Grounded Art

As published at SubStack, 4/18/24:

Thomas Anshutz, The Ironworkers' Noontime, 1880

Sarah Stolfa was a bartender at McGlinchey’s. Photographing its regulars, she published a book that established her as an artist. Zoe Strauss was given a camera, so she photographed her neighbors in Pennsport, before foraying into Olde Richmond, East Kensington and Kensington, etc. Having no gallery, she taped her images onto the pillars of I-95 for her annual shows. In 2012, the Philadelphia Museum of Art staged Zoe Strauss: 10 Years. It then traveled to the International Center of Photography in NYC.

Even those paying close attention to American painting aren’t likely to recognize the name of Thomas Anshutz, but he inspired many regionalists who focused on ordinary subjects. Among his students at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts were Robert Henri, George Luks, John Sloan and Everett Shinn. These Philadelphians only made their name after relocating to NYC, however. Anshultz stayed put.

His most famous canvas is The Ironworkers’ Noontime. Debuting in 1880, it shocked viewers with its stark depiction of factory life. Still, the men are clean, muscular and even heroic. Real laborers were much more wretched. Thirty years later, workers at Bethlehem Steel went on strike for 108 days to demand one day off a week, a dressing room so they could go home in clean clothes and 15 or 20 minutes for lunch. Writing from the dark side of the moon, I can’t recall exactly their last request. I do have a corrido chronicling the recruitment of Mexicans to Bethlehem. Then, as now, immigrants were imported to keep wages down. A short excerpt:

Yo me voy pa' Pensilvania
Por no piscar algodón.
Adiós, Fort Worth y Dallas,
Por no de mucha importancia
Yo me voy pa' Pensilvania
Por no andar en la vagancia.
[...]
Cuando llegamos allá
Y del tren nos bajamos,
Preguntan las italianas,
¿De dónde vienen mexicanos?
Responden los mexicanos,
Los que ya saben “inglear,”
"Venimos en un engache
Del pueblo de Fort Worth."

[I’m going to Pennsylvania
But not for picking cotton.
Goodbye, Fort Worth and Dallas,
You’re not much to me now,
I’m going to Pennsylvania
To be a vagrant no more.
[...]
When we arrived there
And got off the train,
The Italian girls asked us,
“Where do you come from, Mexicans?”
The Mexicans reply,
Those who know how “to English,”
“We come out under contract
From the town of Forth Worth.”]

Although realist painting remains strong in Philly, that focus on society’s bottom half has mostly been lost. There are no Joey Cheesesteaks in Sidney Goodman, Edith Neff or Larry Day, etc. Bo Barlett painted a deerhunter with his woman, son and pickup truck, but their gazes are distrustful, if not confrontational. Bo ain’t with them, and neither is the viewer.

To advance, most men gleefully kiss asses. To avoid punishment, they sidestep taboos. By natural inclination, they gravitate towards the beautiful, young and sexy, so anything that hints of decay, squalor or death, they avoid. On their walls they hang, if anything, pictures of flowers and babes. Regarding natural inclinations, Aquinas lists just four: life preservation, procreation, sociability and knowledge. In 2024, we must revise the last to avoidance of knowledge. That’s the strongest urge of contemporary man. We’ve evolved a long way from your dark days, Tommaso d’Aquino! Some Greek even said, “All men by their nature, desire to know”!

Marooned on a savage continent, Americans struggled to accrue culture. With Walt Whitman, they miraculously surpassed Europe. In painting, they had native flashes of genius in the Hudson River School, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Edward Hopper and the Chicago Imagists, with their overblown Abstract Expressionists given an extra push by the CIA. Singer, Whistler, Eakins, Homer, Wood, Benton, Bellows, Johns, Salle, Harriman, Crumb, Pettibon and a few others are all interesting, with Warhol, Lichenstein, Haring, Scharf and Baldesari fine, enduring jokes. No, I have not forgotten fascinating weirdos like Henry Darger or Bill Traylor. There’s also Philip Guston, but he’s Canadian. In photography, America has produced the very best, but I won’t burden you with more names. Who cares, though, what outsiders think, least of all some sweating bum in Vung Tau with his coconut?

Most succinctly, Grant Wood defended the local, “Great art works from the inside out—individual, regional, national, universal—not vice versa. We shall never produce a great national art or a lasting universal art by starting out consciously to do so. We have to start by looking inside ourselves, selecting our most genuine emotions.” Unlike most others, Wood didn’t seek his fame in the city. After studying in Chicago and Paris, Wood returned to Iowa. Not content to be a rural artist, Wood dressed like a farmer. Recent scholarship has suggested Wood appeared as a rugged man of the soil to mud mask his gayness. So be it. Wood’s message stands.

In a better world, each neighborhood would have its cherished painters and writers, so local delights, anguishes, scandals and fantasies would be aimed at local eyes and ears, in the most localized idioms.

Sober, unflinching art is extremely rare. Wood’s Iowa is nearly always idealized and stylized, to the point of kitsch, but his American Gothic is an enigmatic masterpiece. So open to interpretations, it’s endlessly parodied. Long after America is gone, it will be scrutinized as an emblem of this most promising of societies so thoroughly screwed over.

Digging deep, Wood revealed his truest self in the charcoal Saturday Night Bath (1937) and the lithograph Sultry Night (1939). Though his family would rather these male nudes not exist, art is the means to step outside social conventions. After Degas’ death, his brother destroyed many of his erotic drawings.

As a dime store provincial with no manual dexterity, I take the easiest way out by photographing what’s right in front of me! Just two days ago, I snapped a sunbaked, shirtless man teaching bottles of water how to read. From Cóc Cóc Coffee, where I’m sitting right now, I can see that very spot. It’s all about orientation.

Whitman said, “If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.” Consider how vast Whitman was, everything is under your bootsoles, but you must look. We’ve been talking all along about living.

Bo Barlett, Young Life, 1994

Grant Wood, Spring in Town, 1941

Grant Wood, Farmer with Pigs and Corn, 1932

Grant Wood, Sultry Night, 1939

Drummer Magazine, circa 1985Drummer Magazine, circa 1985

41-year-old Victoryloc Vinh Nguyen accused of firing 30-40 shots from rooftop smiles, makes hand gestures in 1st court appearance

[seller of lottery tickets]

[seller of lottery tickets]

Snooping Around NYC with John Sloan

As published at SubStack, 4/17/24:

[Vung Tau, 4/16/24]

For two days, I’ve been thinking about John Sloan and Grant Wood. Each attempt to start a new article had to be aborted, however. On top of my exhaustion, I had also been subjected to an elaborate sabotage, in the form of dancing women. Living just half a block from Triangle Park, I must walk by there at least twice daily. Nothing is more disorienting than these women dancing, and they’re always dancing. Since many are middle-aged, they can’t possibly wiggle their asses for even 15 minutes, so as soon as I’m out of sight, they collapse. I’m certain there’s a squad garrisoned there overnight, just in case I walk by at, say, 3AM.

Conditions are never perfect. Having mentioned Lafadio Hearn, I thought of the artist as ethnographer, of how much of society, of other people’s lives, he can capture. To do this, he must not only observe those close to him, but goes where he doesn’t belong. The more narcissistic, the less qualified he’s for this task.

At the Philadelphia Art Museum, there’s a smallish canvas by Sloan, Three AM, that’s quietly fascinating, though not particularly well executed. Its very crudeness suggests a sketch, done in haste or by stealth, and that’s its genius. One fully dressed woman is at a table, drinking coffee or tea. Another is in a nightdress, smoking while cooking. One shoulder and much of her bosom are bare, for she’s in a private space, which makes the painter, and us, voyeurs. The title is crucial. What are they doing up at 3AM, eating and smoking?

On 4/28/1909, John Sloan wrote in his journal, “A good day’s work, painting on the subject that has been stewing in my mind for some weeks. I have been watching a curious two room household, two women and, I think, two men, their day begins after midnight, they cook at 3 A.M.” The “I think” means he’s not even sure they lived with two men. Sloan paid that household enough attention to know their day began after midnight. Interesting, too, the fact that Sloane had to stew for weeks to produce something that ended up rejected by several juries for being too scandalous! Nearly all artistic exertion is wasted. Even the best paintings are locked away in private collections or destroyed by men who relish destruction.

There’s a Sloan etching, Man, Wife and Child, that’s also an insertion into private lives. By the beginning of the 20th century, realism made by hand was seriously challenged by photography. This 1905 print, though, was an imagined scene, so could not have been photographed. As with Three AM, Sloan wasn’t there. He knew this family well enough to construct this image of a man and woman dancing rather aggressively, just like lovemaking, with their young daughter looking on. Each detail, spoon in cup, half open middle drawer, pitcher in basin or pant suspenders dangling, had to be imagined.

Born in tiny Lock Haven, PA, Sloan lived in Philadelphia from age 6 to 33, then moved to New York City, where he matured as an artist. Like so many others, Sloan was exhilarated by the world’s most magnificent human zoo. To quote just two lines from Blaise Cendrar’s “Easter in New York” of 1912:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

La rue est dans la nuit comme une déchirure,
Pleine d’or et de sang, de feu et d’épluchures.

[The street at night like an open wound, 
Stuffed with gold and blood, flames and trash.]

In 1935, Grant Wood would write “Revolt Against the City,” to make a strong case that one needs not leave Bumfuck to make art, but Sloan was also a regionalist, of New York City and, to a lesser extent, Santa Fe. If anything, Sloan was more grounded than Wood!

NYC allowed Sloan to peer into many windows, as illustrated by his Night Windows of 1910. Barely visible is a balding man on the verge of falling off a roof. It’s well worth it to catch glimpses of a half naked woman. Sloan’s teacher, Robert Henri, said something about the nude as the most beautiful form. With his porn addiction, the 21st century man fully agrees as he wipes his furry hand. As for oil paintings, you’ve got to be kidding! Even life in the flesh can’t beat what’s found online.

Once, any man could delight in festering and festive streets, such as I have daily in Southeast Asia. The New York as depicted in Sloan’s Hairdresser Window of 1907 is long gone. At Grand Central, a man has just been arrested for punching a nine-year-old girl in the face. Locked inside while staring at a screen, even those in NYC may not be aware of this incident. Who cares, really? On another day, someone is knifed, shot or pushed onto subway tracks, unprovoked. It’s safest and much more enjoyable to get off alone.

With tiny screens conforming to their wishes, many still insist there’s no social degradation, economic collapse or war ruining their pornography. It’s been forever since they’ve looked up or outside.

John Sloan, Three AM, 1909

John Sloan, Man, Woman and Child, 1905

John Sloan, Night Windows, 1910

John Sloan, Hairdresser Window, 1907

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Homeless man teaching bottles of water to read. He's still the only visible homeless man in my neighborhood. I've written about another, but that man only slept outside for one night.

Man arrested for punching girl in Grand Central

Itinerant seller of lottery tickets. Boy's hat says, "BOY ĐẸP TRAI" ["HANDSOME BOY"].