2. Progressive Era: 1890s-1920s;
era of U.S. history when reformers tried to clean up
problems created during the Gilded Age
Industrialization led to
a rise in urbanization,
immigration, poverty,
and dangerous
working conditions
City, state, and federal
governments were
seen as corrupt
Corporate monopolies
limited competition
and workers’ wages
3. 1. Progressive Era: 1890s-1920s
By 1890s:
Wealthy had immense political power
Huge gap b/t rich & poor (9% of
Americans had 75% of wealth)
2015: 5% of Americans had 89% of wealth
Wealthy flaunted wealth (“gilded”)
Industrial workers’ working & living
conditions
Working: long hours, low wages,
dangerous work (corporate
monopolies)
Living: slums
4. Christian “Social Gospel” movement
Salvation Army: created nurseries &
soup kitchens
YMCA: libraries & gyms for men &
children
Development of settlement houses
(as opposed to slums)
Muckraking: investigative journalism to
expose societal ills
2. Contributing factors to reform
5. 3. Jacob Riis, photographer, journalist, muckraker:
How the Other Half Lives (1890)
America: The Story of Us
Jacob Riis video
Jacob Riis’ How the Other
Half Lives (1890) exposed
urban poverty and life in
the slums
6. 4. Four Goals of Reformers
1) Protect the Social Welfare
i.e., governmental provision of economic assistance to
persons in need
2) Promote Moral Improvement
i.e., changes in character
3) Create Economic Reform
i.e., government change in policies toward businesses
4) Foster Efficiency
i.e., effective use of resources
7. 5. Progressive Era’s mixed results
Problem: Poor working/living conditions for working class
Solution: unions worked for safety laws, child labor laws, & limiting
length of work day; food safety laws
Problem: rampant alcoholism & alcohol abuse led to workplace
accidents, loss of employment, domestic abuse
Solution: 18th amendment passed in 1919 (Prohibition)
Repealed: 21st amendment in 1933
Problem: Women’s inequality/discrimination – especially as many
(white women) entered paid workforce
Solution: 19th amendment passed in 1920 (women’s suffrage)
Problem: Racism, Jim Crow
Solution: ¯_(ツ)_/¯ until 1960s
8. 5. Progressive Era’s mixed results
Problem: Poor working/living conditions for working class
Solution: unions worked for safety laws, child labor laws, & limiting
length of work day; food safety laws
Problem: rampant alcoholism & alcohol abuse led to workplace
accidents, loss of employment, domestic abuse
Solution: 18th amendment passed in 1919 (Prohibition)
Repealed: 21st amendment in 1933
Problem: Women’s inequality/discrimination – especially as many
(white women) entered paid workforce
Solution: 19th amendment passed in 1920 (women’s suffrage)
Problem: Racism, Jim Crow
Solution: ¯_(ツ)_/¯ until 1960s
Excerpt from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle:
“…old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white – it would be
dosed with borax and glycerin, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again
for home consumption. There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in
the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of
consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the
water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about
on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his
hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats.
These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them;
they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers
together… the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the
shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one – there were
things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a
tidbit.”
9. 6a. Progressivism Art
realism: mid-19th-early 20th-c. movement in art &
architecture attempting to portray things as they are
Rejection of romanticism
No avoidance of “unpleasant” aspects of life
Emphasis on everyday life & events – “ordinary life”
modernism: primarily 19th-20th-c. movements in art &
architecture rooted in the transformation of a post-industrial
society
self-expression: individualism & agency
rejection of realism
embrace of technology
emphasis on progress (rejection of tradition)
10. 6a. Progressivism Art
realism: mid-19th-early 20th-c. movement in art &
architecture attempting to portray things as they are
Rejection of romanticism
No avoidance of “unpleasant” aspects of life
Emphasis on everyday life & events – “ordinary life”
modernism: primarily 19th-20th-c. movements in art &
architecture rooted in the transformation of a post-industrial
society
self-expression: individualism & agency
rejection of realism
embrace of technology
emphasis on progress (rejection of tradition)
Modernism in philosophy: multiple
philosophical movements
• thought to begin with Descartes
(17th-c.)
• Includes humanism (individualism,
agency, & rationality) & emphasis on
objective truth
Modernism v. Modernity
11. 6b. Progressivism Art
Question: What do you think is the relationship between the Progressive era
politics/reform and the art movements that were around at the time (realism
and modernism)?
Muckraking – attempting to shed light on reality of daily life
Social upheaval and change affects art, not just politics
Reform allowed greater access to education (and likewise art) to more than just the
wealthy
12. 7. Realism: Ashcan School
Characteristics:
Gritty, urban scenes: finds beauty in
the ugly
Portrays life in urban areas
Documents day-to-day life
Traces process of Americanization of
immigrants
Rejects romanticism (genteel portraits;
landscapes, etc.)
13. 8. Robert Henri: Ashcan Realist
Born: 1865; Died: 1929 – Midwest
Shot & killed a rancher (had physical
dispute w/his father)
Moved to Philadelphia to attend
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine arts
Eventually settled in NYC
Began as impressionist, but ultimately
rejected it as “academic”
Wanted to create something new
(Ashcan School):
Art as journalism
Not romanticized
14. 8. Robert Henri: Ashcan Realist
Born: 1865; Died: 1929 – Midwest
Shot & killed a rancher (had physical
dispute w/his father)
Moved to Philadelphia to attend
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine arts
Eventually settled in NYC
Began as impressionist, but ultimately
rejected it as “academic”
Wanted to create something new
(Ashcan School):
Art as journalism
Not romanticized
Salome (1909):
*dancer (Henri hired a dancer to
perform “dance of the 7 veils” in
order to paint it
*”affront” to conservatives
-strutting (proud)
-bare midriff, legs, barefeet
-exotic (stereotypes?)
-haughty facial expression
15. 9. George Bellows: Ashcan Realist
Born: 1882; Died: 1925 –
Midwestern
Became student of Robert Henri /
Ashcan Realist
Excavation of Penn Station
(1907):
16. 10. George Bellows: Boxing Paintings
Question: What stands out to you in these paintings? What makes them
different?
What about them could we say is “American”?
17. 11. John Sloan: Ashcan Realist
Born: 1871 (Pennsylvania); Died: 1951
Parents: mother was a schoolteacher; father eventually
unable to work b/c of mental illness
Studied under Thomas Anschutz; eventually Robert
Henri became his mentor
Struggled financially as an artist; worked as a freelancer
to make money
Artistic style:
Subjects often people in urban areas (New York)
Perspective: often through windows (“unsuspecting”
subject – intimate)
“Spectator of life” – not violent, like Bellows
Attempted to avoid “conscious” propaganda (he was a
socialist)
18. 12. Sloan’s Election Night
Energetic painting – crowd is
active; train is moving
quick brush strokes
dabs of color/light in an
otherwise dark painting
Focal point: people, not place
New Yorkers aren’t
“stereotypes of misery”
19. 13. Marcel Duchamp: French-American
Modernist
Born: 1887 (France); Died: 1968.
Became American citizen in 1955
Modernist artist (painter, sculptor)
Cubism, Dada, conceptual art
Coined term “anti-art” – challenge
to accepted notions of what ”art”
is
The Fountain (1917)
20. 13. Marcel Duchamp: French-American
Modernist
Born: 1887 (France); Died: 1968.
Became American citizen in 1955
Modernist artist (painter, sculptor)
Cubism, Dada, conceptual art
Coined term “anti-art” – challenge
to accepted notions of what ”art”
is
The Fountain (1917)
Cubism: subject matter is broken apart
& reassembled in abstract way
• often to see different perspectives
of the same subject
• E.g., superimposed on each
other
Dada: avant-garde movement of artists
who rejected logic & aesthetics of
modern capitalism focused on
irrational or nonsensical
Conceptual: idea behind art >
technique/aesthetic quality (e.g.,
readymades)
21. 14. Duchamp’s Nude Descending a
Staircase, No. 2 (1912)
Debuted at Armory Show (Alfred Stieglitz)
Cubist
Demonstrates Duchamp’s focus on capturing time as
the 4th dimension in visual art
Limited color (brown/beige)
Based on sequential photos (studying
movement)
Not well-received by either art critics/elite (who
didn’t like modernism) or even other Cubists
Duchamp’s work represents problem of the “truly
new”
Must be scorned before accepted
22. 15. Joseph Stella: Italian-American Futurist-
Modernist
Born: 1877 (Italy); Died: 1946
Background: middle-class Italian family
Came to NYC to study medicine; abandoned
medicine for art
Contemporary of Stieglitz, Duchamp, & others
from the Armory Show
Style:
Futurist; Precisionist
Geometric: defined shapes
(e.g., based on Lower Manhattan’s architecture)
Colorful, with sweeping lines
23. 15. Joseph Stella: Italian-American Futurist-
Modernist
Born: 1877 (Italy); Died: 1946
Background: middle-class Italian family
Came to NYC to study medicine; abandoned
medicine for art
Contemporary of Stieglitz, Duchamp, & others
from the Armory Show
Style:
Futurist; Precisionist
Geometric: defined shapes
(e.g., based on Lower Manhattan’s architecture)
Colorful, with sweeping lines
Futurist:
• avant-garde; rejection of
tradition/the old
• light often painted as a “force”
(beam)
Precisionist:
• 1st indigenous American art
movement
• celebrates industry (skyscrapers,
bridges, factories)
• Themes: industrialization;
modernization
• “Cubist-realism”
• Influenced advertising art, pop art
24. 16. Stella’s Brooklyn Bridge paintings
Question: What do you see
in these paintings? What do
they highlight, and what
might that say about this era
in American history?
25. 16. Stella’s Brooklyn Bridge paintings
Question: What do you see
in these paintings? What do
they highlight, and what
might that say about this era
in American history?
• City framed in gothic arches; colors like
stained glass: new focal point/gods:
industry, technology, business, profit,
progress
• Perspective/lines: forward motion
• Optimism about future?
26. 17. John Marin: American Modernist
Born: 1870; Died: 1953.
Mother died after childbirth; raised by aunts in NJ
Attended Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
Studied with Thomas Anschutz
Exhibited in Stieglitz’s gallery first in 1909
Exhibited in Armory Show
Style:
Abstract – influenced later Abstract Expressionists
Light, color – energetic
Use of negative space – bare canvas
27. 18. Marin’s Lower
Manhattan from the
Woolworth (1922)
Question: How does the
perspective of this painting
make you, the viewer, feel?
How would you characterize
his style here?
Energy
Perspective non-linear
“explosive; toppling”
Disjointed/dissociative
Sparse use of color
28. 19. Charles Sheeler: American Modernist &
Precisionist
Born: 1883; Died: 1965.
Grew up in Pennsylvania – attended Pennsylvania
Academy of Fine Arts
Intrigued by cubism
Photographer & painter
Hired by Ford Motor Co. to photograph/paint
factories
Process: photograph drawing painting
Developed art movement: Precisionism
Style:
Landscapes, but not pastorals (nature) factories
29. 20. Sheeler’s American Landscape (1930)
Question: How is Sheeler’s work different from Marin’s or Stella’s? What might we learn
about Sheeler’s picture of America at this time?
30. 20. Sheeler’s American Landscape (1930)
Question: How is Sheeler’s work different from Marin’s or Stella’s? What might we learn
about Sheeler’s picture of America at this time?
• Blurs line between human-
made & nature
• E.g., smoke/clouds;
machinery/river reflection
• But: human is small (one tiny
man) in face of
machinery/nature