IT’S ALWAYS interesting, and sometimes surprising, when a museum exhibition makes the familiar seem strange, shedding new light on artists and artworks we thought we knew—and, perhaps, took for granted. Such is the case with “The Ashcan School and The Eight: ‘Creating a National Art’”, the new exhibition now on view at the Milwaukee Art Museum. The Eight, originally, were Robert Henri, Arthur Bowen Davies, William Glackens, Ernest Lawson, George Luks, Maurice Prendergast, Everett Shinn and John Sloan. Their name from their first major exhibition at the Macbeth Gallery in New York in 1908, which was titled “Eight American Painters”. Over time, George Bellows, Jerome Myers, Stuart Davis (in his early years) and others would come to be associated with The Eight.
What characterizes The Eight in American art history…
