Going out to the cinema in 1913, John Sloan's Movies

(gentle piano music) - [Dr. Zucker] We're in the Toledo Museum of Art, standing in front of a small painting by John Sloan. It's called Movies, and it dates to 1913. And what we're actually seeing is not the movie itself but the street in front of the theater. - [Dr. Nichols] Clusters of New Yorkers, a man and a woman, two women, a man with a hat on leaning against the wall, two men in the lower right, one looking over his shoulder, three children in the foreground; in other words, clusters of individuals in front of a movie marquis. - [Dr. Zucker] And they're not specific people. We can't identify their individual features, but they do seem to represent types of people. - [Dr. Nichols] Their dabs of paint that represent eyes or mouth or a nose, we're told more about who they are and what they're thinking by what they're wearing and their gestures. - [Dr. Zucker] If we were to make a general statement about these people and this place, it would be that they're working class people. According to at least one art historian, this was located on Carmine Street in the West Village. - [Dr. Nichols] What Sloan has done is brightly illuminated up here a middle shape with gas light, and what he's featuring is the words A Romance of the Harem. We can describe Sloan as a New York realist. In 1908, he first exhibited with a group called The Eight, which came to be known as the Ashcan School. They painted what they saw on the streets of New York. - [Dr. Zucker] But they chose to paint it with a grittiness and a quality of urban life that was really distinct from the prevailing style of the day. I'm thinking about the work of American impressionists that had borrowed the techniques of Europe and brought them to American soil. The Ashcan artists are dealing not with the broad avenues of New York, but they're dealing within more narrow streets of the neighborhoods. - [Dr. Nichols] Often taking unglamorous subjects: boxing matches, prostitutes, people going to see A Romance of the Harem. - [Dr. Zucker] The idea of going to a moviehouse in New York was really only a few years old, and these places were considered low; this was not high culture, and part of that was because of the lasciviousness because of the sexually charged subject matter that was on display. - [Dr. Nichols] The Ziegfeld Follies just began. This is the age of the Hoochie Koochie, the provocative belly dance, the age of the burlesque. This was the age of becoming more aware of things happening outside of the United States, and so there was this interest in, "What am I going to see on the screen when I go in there?" and all accentuated by bright lights and pockets of darkness. What goes on in that darkness after you see such a movie? - [Dr. Zucker] So there's a kind of voyeurism for us, as we look at these people looking at each other. - [Dr. Nichols] This fellow leaning against the marquis with a bright light on his hat. He's wearing a white-ish necktie, hands in his pant pockets, taking it all in, and not missing a thing or being missed. - [Dr. Zucker] But with a slight menacing quality, in that he's one of the only figures here that is unaccompanied. - [Dr. Nichols] This painting is also about suggestiveness, of what we're seeing but what we're not seeing. - [Dr. Zucker] You said a moment ago that John Sloan was interested in New York as a whole. American culture was increasingly interested in European developments, and John Sloan, in 1913, was part of a committee that put on the armory show. This was an exhibition of advanced American art but also of advanced art in Europe, and it became a sensation. - [Dr. Nichols] It was the first exhibit that made America aware of the moment called cubism. And a very important show. So Sloan and his cohorts, Robert Henri and others, were very active in bringing to an American public an awareness of what was going on in Europe. - [Dr. Zucker] And Sloan's interest in working class people should be no surprise. By 1913, he had become a socialist, and he had become the artistic director for a periodical called The Masses. - [Dr. Nichols] Gritty actuality of urban America, that's what Sloan is capturing. - [Dr. Zucker] And you see it in his open brushwork. You see that movement, the vitality of the city. Even the architecture seems unstable, as if the buildings themselves are shifting and moving, as they appear and disappear into the night. - [Dr. Nichols] John Sloan's The Movies. (upbeat piano music)