Art Students League of New York

Art Students League of New York
The Art Students League of New York is an art school in the American Fine Arts Society in Manhattan, New York City. The Arts Students League is known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists.
Although artists may study full-time, there have never been any degree programs or grades, and this informal attitude pervades the culture of the school. From the 19th century to the present, the League has counted among its attendees and instructors many historically important artists, and contributed to numerous influential schools and movements in the art world.
The League also maintains a significant permanent collection of student and faculty work, and publishes an online journal of writing on art-related topics, called LINEA. The journal's name refers to the school's motto Nulla Dies Sine Linea or "No Day Without a Line", traditionally attributed to the Greek painter Apelles by the historian Pliny the Elder, who recorded that Apelles would not let a day pass without at least drawing a line to practice his art.
History
19th century
Founded in 1875, the League's creation came about in response to both an anticipated gap in the art instruction program of classes at New York's National Academy of Design for that year, and to longer-term desires for more variety and flexibility in education for artists than it was felt the Academy provided. The breakaway group of students included many women, and was originally housed in rented rooms at 16th Street and Fifth Avenue.
When the Academy resumed a more typical but liberalized program in 1877, there was some feeling that the League had served its purpose, but its students voted to continue its program, and it was incorporated the following year. Influential board members from this formative period included painter Thomas Eakins and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Membership continued to increase, forcing the League to relocate to increasingly larger spaces.
The League participated in the founding of the American Fine Arts Society (AFAS) in 1889, together with the Society of American Artists and the Architectural League, among others. The American Fine Arts Building at 215 West 57th Street, constructed as their joint headquarters, has continued to house the League since 1892. Designed in the French Renaissance style by one of the founders of the AFAS, architect Henry Hardenbergh (in collaboration with W.C. Hunting & J.C. Jacobsen), the building is a designated New York City Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
In the late 1890s and early 1900s an increasing number of women artists came to study and work at the League many of them taking on key roles. Among them were Wilhelmina Weber Furlong and her husband Thomas Furlong. The avant-garde couple served the league in executive and administrative roles and as student members throughout the American modernism movement. Alice Van Vechten Brown, who would later develop some of the first art programs in American higher education, also studied with the league until prolonged family illness sent her home.
The painter Edith Dimock, a student from 1895 to 1899, described her classes at the Art Students League:
In his official biography, My Adventures as an Illustrator, Norman Rockwell recounts his time studying at the school as a young man, providing insight into its operation in the early 1900s.
20th century
The League's popularity persisted into the 1920s and 1930s under the hand of instructors like painter Thomas Hart Benton, who counted among his students there the young Jackson Pollock and other avant-garde artists who would rise to prominence in the 1940s. In 1925 to celebrate their golden jubilee (fifty years), the League organized an exhibition which included the work of members, students and instructors. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney gave a reception at which Charles Dana Gibson was toast master.
Between 1942 and 1943, many of the League's students joined the armed forces to fight in World War II, and the League's enrollment decreased from 1,000 to 400, putting it in danger of closing in mid-1943. In response, five hundred artists donated $15,000, just enough to keep the League from closing. In the years after World War II, the G.I. Bill played an important role in the continuing history of the League by enabling returning veterans to attend classes. The League continued to be a formative influence on innovative artists, being an early stop in the careers of Abstract expressionists, Pop Artists and scores of others including Lee Bontecou, Helen Frankenthaler, Al Held, Eva Hesse, Roy Lichtenstein, Donald Judd, Knox Martin, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Cy Twombly and many others vitally active in the art world.
In 1968, Lisa M. Specht was elected first female president of the League. The League's unique importance in the larger art world dwindled somewhat during the 1960s, partially because of higher academia's emergence as an important presence in contemporary art education, and partially due to a shift in the art world towards minimalism, photography, conceptual art, and a more impersonal and indirect approach to art making.
21st century
, the League continues to attract a wide variety of young artists, and its focuse on art made by hand, both figurative and abstract, remains strong. Its continued significance has largely been in the continuation of its original mission, which is to give access to art classes and studio access to all comers regardless of their means or technical background.
Other facilities
From 1906 until 1922, and again after the end of World War II from 1947 until 1979, the League operated a summer school of painting at Woodstock, New York. In 1995, the League's facilities expanded to include the Vytlacil campus in Sparkill, New York, named after and based upon a gift of the property and studio of former instructor Vaclav Vytlacil.
Notable instructors and lecturers
Since its inception, the Art Students League has employed notable professional artists as instructors and lecturers. Most engagements have been for a year or two, and some, like those of sculptor George Grey Barnard, were quite brief.
Others have taught for decades, notably: Frank DuMond and George Bridgman, who taught anatomy for artists and life drawing classes for some 45 years, reportedly to 70,000 students. Bridgman's successor was Robert Beverly Hale. Other longtime instructors included the painters Frank Mason (DuMond's successor, over 50 years), Kenneth Hayes Miller (40 years) from 1911 until 1951, sculptor Nathaniel Kaz (50 years), Peter Golfinopoulos (over 40 years), Knox Martin (over 45 years), Martha Bloom (30 years) and the sculptors William Zorach (30 years), and Jose De Creeft, Will Barnet (50 years) from the 1930s to the 1990s, and Bruce Dorfman, who is the longest continually-teaching instructor in the League's history (over 55 years).
Other well-known artists who have served as instructors include:
Lawrence Alloway
Charles Alston
Will Barnet
Robert Beauchamp
George Bellows
Thomas Hart Benton,
Isabel Bishop
Arnold Blanch
Homer Boss
Louis Bouche
Robert Brackman
George Bridgman
Alexander Stirling Calder
Naomi Andrée Campbell
Robert Cenedella
Jean Charlot
William Merritt Chase
Dionisio Cimarelli
Timothy J. Clark
Walter Appleton Clark
Kenyon Cox
Jose De Creeft
John Steuart Curry
Stuart Davis
Edwin Dickinson
Sidney Dickinson
Frederick Dielman
Harvey Dinnerstein
Arthur Wesley Dow
Frank DuMond
Frank Duveneck
Thomas Eakins
Daniel Chester French
Dagmar Freuchen
Wilhelmina Weber Furlong
Michael Goldberg
Stephen Greene
George Grosz
Molly Guion
Lena Gurr
Philip Guston
Robert Beverly Hale
Lovell Birge Harrison
Ernest Haskell
Childe Hassam
Robert Henri
Eva Hesse
Charles Hinman
Hans Hofmann
Harry Holtzman
Jamal Igle
Burt Johnson
Wolf Kahn
Morris Kantor
Rockwell Kent
Walt Kuhn
Yasuo Kuniyoshi
Gabriel Laderman
Ronnie Landfield
Jacob Lawrence
Hayley Lever
Martin Lewis
James Little
George Luks
Paul Manship
Reginald Marsh
Fletcher Martin
Knox Martin
Jan Matulka
Earl Mayan
Mary Beth Mckenzie
William Charles McNulty
Willard Metcalf
Kenneth Hayes Miller
Fred Mitchell
F. Luis Mora
Robert Neffson
Kimon Nicolaïdes
Maxfield Parrish
Jules Pascin
Joseph Pennell
Richard C. Pionk
Larry Poons
Richard Pousette-Dart
Abraham Rattner
Peter Reginato
Frank J. Reilly
Henry Reuterdahl
Boardman Robinson
Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Kikuo Saito
Nelson Shanks
William Scharf
Susan Louise Shatter
Walter Shirlaw
John Sloan
Hughie Lee-Smith
Isaac Soyer
Raphael Soyer
Theodoros Stamos
Anita Steckel
Harry Sternberg
Augustus Vincent Tack
George Tooker
John Henry Twachtman
Vaclav Vytlacil
Max Weber
J. Alden Weir
Jerry Weiss
William Zorach
Notable alumni
The list of Art Students League of New York alumni includes:
Pacita Abad
Harry N. Abrams
Edwin Tappan Adney
Olga Albizu
Karin von Aroldingen
Ai Weiwei
Gladys Aller
William Anthony
Edmund Archer
Nela Arias-Misson
David Attie
Milton Avery
Norio Azuma
Elizabeth Gowdy Baker
Thomas R. Ball
Hugo Ballin
Will Barnet
Nancy Hemenway Barton
Saul Bass
C. C. Beall
Romare Bearden
Tony Bennett
Theresa Bernstein
Brother Thomas Bezanson
Thomas Hart Benton
Ilse Bischoff
Isabel Bishop
Dorothy Block
Leonard Bocour
Harriet Bogart
Abraham Bogdanove
Lee Bontecou
Henry Botkin
Louise Bourgeois
Harry Bowden
Stanley Boxer
Louise Brann
D. Putnam Brinley
Emma L. Brock
James Brooks
Carmen L. Browne
Jennie Augusta Brownscombe
Edith Bry
Dennis Miller Bunker
Jacob Burck
Feliza Bursztyn
Theodore Earl Butler
Paul Cadmus
Alexander Calder
Chris Campbell
John F. Carlson
Kathrin Cawein
Robert Cenedella
Paul Chalfin
Ching Ho Cheng
Minna Citron
Margaret Covey Chisholm
Walter Appleton Clark
Kate Freeman Clark
Henry Ives Cobb, Jr.
Claudette Colbert
Willie Cole
John Connell
Russell Cowles
Allyn Cox
Ellis Credle
Richard V. Culter
Mel Cummin
Frederick Stuart Church
Joan Danziger
Andrew Dasburg
Charles C. Dawson
Adolf Dehn
Dorothy Dehner
Sidney Dickinson
Burgoyne Diller
Ellen Eagle
Marjorie Eaton
Sir Jacob Epstein
Marisol Escobar
Joe Eula
Philip Evergood
Peter Falk
Frances Farrand Dodge
Ernest Fiene
Irving Fierstein
Louis Finkelstein
Ethel Fisher
Wilhelmina Weber Furlong
Helen Frankenthaler
Frederick Carl Frieseke
Wanda Gág
Dan Gheno
Charles Dana Gibson
William Glackens
Joseph Glasco
Elias Goldberg
Michael Goldberg
Shirley Goldfarb
Peter Golfinopoulos
Adolph Gottlieb
Blanche Grambs
John D. Graham
Enrique Grau
Nancy Graves
Clement Greenberg
Stephen Greene
Red Grooms
Chaim Gross
Lena Gurr
Bessie Pease Gutmann
Minna Harkavy
Marsden Hartley
Julius Hatofsky
Ethel Hays
Gus Heinze
Al Held
Carmen Herrera
Eva Hesse
Al Hirschfeld
Itshak Holtz
Lorenzo Homar
Winslow Homer
Thomas Hoving
Paul Jenkins
Burt Johnson
Donald Judd
Joan Kahn
Matsumi Kanemitsu
Alonzo Myron Kimball
Torleif S. Knaphus
Belle Kogan
Lee Krasner
Anne Kutka (McCosh)
Ronnie Landfield
Adelaide Lawson
Arthur Lee
Lucy L'Engle
Alfred Leslie
Roy Lichtenstein
Dorothy Loeb
Tom Loepp
Michael Loew
John Marin
Reginald Marsh
Knox Martin
Donald Martiny
Mercedes Matter
Louisa Matthiasdottir
Peter Max
John Alan Maxwell
Roderick Fletcher Mead
Felicia Meyer
Eleanore Mikus
Emil Milan
Lee Miller
David Milne
F. Luis Mora
Walter Tandy Murch
Reuben Nakian
Louise Nevelson
Barnett Newman
Isamu Noguchi
Sassona Norton
Frank O'Connor
Georgia O'Keeffe
Mary Orwen
Roselle Osk
Tom Otterness
Betty Waldo Parish
Clara Weaver Parrish
Betty Parsons
David Partridge
Phillip Pavia,
Roger Tory Peterson
Bert Geer Phillips
I. Rice Pereira
Alain J. Picard
Jackson Pollock
Fairfield Porter
Edith Mitchill Prellwitz
Henry Prellwitz
Robert Rauschenberg
Man Ray
Charles M. Relyea
Frederic Remington
Priscilla Roberts
Norman Rockwell
Esther Rolick
Louise Emerson Ronnebeck
Herman Rose
Leonard Rosenfeld
James Rosenquist
Sanford Ross
Mark Rothko
Glen Rounds
Luis Alvarez Roure
Peter Rubino
Morgan Russell
Abbey Ryan
Sam Savitt
Concetta Scaravaglione
Louis Schanker
Mary Schepisi
Edith Schloss
Katherine Schmidt
Emily Maria Scott
Ethel Schwabacher
Joan Semmel
Maurice Sendak
Ben Shahn
Nelson Shanks
Nat Mayer Shapiro
Henrietta Shore
Jessamine Shumate
David Smith
Tony Smith
Vincent D. Smith
Robert Smithson
Louise Hammond Willis Snead
Armstrong Sperry
Otto Stark
William Starkweather
Frank Stella
Joseph Stella
Inga Stephens Pratt Clark
Harry Sternberg
Clyfford Still
Soichi Sunami
Katharine Lamb Tait
Minerva Teichert
Val Telberg
Patty Prather Thum
George Tooker
Kim Tschang-yeul
Wen-Ying Tsai
Luce Turnier
Cy Twombly
Jack Tworkov
Edward Charles Volkert
Emmett Watson
Nan Watson
Alonzo C. Webb
Sybilla Mittell Weber
Davyd Whaley
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
Adolph Alexander Weinman
J. Alden Weir
Jerry Weiss
Stow Wengenroth
Pennerton West
Anita Willets-Burnham
Ellen Axson Wilson
Gahan Wilson
Louise Waterman Wise
Sarah A. Worden
Alice Morgan Wright
Russel Wright
Koho Yamamoto
Art Young
Marie Zimmermann
Philip Zuchman
Iván Zulueta
See also
National Academy of Design
Society of American Artists
Ten American Painters
List of art schools
Atelier Method
References
Further reading
McElhinney James L: Art Students League of New York on Painting: Lessons and Meditations on Mediums, Styles, and Methods, 2015.
External links
Art Students League of New York
"Brief History of The League's Early Years"
Linea
PBS American Masters documentation including some notable alumni
Information on the ASL at the Traditional Fine Arts Organization web site, retrieved December 14, 2007
"Linea, Journal of the Art Students League of New York" available for download in PDF form; four issues per year (free)
"On the Front Lines: Military Veterans at The Art Students League of New York"
Art Students League records, 1875-1955 from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art
Art schools in New York City
American artist groups and collectives
Arts organizations based in New York City
Culture of Manhattan
Education in New York City
Modern art
Arts organizations established in the 1870s
Educational institutions established in 1875
1875 establishments in New York (state)
Cultural history of the United States