ABSTRACT
At the dawn of the twentieth century in the city of New York, you might have seen them: Robert Henri, searching the faces of the passing strangers; Everett Shinn, laughing with the crowd at a vaudeville theater; George Bellows, sitting elbow to elbow with the fight fans at ringside; William Glackens, eyeing the strollers in Washington Square Park; George Luks, pondering the rhythms of immigrant life on the Lower East Side; and John Sloan, revelling in a streetcorner flirtation conducted by the lights of a movie marquee. The six were artists who collectively became known as the Ashcan School; they went to New York City to make art rooted in the defining social trends of their time and created a record of a gregarious, contradictory and hybrid moment in the history of urban life.
