​Black Film Archive

 

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

“Black Film Archive celebrates the rich, abundant history of Black cinema. We are an evolving archive dedicated to making historically and culturally significant films made from 1915 to 1979 about Black people accessible through a streaming guide with cultural context. ...”

Black Film Archive (Video)

 

Sweet Love, Bitter

End the Imperial Presidency

 

“Suppose President Biden came before Congress to announce that ending the war in Afghanistan was only the beginning. In recent years, the United States has used force on the ground or conducted strikes from the air in at least nine countries: not only Afghanistan, but also Iraq, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. These wars go on in part because one person wages them. Congress has abdicated its constitutional duty to determine whether, where and whom America should fight. Mr. Biden inherited this situation, but he need not perpetuate either the ongoing wars or the legal evasions that enable them. ...”

NY Times: Opinion

​FIFA, Deemed a Victim of Its Own Scandal, Will Share $200 Million Payout

 

“Even as top soccer officials were still being arrested as part of a sprawling corruption investigation in 2015, lawyers for the sport’s global governing body and U.S. prosecutors began to embrace an intriguing premise: The soccer organization, FIFA, and its affiliates were not only the hosts of the scheme, the thinking went, they were also its victims. For prosecutors, the notion distinguished between the hijackers and the hijacked: It held individuals accountable for their crimes but spared the organizations and the sport that they had defrauded. ...”

NY Times

W – Gianni Infantino

W – Sepp Blatter

DJ Kool Herc vs. Pete DJ Jones

 

“Back in the good old days of 1977 when gas lines were long and unemployment was high, there were two schools of DJs competing for Black and Latino audiences in New York City: the Pete DJ Jones crowd and the devout followers of DJ Kool Herc. One group played the popular music of the day for party-going adult audiences in clubs in downtown Manhattan. The other played raw funk and breakbeats for a rapidly growing, fanatic—almost cultlike—following of teenagers in rec centers and parks. Both sides had their devotees. One night in the Bronx, the two masters of the separate tribes clashed in a dark and crowded club on Mount Eden and Jerome Avenues called the Executive Playhouse. ...”

Wax Poetics (Video)

​Meditations in an Emergency - Frank O’Hara (1957)

 “... One of O’Hara’s few prose poems, the 1954 'Meditations in an Emergency' presents a headlong rush of conflicting emotions (triggered, it seems, by a recent break-up with a lover), as presented in a series of campy and comic aphorisms, exclamations, and observations. ... It’s a brave conclusion, but as the poem has made all too clear, ecstasy is impossible to maintain. Its downside is a terrible sense of emptiness, anxiety, and restlessness. ... Only art, in this scheme of things, can provide solace. Joan Mitchell’s work testifies to similar highs and lows, and to a comparable restlessness. ...”

Poetry Foundation

W - Meditations in an Emergency

BBC - Frank O’Hara: Poet of the Mad Men era

Mad Men, Frank O'Hara, and Our Moment of Crisis

[PDF] Meditations in an Emergency

amazon

2008 January: Frank O'Hara, 2010 February: USA: Poetry, 2010 October: Stones: Larry Rivers and Frank O’Hara,  2011 October: City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara - Brad Gooch, 2012 December: USA: Poetry, Frank O'Hara (1966), 2013 June: A  Visual Footnote to O’Hara’s “The Day Lady Died”: New World Writing and The Poets of Ghana, 2013 March: Happy Birthday, Frank O’Hara: The Beloved Poet Reads His “Metaphysical Poem”, 2014 June: Remembering Frank O’Hara’s Apartments, 2014 August: Lunch Poems (1964), 2014 November: In Which The Elements of Disbelief Are Very Strong In The Morning, 2014 December: Hymns of St. Bridget & Other Writings, by Bill Berkson and Frank O’Hara, 2013 June: Cedar Tavern, 2016 April: Experiments with the New York School of Poets, 2016 October: Frank O’Hara’s “For Bob Rauschenberg,” on His Birthday

 

The Birth of Espresso: How the Coffee Shots The Fuel Our Modern Life Were Invented

 

“Espresso is neither bean nor roast. It is a method of pressurized coffee brewing that ensures speedy delivery, and it has birthed a whole culture. Americans may be accustomed to camping out in cafes with their laptops for hours, but Italian coffee bars are fast-paced environments where customers buzz in for a quick pick me up, then right back out, no seat required. It’s the sort of efficiency the Father of the Modern Advertising Poster, Leonetto Cappiello, alluded to in his famous 1922 image for the Victoria Arduino machine (below). Let 21st-century coffee aficionados cultivate their Zenlike patience with slow pourovers. A hundred years ago, the goal was a quality product that the successful businessperson could enjoy without breaking stride. ...”

Open Culture (Video)

2010 September: Espresso, 2013 April: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, 2013 May: Coffeehouse, 2015 June: Barista, 2015 August: Coffee Connections at Peddler in SoHo, 2015 November: The Case for Bad Coffee, 2016 January: 101 Places to Find Great Coffee in New York (2014), 2017 June: How Cold Brew Changed the Coffee Business, 2017 September: Our 7 Favorite Literary Coffee Shops, 2017 October: Clever Literary Coffee Poster, 2017 October: Coffee as Existential Statement: A Crisis in Every Cup on Valencia Street, 2018 February: The Trencherman: A Tale of Two Coffee Shops, 2020 April: Unfair trade, April 2020: A (Very) Brief History of NYC Espresso, 2020 May: The Islamic History of Coffee, 2021 January: The Life Cycle of a Cup of Coffee: The Journey from Coffee Bean, to Coffee Cup, 2021 June: Philosophers Drinking Coffee: The Excessive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard, 2021 July:  The invisible addiction: is it time to give up caffeine?

Jean Cocteau - Orphic Trilogy

 

“Decadent, subversive, and bristling with artistic invention, the myth-born cinema of Jean Cocteau disturbs as much as it charms. Cocteau was the most versatile of artists in prewar Paris. Poet, novelist, playwrite, painter, celebrity, and maker of cinema—his many talents converged in bold, dreamlike films that continue to enthrall audiences around the world. In The Blood of a Poet, Orpheus, and Testament of Orpheus, Cocteau utilizes the Orphic myth to explore the complex relationships between the artist and his creations, reality and the imagination. ...”

Jean Cocteau's Orphic Trilogy at Norton Simon

W - The Blood of a Poet (1930), W - Orpheus (1950), W - Testament of Orpheus (1960)

The Blood of a Poet By Jean Cocteau, Orpheus By Jean Cocteau, Testament of Orpheus By Jean Cocteau (Essays)

Open Culture: Jean Cocteau’s Avante-Garde Film From 1930, The Blood of a Poet (Video)

YouTube: New trailer for Orphée, Le testament d'Orphée - Un peintre fait toujours son autoportrait, Le Testament d'Orphée (1959), Jean Cocteau

2009 March: Jean Cocteau, 2016 February: In Which Jean Cocteau Gives Elan To This Milieu, 2021 January: Flair Magazine: The Short-Lived, Highly-Influential Magazine That Still Inspires Designers Today (1950)

 

Testament of Orpheus (1960) - Jean Cocteau

​Twenty Years After 9/11, Are We Any Smarter?

 

“On a warm June evening in downtown Manhattan, tourists hoping to visit the National September 11 Memorial & Museum are disappointed. The spot is closed after 5 p.m., a security guard repeats patiently to visitors. From behind a rope, the tourists look at the spaces where the Twin Towers used to be. The names of the 2,977 people killed by Al Qaeda in September 2001 are etched into bronze parapets surrounding two pools. Water flows down 30 feet in clear streams over the walls into the pools. During the day, if you are close enough to the water, the endless noise of the city is drowned out. But on nights like this one, New York’s cacophony makes itself heard here. If you close your eyes, it doesn’t sound very different than it did before the terrorists devastated the buildings. This September marks the twentieth anniversary of the attacks. ...”

New Republic (Audio)

A U.S. Marine was trapped in a building in Fallujah, Iraq, during fighting in November 2004.

​Vintage store signs from the 1970s live on in Astoria

 “Astoria is known for its low-key neighborhood vibe, Greek food, beer gardens….and some very atmospheric vintage store signs on the main drag of 31st Street that look time-capsuled from the 1960s and 1970s. It’s hard to beat this charming, no-frills sign from Rose and Joe’s, a traditional Italian bakery (and pizza place). The bakery has been at this address since the 1970s; previously it operated on the corner of 31st Street and Ditmars, per queensscene.com. ... La Guli Pastry Shop is another stunner: the classy cursive lettering, slightly torn fabric awning, the curves in the display windows. ...”

Ephemeral New York

LKJ in Dub - Linton Kwesi Johnson (1980)

 

“LKJ in Dub is an album by the dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, released in 1980 on Island Records. It was produced by Dennis Bovell (credited as Blackbeard). It contains dub versions of tracks from the two previous LKJ albums, Forces of Victory and Bass Culture. Critical reception Trouser Press called the album ‘an interesting and successful example of dub technique.’ The New York Times compared the album to Bovell's recent I Wah Dub, calling LKJ in Dub ‘a less gimmicky, more emotionally satisfying piece of work.’ The Boston Globe wrote that ‘there are some nice grooves here, but with no voice to sing, no soloing instruments, not even a stray Frippertronic to hang onto, it's hard to recommend this album.’ ...”

Wikipedia

Discogs (Video)

amazon

YouTube: LKJ in Dub Vol.1 30:26

Unmuzzled OX - Michael Andre

 

“When the first plane hit the World Trade Center I was a few blocks away, xeroxing John Cage’s various contributions to Unmuzzled OX. The xerox joint shook. ... Cage is complicated and I had to concentrate. I didn’t give the first explosion another thought until the second plane hit. I had an 11:00 a.m. appointment with Colette that morning. Her art had illustrated the last issue of Unmuzzled OX, an opera libretto by Carlos Goldoni translated by W. H. Auden. We were going to sign and number an edition of 100. ...”

From a Secret Location

W - Unmuzzled OX

W - Michael Andre

​Wonder & Waveform: Hannah Peel's Favourite Albums

 

“It perhaps speaks to the nature of the times that Hannah Peel’s newest album had a somewhat different gestation to much of the work that has made up the many highs of her pleasingly non-conformist career. Film scores, super-groups, brass bands, working with bona fide musical national treasures – even the potential disaster of picking up with yours truly for our Chalkhill Blue collaboration. But Fir Wave comes out of a more singular enterprise, starting life as a project based on the re-interpretation of the library music label KPM’s 1972 album KPM 1000 series: Electrosonic, which featured one of Peel’s heroes in Delia Derbyshire. ...”

The Quietus (Video)

Hannah Peel: "Delia Derbyshire would be completely in awe of all the synthesizers and recording technology we have now” (Video)

W - Hannah Peel

Bandcamp (Audio)

Soundcloud (Audio)

YouTube: Emergence In Nature (Official Video)

J.M.W. Turner - Sun Rising Through Vapour, Before 1807

 

“It’s the dawning of a new day and the sun is just breaking through a veil of sea mist. You can look at it without hurting your eyes – of course you can, it’s a painting, but in some of Turner’s works that searing dot really does seem to burn your retina. Here, the world is gentle, the sea so still it holds reflections of boats and light. But this is most of all a painting of people. They gather and go about their morning business in one of his most down to earth scenes, a joyous memory of the seaside as a working world.“

National Gallery

November 2007: J. M. W. Turner, 2009 April: Turner & Italy, 2011 June: J. M. W. Turner - 1, 2014 June: In Which We Find His Theory Of Color Implausible, 2014 September: The EY Exhibition: Late Turner – Painting Set Free, 2015 May: Mr. Turner (2014), 2018 November: The Slave Ship (1840), 2018 December: Turner and Constable: The Inhabited Landscape, 2020 September: The Fighting Temeraire  (1838)

Oranges - Jordan Kisner

 

“When I undertook this column, I had the notion that I would be writing about, I don’t know, heredity. Like: I went to a healing circle in south Brooklyn. After a few days of being asked to think about the particular ways we might need to be healed, as well as the particular ways we might offer healing to other people, we were taken into a small, dark room in groups of four or five and told to sit on stools and close our eyes. The two women leading the healing circle told us they would be drawing initiatory symbols in the air over our heads and invoking various energies on our behalf. They instructed us to keep our eyes closed and to anticipate that we might receive a vision of a spirit that would guide us in this healing journey. ...”

The Paris Review, The Paris Review: Category Archives

Jordan Kisner - Thin Places

Jordan Kisner on Obsession Versus Possession in Thin Places

NY Times - Blurred Lines: An Essayist’s Dispatches on Slippery States of Being

amazon

Jordan Kisner’s “Thin Places: Essays From in Between” touches on religion and atheism, race, class, assimilation and cultural appropriation.

​10 Tracks and Alliances

 

“When Sounds of Sisso was released in June 2017, the global electronic music scene briefly stopped in its tracks. The compilation shed light on a previously little-known music genre from Tanzania, singeli, which is characterized by wild rhythmic salvoes, hysteric melodies, the grotesque use of sound effects, and raw lyric fragments in Swahili – and all this happens at breakneck tempos. The compilation can be found in the release catalogue of the Ugandan collective Nyege Nyege, founded by the expatriates Arlen Dilsizian and Derek Debru, and the same is true for Sounds of Pamoja, its unofficial sequel recently announced to be released in the fall. ...”

Various Artists (Video/Audio)

The Foghorn’s Lament: The Disappearing Music of the Coast - Jennifer Lucy Allan

 

“It seems appropriate that the daughter of the man who is said to have invented the foghorn was christened Euphemia, and that her mother died shortly after giving birth. The name means ‘well-spoken’ (or ‘well-spoken of’) in a dead language, and the story is tinged with grief right from the start. That combination pretty much sums up the foghorn: a device both famed for its emotionally resonant seaside dirges and synonymous with a certain breed of foreboding moodiness. Jennifer Lucy Allan shines light into the mist, and the mist of history alike, in a new book that traces the roughly 170 year arc of the foghorn’s existence: from innovative safety measure to ambivalently received coastal sentinel to what it is today, a fading cultural heirloom. ...”

disquiet

Guardian: The Foghorn’s Lament by Jennifer Lucy Allan review – a whole world in a sound

“The Foghorn’s Lament: The Disappearing Music of the Coast” (Video)

W - Foghorn

amazon

YouTube: Sounding the Sumburgh Foghorn

Cape Wrath lighthouse foghorn, Sutherland, Scotland

​Jupiter Dazzles at Opposition on August 20th

 

A single moon shadow transit Jupiter is exciting enough, but on August 15, 2021, there was a rare triple transit of Europa (II), Ganymede (III), and Callisto (IV) paired with a double shadow transit of Ganymede and Europa. In addition, Ganymede occulted Europa while Io appeared in partial eclipse (center frame) off the planet's limb. The prominent, pale pink vortex dubbed Oval BA is also shown. North is up and "s" indicates shadow. For more images click the link. 

“Jupiter comes to opposition on August 20th, when it will shine brighter and closer than at any other time this year. With nights starting earlier and cooler temperatures arriving, there’s no better time to make the most of the planet. Roughly every 13 months Earth comes from behind and passes Jupiter in a planetary horse race that's been going on for billions of years. And the prize? Spectacular views of the solar system's largest planet from dusk till dawn. ...”

Sky & Telescope

Blue Moon, Perseids Shower, Jupiter-Saturn Opposition, & Other Exciting Events To See This Month.

W - Perseids, W - Perseus

YouTube: What's Up: August 2021 Skywatching Tips from NASA

Perseus Freeing Andromeda by Piero di Cosimo (c. 1515)

​How Will the Taliban Rule? Here’s the Early Evidence.

 

“For all the recriminations and finger-pointing about how the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan so rapidly, there is a hard truth that needs to be reckoned with: The Taliban have spent years preparing for the eventual U.S. withdrawal. Despite numerous military surges, relentless airstrikes and thousands killed on all sides, no one was able to stop them. Year by year, Taliban soldiers methodically gained ground as they coerced and co-opted large swaths of the population now living under their rule and set up a shadow state. The Taliban exploited anger at the abuses of foreign forces and Afghan government corruption to gain support in village after village. The question now is what kind of government the Taliban will impose and what that will mean for Afghans. ...”

NY Times: Opinion

NY Times: Opinion - The Tragedy of Afghanistan

NY Times: Opinion - Thomas L. Friedman - Biden Could Still Be Proved Right in Afghanistan

The Collapse of Afghanistan Is Biden's Fall of Saigon

Washington Square - Henry James (1880)

 

“Washington Square is a short novel by Henry James. Originally published in 1880 as a serial in Cornhill Magazine and Harper's New Monthly Magazine, it is a structurally simple tragicomedy that recounts the conflict between a dull but sweet daughter and her brilliant, unemotional father. The plot of the novel is based upon a true story told to James by his close friend, British actress Fanny Kemble. The book is often compared with Jane Austen's work for the clarity and grace of its prose and its intense focus on family relationships. ... The novel begins at a distance from the characters, describing the background of the Sloper family. It then recounts in detail the story of Catherine's romance with Morris Townsend. When Morris jilts her, the focus shifts back to a long view. As the narrator puts it: ‘Our story has hitherto moved with very short steps, but as it approaches its termination it must take a long stride.’ The final few chapters are taken once more in short steps, ending with the striking vignette of Catherine's rejection of Morris. ...”

Wikipedia, YouTube: Washington Square by Henry James (FULL Audiobook) 7:24:48

W - Washington Square (film)

NY Times - 'Washington Square': Clash of the Dazzling and the Meek, Again

Chicago Tribune - `WASHINGTON SQUARE' A SUPERB ADAPTATION

YouTube: Washington Square (1997) Trailer

​JazzDee • Vinyl Set • Le Mellotron

 

“Brussels based JazzDee comes without boundries. Bringing his recent digs that go from World to brokenbeat, from disco to electro, from funk to breaks. All things fresh to make you skip sleep. Next to that, he also curates his own events where he brings art and his passion for music together. With ‘JazzDee INVITES’ he already brought names like Carista, Habibi Funk, Mr. Thing, Gonesthedj, AliA and Mixmonster Menno to the dancefloor. You might’ve seen JazzDee spin at Couleur Café, DOUR festival, Pukkelpop, CACTUS festival, RedLight Radio (Amsterdam), Bar Tausend (Berlin), Radio Raheem (Milan), Studio Brussel or on his monthly show at Kiosk Radio & Le Mellotron in Paris. ...”

YouTube: ​JazzDee • Vinyl Set • Le Mellotron

The Heteronymous Identities of Fernando Pessoa By Richard Zenith

 

“When the ever elusive Fernando Pessoa died in Lisbon, in the fall of 1935, few people in Portugal realized what a great writer they had lost. None of them had any idea what the world was going to gain: one of the richest and strangest bodies of literature produced in the twentieth century. Although Pessoa lived to write and aspired, like poets from Ovid to Walt Whitman, to literary immortality, he kept his ambitions in the closet, along with the larger part of his literary universe. He had published only one book of his Portuguese poetry, Mensagem (Message), with forty-four poems, in 1934. It won a dubious prize from António Salazar’s autocratic regime, for poetic works denoting ‘a lofty sense of nationalist exaltation,’ and dominated his literary résumé at the time of his death. Some of Pessoa’s admirers—other poets, mostly—were baffled by the publication of Message, whose mystical vision of Portugal’s history and destiny seemed to rise up out of nowhere. ...”

LitHub

NY Times - Fernando Pessoa: Office Worker, Occultist, Galaxy of Writers

W - Heteronym (literature)

amazon: Pessoa: A Biography by Richard Zenith

2008 March: Fernando Pessoa, 2012 October: The Book of Disquiet, 2012 November: Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems, 2014 May: Aspects by Fernando Pessoa, 2016 March: Passoa's Trunk - 13+ ways of looking at a poem, 2017 September: Fernando Pessoa’s Disappearing Act, 2020 February: Strange Music Of Silence: Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet

​Leni Sinclair

 

"Leni Sinclair, born Magdalene Arndt, is an American photographer and radical political activist who lives in Detroit. She has photographed rock and jazz musicians since the early 1960s. She was the co-founder of the White Panther Party along with John Sinclair and Pun Plamondon. Magdalene Arndt was born on March 8, 1940, in Königsberg, Germany, later renamed Kaliningrad when it became territory of the Soviet Union. She grew up in the village of Vahldorf near Magdeburg in East Germany where she listened to American jazz artists such as Harry Belafonte, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald on Radio Luxemburg. ...”

Wikipedia

Jacobin: When Detroit Was Revolutionary

Kresge Arts in Detroit: Leni Sinclair (Video)

Leni Sinclair Shares on Life, Detroit, and More Ahead of Her Motor City Underground Exhibition

 

 Public display of poem by Medgar Evers B&W photograph, undated image, by Leni Sinclair

Afghanistan Live Updates: Afghan President Said to Have Fled as Taliban Enter Kabul

 

“President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan has fled the country, a top political figure said on Sunday, as the Taliban’s relentless, rapid advance brought them into the capital, Kabul, and the last major city controlled by the government fell into chaos. Abdullah Abdullah, chairman of the council appointed to lead peace talks, said in a Facebook video that Mr. Ghani, who had resisted calls for him to step down, had left Afghanistan. Afghan media also reported his departure, which many analysts said was needed to prevent a bloody battle for control of Kabul. On Sunday evening, former President Hamid Karzai announced on Twitter that he was forming a Coordinating Council together with Mr. Abdullah and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of the Hesb-i-Islami party, to manage a peaceful transfer of power. He called on both government and Taliban forces to act with restraint but resolutely to curb any individuals causing chaos or acting irresponsibly. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: A Week Into Taliban Rule, One City’s Glimpse of What the Future May Hold

NY Times: Taliban Sweep in Afghanistan Follows Years of U.S. Miscalculations

Guardian: Taliban orders fighters into Kabul as US evacuates embassy (Video)

The Atlantic: What We Got Wrong in Afghanistan

The Atlantic: Biden’s Betrayal of Afghans Will Live in Infamy

New Yorker: The Return of the Taliban

The Taliban have completed their sweep of the country’s south on Friday, as they took four more provincial capitals

​A fresh angle: The revolutionary gaze of Margaret Watkins – in pictures

 

Still Life – Bathtub, New York, 1919

“Canadian photographer Margaret Watkins rejected traditional gender roles to become a pioneering modernist photographer with Renaissance flair. ... Still Life – Bathtub, New York, 1919. Watkins’ world, like many women at the time, was that of the interior, the home. Watkins had the ability to see it as a pretext for inventing new forms. ... Untitled, Glasgow, 1928-1938. Watkins moved to Glasgow, the city her parents had left to emigrate to Canada, in 1928. The last series of photographs she took was of the city’s building sites. ...”

Guardian

W - Margaret Watkins

Untitled, Glasgow, 1928-1938.

​George-Thérèse Dickenson, 1951-2021

 

“Poet, editor and activist George-Thérèse Dickenson died on June 15, 2021, in New York. The cause was a brain hemorrhage, according to her brother, John Dickenson. With Will Bennett, Dickenson edited the magazine Assassin in the late 1970s. ...  After a brief stint at UC-Berkeley, she moved to Vermont and then Boston in the early 1970s, where she became involved with the anarchist circle around Murray Bookchin. She also connected with a group of poets. In the late 1970s, she moved to lower Manhattan, where, over the next decade, Dickenson was closely involved with Larry Estridge and Peter Seaton. During that time, she taught poetry in the prisons through Janine Pommy Vega’s Incisions Arts Project. ...”

Seven Days

Jacket2: Charles Bernstein - George-Thérèse Dickenson (1951–2021)

​The Hidden Melodies of Subways Around the World

 

“Ted Green has been collecting the sounds and sights of transit systems for more than a decade. He travels frequently for work, as a civil engineer, and in every city he visits, he rides the mass transit system and films video of the closing doors, replete with the announcements and the telltale chimes — beeps, ding-dongs, jingles and arpeggios that warn riders around the world to stand clear. ... Like many aspects of mass transit systems, door chimes may seem banal, the dull background track to daily commutes. If you listen more closely, though, you’ll notice regional patterns and distinctions. ...”

NY Times (Audio)

The Ashcan School Painted the American Working Class

 

New York (1911) by George Bellows. 

“At the turn of the twentieth century, many Western painters sought to enhance the visual world through glorification. Portraits of politicians and socialites instilled pride in their moneyed subjects, while landscapes and narrative works told epic tales across massive canvases. In the United States, the industrial revolution altered the landscape of every major city, with skyscrapers rising rapidly and workers pressing their noses further to the grindstone. Bourgeois painters were ill-equipped to portray urban development and its effects on everyday people, but one tight-knit group of working-class artists captured the spirit of this time by going against the mainstream. These artists, commonly known as the Ashcan school, had cut their teeth as political cartoonists during the rise of investigative journalism. Working in newspapers brought them closer to this rapidly industrializing social environment, instilling a sense of journalistic presence. They served the press in ways the camera would just a few decades later, leading their art from postimpressionism to documentary realism. ...’

Jacobin

Ashcan Artists - Bill Davis

The City from Greenwich Village (1922) by John Sloan.