Gritty Urban Reality Resonates ‘In the City’

It was in 1914 that heiress Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney began collecting works by American artists who recorded urban life as they saw it: gritty, not always cheerful and of the commonplace or common man.

She gave these artists a refuge called the Whitney Studio Club, a rare place in New York City where they could show their work, branded elsewhere as controversial, radical and too truthful. (Critics at that time preferred the more refined and idealized art of the impressionists and the neoclassicists. Realism by its nature was considered unacceptable.)

As her collection expanded, the Studio Club evolved, by 1930, into the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Today, some of those works are on display at the Orange County Museum of Art, which is hosting the exhibit “In the City: Urban Views 1900-1940.”

The show reflects American art in relationship to U.S. city life through the often turbulent first few decades of this century, with its alternating currents of prosperity and depression, optimism and despair.

“This is an appropriate moment in Orange County history to take a look at the growth and development of cities in America and the urban environment,” museum director Naomi Vine said of the collection, which took a year in planning to bring to Orange County audiences. “It’s also important for this institution to bring 20th century masterpieces of American art to this community. Some of the century’s greatest names in American art are represented.”

The exhibit--which is on display through Jan. 23 --showcases more than 60 works from 44 American artists, including George Bellows, William J. Glackens, George Grosz, Robert Henri, Reginald Marsh and Maurice Prendergast, as well as Edward Hopper, five of whose works are in the show.

On a recent tour of the exhibit’s four galleries, Shamem Momin, a traveling docent from the Whitney Museum of American Art, discussed each changing decade in relationship to the art and offered these insights:

The first gallery showcases works of the Ashcan School--a small informal group of artists so named by critics who took exception to their realistic approach.

Many from the Ashcan School--led by John Sloan, Everett Shinn and George Luks--were newspaper illustrators accustomed to quick assignments depicting daily life. They used this same approach to capture artistically off-limits scenes such as laundry hung out to dry in John Sloan’s 1914 “Backyards, Greenwich Village” or Everett Shinn’s pastel and charcoal depiction of oppressive tenement life under a train in the undated “Under the Elevated.”

In the second gallery, American artists capture city life in the 1920s as a glorious period of immense prosperity in colorful portrayals of leisure time, such as Guy Pene du Bois’ 1928 park scene, “Fete Champetre.” Americans--rich and poor--were depicted at the opera, in a night at the theater, strolling in the park, at the circus or enjoying vaudeville.

Even the buildings of the era were shown as a sign of cheerful technological progress, as in Abraham Walkowitz’s “Cityscape” (circa 1915), which depicted skyscrapers as graceful dancers.

The third gallery loosely represents the 1930s and the Great Depression. Artists of the decade painted portraits of the city but used their canvasses to show how desperate things had become. The city is shown as a place of entrapment and uncertainty, with unemployment lines and labor strikes. Even entertainment is suddenly sinister, as in Reginald Marsh’s 1935 work, “Minsky’s Chorus,” which shows a stage full of sallow-skinned girls dancing in a soulless attempt to make ends meet.

“In the City: Urban Views 1900-1940” also demonstrates the painful reality of economic disparity. George Grosz’s “Couple” from 1934 shows an affluent pair on the town for the evening. His exaggerated characterization of the stodgy duo suggests how they may be viewed by the less fortunate as people oblivious to the despair around them.

The fourth gallery, which represents the late 1930s and 1940s--shows the impact of a depression and the cities’ crumbling infrastructures. The city is depicted as overwhelmed and on the brink of yet another unknown: involvement in World War II.

Louis Guglielmi’s 1941 “Terror in Brooklyn” offers a commentary on the nation’s uncertainty: Three women cower in a bell jar dressed in funeral clothes; a broken pelvis hangs on a decaying brick wall reminiscent of the Crucifixion; the city is in a state of entrapment and the future looks dark. Here, even clouds appear sinister.

With a sweep that captures the turbulence of the effects of World War I through the Great Depression and the United States’ emergence as an industrial leader, the Whitney exhibit at OCMA documents a thoroughly American experience.

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s collection has enabled viewers today to look back in remembrance--and forward in anticipation at what today’s urban centers may say about Americans generations from now.

“There’s a tremendous contrast now as we enter the 21st century as to what we think of in terms of technology, progress and innovation,” OCMA assistant curator Sarah Vure said. “It is an exciting show to conclude the century as we go into the new millennium.”

After its showing at OCMA, the exhibit will return to the Whitney for a hiatus, according to Vure. The exhibit previously was displayed at the Asheville Museum in North Carolina and the New York State Museum in Albany.

“In the City: Urban Views 1900-1940, Selections From the Whitney Museum of American Art,” Orange County Museum of Art, 850 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach. Through Jan. 23. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Admission: $5 adults; $4 students and seniors. Children under 16 and members free. Free admission Tuesdays. (949) 759-1122.

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Allison Cohen can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]

Related Programs

* Tuesday Talks at Noon begins with “The City Unraveled: Artists Responding to the Depression” on Nov. 2 and continues with “Edouard Manet: Social Consciousness and the Urban Environment” on Nov. 16; “The Art of Jacob Lawrence” on Nov. 23; “Poets of the City: 1920s” on Nov. 30; and “Urban Rhythms: 1900-1940” on Dec. 7.

* Children will create four city-based projects inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper. “Family Arts Day: Skyscrapers and City Slickers, Life in the Big City!” from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 7. Free. For children of all ages and their families. Hands-on art activities, tours and performances.

* “The Making of a City: Urban Sculpture.” 3:30 to 5 p.m. on Thursdays beginning Nov. 11 and continuing Nov. 18, Dec. 2 and Dec. 9. Ages 6 to 12. $45, members; $50 general admission.