Ashville

American artists hit the streets

by Leon Nigrosh

CLAPBOARD AND STEEL: VISIONS OF RURAL AND URBAN AMERICA 1900-1950
At the Fitchburg Art Museum, 185 Elm Street, Fitchburg, through June 4.

Culled from the New Britain Museum of American Art's extensive collection, 54 paintings and prints produced during the first half of the 20th century are on display in Fitchburg Art Museum's main galleries. These works are masterfully executed by a coterie of diverse American artists, some of whom bear familiar names. They present us with everyday scenes of America as it industrialized, boomed, coped with a massive European immigration, and fought severe poverty wrought by the Great Depression.

The exhibit's first section includes portraits made by a group of figurative artists who had migrated to New York City in the early 1900s. Known as The Eight -- later, the Ashcan school -- these former newspaper illustrators were drawn to both the city's glitter and its grime and attempted to depict those who did not make it onto the society pages. Though at odds with the nature painters from the Hudson River School (who detested urban growth for what it imposed upon America's rich, unspoiled landscape), Ashcan artists (named so for their love of dark colors and for their propensity to show New York's seamier side) debuted in 1908 and were immediately controversial: not only did they forgo rigid portraiture, in which they'd trained, but also they depicted the streets as a rough but tender place.

By the 1913 Armory Show, several Ashcan artists showed their work alongside that of their contemporaries, Impressionist Paul Cézanne and Dadaist Marcel Duchamp. Yet even knowing these new and exciting artistic directions, painters like William Merritt Chase (1849-1924) and Abbott Handerson Thayer (1849-1921) continued to revere the early German and Dutch masters, creating dark and gloomy images of nameless sitters such as Chase's Man Wearing Gold-Rimmed Glasses. In this small "face painting" the brighter flesh tones quickly fade into the opaque brown-black background. John Sloan's (1871-1951) tiny etchings of urban life, while lighter and more airy than Chase's, border on parodies much like the great French illustrator Honoré Daumier's (1808-1879) own political parodies. Sloan's 1909 print Fifth Avenue appears to be mocking the well-dressed shoppers. Similarly, his 1908 Copyist at the Metropolitan Museum casts aspersions on the dutiful art student seeking to perfect her drawing skills.

Step into the next gallery, and it is as if a light suddenly went on across the United States. The artists in this grouping, though eschewing Modern art around them, breathed life into their images of strong, bustling urban-industrial scenes. Paul Sample's 1935 oil-on-linen painting Norris Dam depicts the TVA's first major construction along the Clinch River. The tiny details of workers, chuffing earth-movers, and trundling trucks lend vitality to this image of a growing machine age powered by the working class. Beatrice Cumming's 1944 oil-on-canvas Welders at the Electric Boat Company has the same sentiment; the welders aglow in the light of their torches, sparks flying, as if to show how mighty this World War 2 superpower was to become.

Midwestern Regionalist Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) is well represented in this exhibition with several paintings and a study for his 1932 mural Arts of the City, which was commissioned by the Whitney Museum. This extensive mural depicts all facets of life -- from high society to unemployment. A bum rummages through a trash can while beauty contestants strut their stuff. Chorus girls and cripples share the same space as jazz musicians and socialites. Benton often took up the pretense of social detachment when presenting his subjects -- appearing to "paint 'em as he sees 'em." But, in truth, he carefully orchestrated every canvas, often constructing clay models of his figures so he could get the elongated poses he desired. His 1935 Strike, Fall River provides an example of his trademark short brushstrokes and geometric shading through which he creates character rather than detail.

As an East Coast Regionalist, Reginald Marsh's (1898-1954) paintings of New York City and its environs recall the Depression. His 1940 watercolor Strokey's Bar (one of several versions) captures the seedy mood of New York's Bowery as crowds linger under the elevated train. They go about their daily missions, oblivious to each other. Marsh captures the anxious and furtive mood by depicting all the men in monochromatic brown pigments; each character stands or walks with a slouch. The only person who seems to have a purpose is a woman in pink striding through the teeming throng, a device Marsh used in a number of his works.

The larger question posed by this exhibit is how these works fit into America's psyche today. They were anomalies in their own time: understood by some, but rejected or ignored by others until they became all but lost to the general public. Now that we have the chance to view them again, is it purely nostalgia? Are they portents of things to come? Or are they to be admired for their own sake?

The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. Call (978) 345-4207.