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Article: `Guts! Guts! Life! Life!'; The Brash Ashcan Artists
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- November 24, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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New York, New York, it's a helluva town. It was already a helluva
town when the first young Ashcan artists arrived to make their
fortunes there 99 years ago.
The Great White Way was not yet white. The electrification of
Manhattan was scarcely underway. The subways weren't yet built. But
New York, New York, was hopping. Its high-society swells were the
richest in the country, its newspapers the noisiest, its street bums
the most desperate. And a century ago, the art world of the city was
just about as open to well-connected leftists, media-savvy shockers
and tweakings of decorum as it is today.
The Ashcan artists loved New York. They loved its tenements and
tensions, its nobodies and night ...