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Inscribing Boundaries in John Sloan's Hairdresser's Window: Privacy and the Politics of Vision

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

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The Public Reception Of An Image stands as a testament to its cultural 1 and social meanings. Nevertheless, the painting Hairdresser's Window (Figure 1) by the American Realist John Sloan (1871–1951) has yet to be considered in light of its contemporary criticism. The response of Sloan's early-20th-century audience was ambivalent and thus raises questions concerning the social issues embodied in this painting. Because Hairdresser's Window contains the major motifs recurring throughout Sloan's oeuvre (for example, windows, stereotyped figures, working-class women, and the inclusion of spectators within the picture), it will be used as paradigm to explore the social relevance of his personal mode of spectatorship, a practice that had its counterpart in the public sphere and was paralleled in other works of American Realist painting.

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Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

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References

Notes

1. I wish to express my appreciation to the archivists at the Delaware Art Museum, to Elizabeth Appleby, and to Helen Farr Sloan, who graciously met with me. My special thanks goes to Howard Risatti, Dianne Macleod, and Hugh Caffey for careful reading and suggestions and to R. Laurence Moore. The quotation is from Yeats, John Butler, “The Work of John Sloan,” Harper's Weekly 58 (11 22, 1913): 2021Google Scholar; also quoted in Shi, David E., Facing Facts: Realism in American Thought and Culture, 1850–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 262Google Scholar.

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13. The U.S. Department of Labor reported an increase in the number of beauty workers from 7,284 in 1900 to 22,298 in 1910. Early census figures do not differentiate between hairdressers, manicurists, and female barbers. Since few women worked in barbershops and few men worked in beauty parlors, these figures represent beauty-shop employment fairly accurately (Job Descriptions for Domestic Service and Personal Service Occupations [Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, 06 1939], 101 nGoogle Scholar).

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19. Ibid., 397.

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27. Baker, John Howard notes this connection in “Erotic Spectacle in the Art of John Sloan: A Study of the Iconography, Sources, and Influences of a Subject Matter Pattern” (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 06 1972), 181, 183Google Scholar. See also Sims, Lowery Stokes, Stuart Davis: American Painter, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/H. N. Abrams, 1991), 18, 19, 38Google Scholar.

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29. Quoted in Cooper, , Hair, 103Google Scholar.

30. Ibid., 164.

31. Baxandall, Rosalyn, Gordon, Linda, and Raverby, Susan, America's Working Women (New York: Vintage, 1976), xviiGoogle Scholar. See also Todd, Ellen Wiley, “The New Woman” Revised: Painting and Gender Politics on Fourteenth Street (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

32. See Hügel, Friedrich, Zur Geschichte, Statistik und Regelung der Prostitution (Vienna: Zamarski and Dittmarsch, 1855), 155–56Google Scholar; and Acton, William, Prostitution, Considered in Its Moral, Social, and Sanitary Aspects (London: J. Churchill, 1857), 165–66Google Scholar. Both works are discussed in Gilman, Sander L., Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 4244Google Scholar.

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34. Dreiser, Theodore, Sister Carrie (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1900)Google Scholar; Crane, Stephen, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (1893; rept. New York: D. Appleton, 1896)Google Scholar; and Zola, Emile, Nana (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson, ca. 1880)Google Scholar. Sloan knew all three novels well and particularly favored Zola's writing.

35. The Working Girls Clubs were a network of social and educational organizations founded in 1880 by a group of working women and some women reformers. See Warner, Lucy A., “Why Do People Look Down on Working Girls?Far and Near 1, no. 3 (01 1891)Google Scholar, quoted in Baxandall, et al. , America's Working Women, 214–15Google Scholar.

36. Meyerowitz, Joanne J., Women Adrift (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 5860Google Scholar.

37. To survive on their low wages, these women formed support networks with other working women and men. Commonly, single women depended on the wages of higher-paid male friends, who contributed to their support by paying for entertainment, luxuries, and sometimes essentials including food or rent. Women reciprocated with social favors, ranging from companionship to sexual intercourse. They generally accepted the sexual culture that attended the practice of “treating.” Although these “charity girls,” offended bourgeois sensibilities, they were deemed respectable by their working-class peers. See Meyerowitz, , Women Adrift, xxii, 101Google Scholar; see also Peiss, Kathy L., “ ‘Charity Girls’ and City Pleasures,” Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality, ed. Snitow, Ann, Stansell, Christine, and Thompson, Sharon (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), 7487Google Scholar.

38. For a discussion of Sloan's own fascination and fear of women, his choice of female subjects, and his use of window and box motifs as subtextual devices to contain his fears and foster exploration, see Coco, Janice M., “Re-viewing John Sloan's Images of Women,” Oxford Art Journal 21, no. 2 (1998): 7998CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This discussion of women in Sloan's art is extended further in Coco, , “Exploring the Frontier from the Inside Out: John Sloan's Nude Studies,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 47, suppl. (1999)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, in press. Paper presented at the American Psychoanalytic Association's fall meeting,December 20, 1998,New York CityGoogle Scholar.

39. Helen Farr Sloan, personal interview, June 13, 1992. In his recent biography, John Loughery notes that Dolly was a part-time prostitute when she met Sloan (Loughery, , John Sloan Painter and Rebel [New York: Henry Holt, 1995], 4952Google Scholar).

40. “Shall I Dye My Hair,” Good Housekeeping (02 1928)Google Scholar, quoted in Corson, , Fashions in Hair, 616Google Scholar.

41. MrsThorne, Stephen Baker, “When Foolish Girls Court Danger,” Ladies' Home Journal, 05 1908, 27Google Scholar.

42. Greeley, , “Beauty Doctoring,” 118Google Scholar.

43. Halttunen, Karen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 93Google Scholar.

44. Etymologically, the French term maquillage (“makeup”) is related to “fetish” via the German root maken (“to make”). The infinitive maquiller refers to fakery and disguise, as well as painting one's face. See Bernheimer, Charles, “Fetishism and Decadence: Salome's Severed Heads,” Fetishism as Cultural Discourse, ed. Apter, Emily and Pietz, William (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 63Google Scholar.

45. For a discussion of the fetishistic nature of Hairdresser's Window, see Coco, “Re-viewing John Sloan's Images.”

46. Sloan frequently urged viewers not to take his images too literally — to “read between the lines.” See Sloan, John, Gist of Art: Principles and Practise Expounded in the Classroom and Studio, ed. Sloan, Helen Farr (New York: Dover, 1939), 7Google Scholar; and Sloan, letters to Dolly Sloan, May 17, 1905, July 29, 1905, and June 2, 1909, in JSA.

47. Golomb, Jacob, “Authenticity, Literature and Irony,” in In Search of Authenticity (London: Routledge, 1995), 2627Google Scholar.

48. Ibid., 26.

49. W. H. D., , “John Sloan's Etchings,” Boston Transcript, 01 22, 1921, in JSAGoogle Scholar.

50. Handy, , Science of Culture, 322–24Google Scholar

51. If the frame on the wall happens to be a mirror, the screen effectively prevents us from seeing the women in the round, thus maintaining the one-sided view necessary for appearances. One could argue that the question of artifice, raised by the mirror, is then blocked by the screen.

52. For this construction, see Goffman, Erving, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor, 1959), ch. 3Google Scholar; also discussed in Halttunen, , Confidence Men, 104–5Google Scholar.

53. For a general discussion of inventions and the invasion of privacy see, Kern, Stephen, The Culture of Time and Space 1880–1918 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 187Google Scholar.

54. Bourdieu, Pierre, “The Social Definition of Photography,” in Photography a Middle-brow Art, trans. Whiteside, Shawn (Cambridge: Polity, 1990), 74, 77Google Scholar.

55. Mensel, Robert E., “ ‘Kodakers Lying in Wait’: Amateur Photography and the Right of Privacy in New York, 1885–1915,” American Quarterly 43, no. 1 (03 1991): 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For complete information on the controversy that eventually led to right of privacy legislation, see also Godkin, E. L., “The Rights of the Citizen,” Scribner's Magazine 8 (07 1890): 5867Google Scholar; Warren, Samuel D. and Brandeis, Louis D., “The Right to Privacy,” Harvard Law Review 4, no. 5 (12 15, 1890): 193220CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and O'Brien, Judge Denis, “The Right of Privacy,” Columbia Law Review 2, no. 7 (11 1902): 437–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56. Sloan, , New York Scene, 04 28, 1909, 308–9Google Scholar.

57. Sloan, , New York Scene, 03 9, 1910, 395–96Google Scholar.

58. Bourdieu, , “Social Definition,” 7883Google Scholar.

59. Hills, Patricia, “John Sloan's Images of Working-Class Women: A Case Study of the Roles and Interrelationships of Politics, Personality, and Patrons in the Development of Sloan's Art, 1905–16,” Prospects 5 (1980): 178CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zurier, et al. , Metropolitan Lives, 173–78Google Scholar; and Kinser, Suzanne L., “Prostitutes in the Art of John Sloan,” Prospects 9 (1984): 240–44, 250CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60. Van Wyck Brooks, , A Painter's Life (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1955), 63Google Scholar.

61. Hills, , “John Sloan's Images,” 178–79Google Scholar; see also Baker, , “Erotic Spectacle,” 159Google Scholar.

62. Sloan, sometimes posed models for this same keyhole effect, such as in his painting The Cot (1907)Google Scholar.

63. Sloan, , New York Scene, 07 6, 1911, 549Google Scholar.

64. Bourdieu, , “Social Definition,” 83Google Scholar.

65. James, William, The Moral Philosophy of William James, ed. Roth, John K. (New York: Thomas Crowell, 1969), 275311Google Scholar.

66. According to Orvell, this yearning for the “real thing” subsequently encompassed the aesthetic realm, spawning the early notions of modernism that eventually formed a counterstatement to Victorian attitudes. See Orvell, Miles, The Real Thing, Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), xixGoogle Scholar; Lears, T. J. Jackson, No Place of Grace: Anti-Modernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), ch. 1Google Scholar; and Mensel, , “Kodakers,” 2526Google Scholar.

67. Baker notes that Sloan disguises the erotic nature of his spectatorship by neutralizing the sexual charge with humor or social satire. See Baker, John Howard, “Voyeurism in the Art of John Sloan: The Psychodynamics of a Naturalistic Motif,” Art Quarterly 1, no. 4 (Autumn 1978): 392, 394Google Scholar.

68. John Sloan, “Notes on Etching,” in JSA, 7. Sloan, mentions that certain intimate scenes were rejected by the Water Color Society Exhibition jury because they were “too vulgar” (New York Scene, 05 2–4, 1906, 33)Google Scholar.

69. John Howard Baker discusses the spectator's “guilt sharing” in Sloan's images in “Voyeurism” (394).