1906, George Bellows, Kids -- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond)
From the museum label: With the rowdy group of unsupervised boys playing before a tenement fence (one of the boys smokes a cigarette), Kids is one of the best-known and most archetypal Ashcan images. Homeless child musicians and newsboys and newsgirls roaming the streets had been a problem in New York since before the Civil War. Kids suggests that homeless children may be mischievous and even transgressive, but not sinister. Note the figural group at left, playing tag or some other game with the goal of capturing the foe. Here, naturalism is less important than the broad brushstrokes necessary to suggest the dynamics of play and exuberance. Capturing the democratic ethos of Ashcan art, Kids helped to rewrite the rules for what counts as "art" in the first place.
1906, George Bellows, Kids -- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond)
From the museum label: With the rowdy group of unsupervised boys playing before a tenement fence (one of the boys smokes a cigarette), Kids is one of the best-known and most archetypal Ashcan images. Homeless child musicians and newsboys and newsgirls roaming the streets had been a problem in New York since before the Civil War. Kids suggests that homeless children may be mischievous and even transgressive, but not sinister. Note the figural group at left, playing tag or some other game with the goal of capturing the foe. Here, naturalism is less important than the broad brushstrokes necessary to suggest the dynamics of play and exuberance. Capturing the democratic ethos of Ashcan art, Kids helped to rewrite the rules for what counts as "art" in the first place.