"For a brief time, roughly between 1912 and 1918, The Masses became the rallying center-as sometimes also a combination of circus, nursery, and boxing ring-for almost everything that was then alive and irreverent in American culture. In its pages you could find brilliant artists and cartoonists, like John Sloan, Stuart Davis, and Art Young; one of the best journalists in our history, John Reed (journalist), a writer full of an indignation against American injustice that was itself utterly American; a shrewd and caustic propagandist like Max Eastman; some gifted writers of fiction, like Sherwood Anderson; and one of the few serious theoretical minds American socialism has produced, William English Walling. All joined in a rumpus of revolt, tearing to shreds the genteel tradition that had been dominant in American culture, poking fun at moral prudishness and literary timidity, mocking the deceits of bourgeois individualism, and preaching a peculiarly uncomplicated version of the class struggle. There has never been, and probably never will again be, another radical magazine in the U. S. quite like The Masses, with its slapdash gathering of energy, youth, hope."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Irving Howe Introduction to Echoes of Revolt: The Masses, 1911-1917 by William L. O'Neill (1989)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Sloan
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
John Sloan
John French Sloan (August 2, 1871 โ September 7, 1951) was an influential U.S. painter and teacher, and a leading member of a group of American artists known as The Eight. He is commonly associated with the Ashcan School of realist artists.
12 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by John Sloan โ
Related Quotes
"I have nothing to teach you that will help you to make a living. [as art teacher, advising his students]"
"[on w:Diego Rivera:] ..the one artist on this continent who is in the class of the old masters."
"People who take things too literally don't get much of anything from my teaching. By never saying anything I mean, I โฆ"
"[As a painting teacher] I'm not flirting, playing around. I'm serious about it.. .If you don't want to be serious aboโฆ"
"It takes a great deal of strong personality to survive the art school training. Hard nuts that the art schools can't โฆ"
"The idea of taking up art as a calling, a profession, is a mirage. Art enriches life. It makes life worth living. Butโฆ"
"Then there is this idea that the world owes you a living. Here is a little thought about that. It isn't particularly โฆ"
"[choosing his scenes by:] ..night vigils at the back window."
"The Masses marked, I have been told, the first appearance of "realism" in an American magazine. But I was ignorant ofโฆ"
"John Sloan not having been abroad [in contrary to Hopper himself], has seen these things [Sloan's interpretations in โฆ"