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Course: Modernisms 1900-1980 > Unit 8
Lesson 3: AshcanVisiting the Lower East Side in 1905
George Luks' 1905 painting "Street Scene Hester Street" captures the bustling life of Jewish immigrants in New York's Lower East Side. The artwork showcases a market scene, highlighting the human density and cultural dynamics of the era. It also reflects the artist's controversial views and the societal attitudes towards immigrants at the time. Created by Smarthistory.
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- So, he was a painter with a particular ethnic identity in a social context that accepted or even rewarded diminishing of people who were "other", and his artwork was purchased and hangs today in museums.
"Othering" of people who are not "mainstream white" persists today. How and where do we see this portrayed artistically?(1 vote)
Video transcript
(easy jazz music) - [Steven] We're in the Brooklyn Museum, looking at a painting by George Luks called "Street Scene Hester Street." It was painted in 1905, when Hester Street was absolutely packed with new immigrants, and that's what we're seeing here. - [Margarita] Hester
Street was the symbolic and commercial center of
the Jewish Lower East Side. Here, Luks has chosen to
depict a market scene. We see two groups of men
who are gesticulating and conversing with one another. In the center of the
composition, a toy peddler, who's demonstrating a toy and his wares to a group of children and to
other adults who surround him. There are other shoppers
included, one of whom is a woman who's wearing a red
shawl, carrying a basket. She's hastening towards
the left-hand portion of the composition as two other men appear to be moving towards the right. - [Steven] But even though
we understand that that woman is moving past, the way
that Luks has structured the painting, they are
confronting each other, and it does, to me, refer to the way that cities bring people
together in unexpected ways. As we continue to move to
the right across this frieze of figures that are so close
to us in the foreground, we can look into a shop doorway. We see a man there, and
then to their right, a woman who is holding
a dead, plucked chicken and seems to have
perhaps just purchased it from the store behind her. - [Margarita] In the right-hand
portion of the composition, Luks has also placed a pushcart. - [Steven] And then in the
very lower right corner, we can see the edge of a basket. - [Margarita] And there's
also this very palpable sense of congestion. The sky is visible only
in a small blue strip at the very top portion
of the composition, and the tenements, the actual
buildings and structures that make up this urban environment, have a sort of oppressive quality to them. - [Steven] And it's
impossible to overstate the sheer human density in the
Lower East Side at this time. - [Margarita] And there were
more than 700 inhabitants per acre by 1905. Between 1880 and 1920, more
than 20 million immigrants came to America. This was the greatest
period of mass migration in American history, and by
1905, the Lower East Side was home to approximately
500,000 Jewish immigrants, most of whom had recently arrived from Eastern and Southern Europe. - [Steven] And they came
because of economic reasons but also because of political violence, particularly in the wake
of the assassination of the czar in Russia. A series of pogroms
were inflicted on Jews, that is, violent attacks on Jewish towns in what was called the Pale,
that is, areas in Poland and the eastern edge of the
Austrian-Hungarian Empire. - [Margarita] And I think
it's important to account for the fact that Jewish immigrants came not only voluntarily
but as refugees fleeing the state-sanctioned violence. With the increased arrival
of Jewish immigrants to the United States also came this rising nativist sentiment, anti-Semitism
that became pervasive in American life and
culture during this era, and I think it's impossible
to consider Luks' painting without taking into account histories of race and immigration
during this period. We do know that Luks creating a number of anti-Semitic caricatures
for several publications during the 1890s that preceded
his work on this painting, and like many other writers
and artists of his era, he ventured into the Lower
East Side with this kind of fixation with the
Jewish Lower East Side with immigrants and the
neighborhoods that they occupied. - [Steven] And if you look, for instance, at the physiognomies that
are being depicted here, Luks is clearly carrying on
this anti-Semitic tradition that had been so common in
the press in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. - [Margarita] What we
know is that Luks talked about hunting types in
the Lower East Side. - [Steven] This was a moment
when there was fascination with the Lower East
Side in more established and genteel parts of Manhattan. People would, just like Luks
come and visit on market days to see the hubbub, to see the activity, to see these exotic foreigners. - [Margarita] And this type
of unidealized subject matter was what was considered most revolutionary about the Ashcan School, the
fact that they were not looking to genteel subject matter or
genteel areas of the city, but it is important to
think about the unequal power dynamics that are really implicit in these kinds of paintings. It's something that's
not readily apparent, but Luks ventured into these areas with this express purpose in mind. (easy jazz music)