although often dismissed as mere “marking” of territory, such ordinary practices by migrants of symbolic home or community building are crucial to understanding global cities. One indicator of their importance is the, often hostile reactions by the dominant society to them. A brief review of some of the most important theoretical perspectives on these interrelated phenomena, such as those of Saskia Sassen, David Harvey, and Manuel Castells, isolates common expectations about the visibility of resulting competing spatial practices in shared multiethnic residential and commercial environments. It is argued that many of the contradictions created by the concentration of global capital can be seen in the neighborhood streetscapes of global cities. From Georg Simmel, through Henri Lefebvre, and Lyn H. Lofland, the visible, and the symbolic, have been central to urban analysis. Therefore, the ubiquitous aspects of what Jackson called ‘vernacular landscapes,’ such as commercial signs and graffiti in Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, London, New York, and Rome are addressed.

Download Full-text