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Indepth Arts News: "Pride in Place: Landscapes by the Eight in Southern Collections" 2000-04-01 until 2000-05-14 Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts Montgomery, AL, USA United States of America
Artwork by members of the group known as THE EIGHT is well represented in
Southern museum collections with more than 150 pieces held by regional
institutions. The Albany Museum, collaborating with these institutions
including the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, has organized Pride in Place:
Landscapes by the Eight in Southern Collections. This exhibition brings
together paintings and works on paper by artists whose style was initially a
source of controversy, but eventually proved revolutionary in the
development of twentieth-century American art.
Early in the twentieth century, Macbeth Gallery in New York City was one of
the few commercial venues for the exhibition of contemporary American art.
Most opportunities for public access to artists' works were obtained through
the exhibition societies such as the National Academy of Design, which
encouraged conventional styles and traditional subject matter when
admitting works of art to their shows. In 1908, Macbeth and more a group of
eight painters—Robert Henri, John Sloan, William Glackens, Ernest Lawson,
George Luks, Everett Shinn, Arthur B. Davies, and Maurice
Prendergast—challenged the academy-dominated system and exhibited their
work, described by many critics of the time as radical. This judgment, based
primarily on these artists' choice of subject matter depicting everyday urban
life in America, proved defining for this group's identity and though they never
exhibited together as a group again in their lifetimes, they have remained
associated with a shift in the appreciation of subject and style in American
painting.
Though critics proclaimed their subject matter undignified (thus the second
term applied to the group—Ashcan School), the members were soon the
undisputed champions of the New York art world. Influential as spokesmen
for American art, as well as teachers of subsequent generations of artists,
THE EIGHT are today recognized as a key source for American realist
painting. The works in Pride in Place represent a treasury of their
accomplishments and also exemplify the extraordinary collection building that
has enriched art museums in the Southern states.
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