The Art Spirit

Robert Henri
Monhegan Island, Maine
1911

“When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and opens ways for better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it and shows there are still more pages possible.” 
― Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

Robert Henri
Cumulus Clouds, East River
1901-1902

Robert Henri (American, 1865 - 1929) was an artist, writer, influential teacher and also the organizer and leader of "The Eight", a group of artists who believed that "art should be relevant to contemporary life rather than conform to standards of popular taste".  They became known as "The Ashcan School".  Henri advocated independence for artists and freedom of expression and was committed to integrating art and life, promoting the development of a new realism in 20th Century American Art.  His progressive art and ideas were in fact the link between the academic world of the 19th Century and the landmark 1913 Armory Show in New York City.

Ashcan School artists & friends at John French Sloan's Philadelphia Studio, 1898

"The Ashcan School" first exhibited in New York City in 1908, an exhibit organized by Henri as a reaction against the conservative, prescriptive exhibit policies of the National Academy of Design.  This show was shocking for its time and included artists like John Sloan, William Glackens, Everett Shinn, George Luks, Arthur B. Davies, Ernest Lawson, and Maurice Prendergast, all artists, like Henri, who rebelled against the refined and polished style of American Impressionism and academic realism.  Their works were darker, in subject and in tone and, at the urging of Henri, were painted in "the robust, unfettered, ungenteel spirit of his favorite poet, Walt Whitman, and to be unafraid of offending contemporary taste".  

. . . For once, and more than once, dimly, down to the beach gliding, /Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the shadows, /Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and sightsafter their sorts, /The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing, /I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair, / Listen'd long and long. . .. . . Where to answering, the sea, /Delaying not, hurrying not, /Whisper'd me through the night, and very plainly before day-break, /Lisp'd to me the low and delicious word DEATH. . .

Walt Whitman, Sea Shore Memories

. . . besides Whitman, Henri's influence at this time in his career were the artists Velasquez, Hals, and Manet, plus his rebellious nature and desire for truth. According to Robert Hughes, he "wanted art to be akin to journalism...he wanted paint to be as real as mud, as the clods of horse-shit and snow, that froze on Broadway in the winter." 

Robert Henri
Snow in New York
1902

Robert Henri first visited Monhegan in 1903, awed by the fundamental, physical character of the island - the sea, the headlands, and the forest.  He and George Bellows, Edward Hopper, and Rockwell Kent helped establish the artist colony there and they produced some of the most iconic images of "Maine".  The experience of the unique natural phenomenon that the island offered must have inspired and complimented their objective for truth and expression in their own work.

Robert Henri
Storm Tide
1903

Robert Henri
Sea and Land (Monhegan Island)
c1909

I admire Henri because he was a teacher who encouraged "creative independence and philosophical anarchism" and he was an artist who never ceased to question his own style and self-expression.  For me, he "opens (the book) and shows there are still more pages possible”, even 100 years later.  I want to be like him, in his work and influence - even in a small way. 

Robert Henri
Bucko O'Malley (Charles)-(Boy with Cap)
1924

"All I can hope to do for you is to incite you to do something for yourself-- to create something. What it is, I can’t guess. I’m eager to see."

- Robert Henri, artist and teacher

. . . must include this final painting:

Robert Henri
Pequot Lighthouse, Connecticut Coast
1902

where I grew up.