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Vaudeville in American Art: Two Case Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

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In 1891, the influential literary realist William Dean Howells stated that “the arts must become democratic” in order to have “the expression of America in art.” This vision of a democratic culture, though modified, continued to inspire American writers and artists well after the turn of the century. The idea of democracy in American culture remained an important touchstone for conservative as well as progressive-minded writers on art and literature even as modernism took hold in the second decade of the century. For James Oppenheim, for example, editor of the eclectic little magazine The Seven Arts, which published some of the most significant cultural criticism of the day, the role of democracy in American art was an unresolved yet still vital issue. “Our moderns slap democracy on the back,” he wrote in 1916, “but what are they giving it in art?” “Yes,” he goes on to state, “we have magazines that circulate in the millions: we have cities sown thick with theaters: we have ragtime and the movies.” These manifestations are signs of cultural democracy, he implies, albeit devoid of art.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 24 , October 1999 , pp. 339 - 375
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

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References

Notes

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2. Oppenheim, James, “Editorials,” Seven Arts 1 (12 1916): 153Google Scholar.

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4. Ibid., 13.

5. Howells, William Dean, “On Vaudeville,” Harper's Monthly 106 (04 1903)Google Scholar, reprinted in American Vaudeville as Seen by Its Contemporaries, ed. Stein, Charles W. (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1984), 70Google Scholar.

6. Ibid., 75 (emphasis added).

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9. Ibid., 86.

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11. As no catalogue raisonné of the paintings of Glackens yet exists, I have relied upon the Inventory of American Paintings compiled by the National Museum of American Art (printout of March 3, 1990, pp. 10255–95) for an overview of Glackens's painting oeuvre.

12. Cachin, Françoise et al. , Manet, 1832–1883, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; Harry N. Abrams, 1983), 537Google Scholar. Richard Wattenmaker asserts that Glackens had “scrutinized [the art of Manet] in March 1895 when the Gallery Durand-Ruel in New York presented an exhibition of fifteen of Manet's major compositions” (Wattenmaker, , introduction to William Glackens: The Formative Years, exh. cat. [New York: Kraushaar Galleries, 1991], n. pag.Google Scholar). In a letter to the author (February 14, 1995), he indicates that however likely it may be that Glackens did attend the Durand-Ruel exhibition, “there is no way of absolutely documenting [it].”

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18. For a broad overview of this phenomenon, see Banta, Martha, Imaging American Women: Idea and Ideals in Cultural History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

19. Hollis Clayson notes that certain late-19th-century French artists — particularly Manet and Renoir — used showy clothing to identify prostitutes in their work (Clayson, , Painted Love: Prostitution in French Art of the Impressionist Era [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991], 75Google Scholar).

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26. In addition to “A Typical New York Beer Garden,” which Glackens drew for Harper's Weekly, and drawings accompanying Royle's “The Vaudeville Theatre” and Brady's “A Vaudeville Turn,” which appeared in Scribner's, Glackens made illustrations for “Whence the Song,” a story by Dreiser, Theodore about popular music publishing in New York, which appeared in Harper's Weekly 44 (12 8, 1900): 1165–1166aGoogle Scholar.

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29. Scrapbook of Epes W. Sargent, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; program for Hammerstein's Victoria Venetian Terrace Roof Garden, week of August 7, 1899, Theatre Collection, Museum of the City of New York; and Huneker, James, “Some Roof Gardens,” Metropolitan Magazine 24 (09 1906): 782Google Scholar. Sargent, mentions the opening of the Venetian terrace in reviews appearing in the Telegraph on 06 11 and 06 28, 1899Google Scholar.

30. Scrapbook of Epes W. Sargent, reviews dated July 19, 1899, June 2, 1901, and June 30, 1901.

31. The exact date of this painting has long been uncertain (see Sims, Patterson, Whitney Museum of American Art: Selected Works from the Permanent Collection [New York: Whitney Museum of American Art; W. W. Norton, 1985], 21Google Scholar). Sims notes that the date of the painting is “not firmly set,” but the style of the work — “its monochrome tonality and uncontrived, cut-off composition” — connect it with the paintings Glackens executed from around 1901 to 1903.

32. Letter from Ira Glackens to Stanley F. Ruby, February 20, 1974, copy in Cataloguing Department, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City.

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34. Ibid., 977.

35. Henri, Robert's endeavor is announced in a notice appearing in the New York Times, 09 7, 1901Google Scholar, clipping in John Sloan Archives, vol. 1 (1894–1905), in the Museum of Modern Art Library, New York City. This volume also contains another clipping from an unidentified New York newspaper, dated ca. 1900, with similar information.

36. Glackens, 's known depictions of Central Park ca. 1905 are Central Park, Winter (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)Google Scholar, The Drive, Central Park (Cleveland Museum of Art), May Day, Central Park (M. H. De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco), and Grey Day, Central Park (now lost; exhibited in 1908 at the Macbeth Gallery, New York City)Google Scholar.

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42. Wanda Corn advanced this view in a pioneering article published in 1973, in which she argues that “all the important elements” of the “modern New York iconography” present in the abstract imagery of the 1910s were first given expression in the previous decade (Corn, , “The New New York,” Art in America 61 [07—08 1973]: 59–63Google Scholar).

43. Rabbito, Karin Anhold, “Man Ray in Quest of Modernism,” Rutgers Art Review 2 (01 1981): 59–69Google Scholar; and Ray, Man, A Primer of the New Art of Two Dimensions (New York: By the author, 1916)Google Scholar, reprinted in Naumann, Francis, “Man Ray's Early Paintings, 1913–1916: Theory and Practice in the Art of Two Dimensions,” Artforum 20 (05 1982): 43Google Scholar.

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45. Huneker, James, “Decade of the New Art Movement Shows Big Changes,” New York Times, 11 16, 1912, sec. 5, p. 12Google Scholar.

46. Exhibition of Drawings and Paintings by Man Ray Until November Twenty Third, exh. cat. (New York: Daniel Gallery, [1915]), n. pag., microform copy in Miscellaneous Exhibition Catalogue Collection (reel 4858), Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, New York Regional Center.

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48. Ray, Man et al. , “Explanatory Notes,” in The Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters, exh. cat. (New York: Anderson Galleries, 1916), n. pagGoogle Scholar.

49. Ray, Man, Self-Portrait, 60Google Scholar.

50. See North, Percy, “Max Weber: The Cubist Decade,” in Max Weber: The Cubist Decade, 1910–1920, exh. cat. (Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 1991), 26–29Google Scholar.

51. Kreymborg, Alfred, Troubadour: An Autobiography (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1925), 182Google Scholar.

52. Kreymborg, Alfred, “Why Marcel Duchamps [sic] Calls Hash a Picture,” Boston Transcript, 09 8, 1915, 12Google Scholar, quoted in “Ephemerides,” in Marcel Duchamp: Work and Life, ed. Hulten, Pontus (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), n. pagGoogle Scholar.

53. Marcel Duchamp to Man Ray, undated, but based on internal evidence, Spring 1922, Collection of the Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin; transcribed and translated in Naumann, Francis M., “Man Ray and America: The New York and Ridgefield Years, 1907–1921” (Ph.D. diss., Graduate School of the City University of New York, 1988), 2: 462–63Google Scholar. The original text reads, “‘Say it with music’ est la chanson a la mode ici — Avais tu vu ‘Shuffle Along’ avant de quitter N.Y.…J'ai vu un dernier Charlie Chaplin ‘Pay Day’ qui est amusant mais trop court.”

54. The film, entitled An Aerial Acrobat, was released January 19, 1910. A short description of it appears in Moving Picture World 6 (02 5, 1910): 181Google Scholar.

55. McCullagh, Janice, “The Tightrope Walker: An Expressionist Image,” Art Bulletin 66 (12 1984): 633–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56. Levy, Oscar, ed., The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, vol. 11, Thus Spake Zarathustra, trans. Common, Thomas (New York: Macmillan, 1916), 9Google Scholar.

57. Naumann, Francis, “Man Ray, 1908–1921: From an Art in Two Dimensions to the Higher Dimension of Ideas,” in Perpetual Motif: The Art of Man Ray, by Merry Foresta et al., exh. cat. (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art; New York: Abbeville, 1988), 68Google Scholar.

58. References to Bird Millman were culled from the Bird Millman clipping file, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

59. Ray, Man, Self–Portrait, 66–67Google Scholar.

60. Ray, Man, quoted in Arturo Schwarz, Man Ray: The Rigour of Imagination (New York: Rizzoli, 1977), 39Google Scholar.

61. Ray, Man's response to a questionnaire, 1954, in Accession File for Admiration of the Orchestrelle for the Cinematograph, Department of Drawings, Museum of Modern Art, New YorkGoogle Scholar.

62. Ibid.

63. Ibid.

64. Ibid.