Election Night by John Sloan, a great art masterpiece about the exuberance and excitement at New Yor

That was a great Thursday morning with clear and bright sky. As an assignment for my writing class, I went to the Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester, looking for an inspiring artwork to analyze about.

And I found "Election Night".

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"Election Night" is contained in a frame of 26 3/8 in. by 32 1/4 in, drawn in oil on canvas. To be honest, "Election Night", is not a catchy picture that grasps audience's attention at the first glance and makes them say "Ow", my friend said. However, my opinion is way different from my friend's. Election Night actually is a combination of greatest art techniques that John Sloan implemented to describe a night of excitement and exuberance in Harald Square, New York City.

FIGURES

My friend, here is first point proving that you're wrong. The figures in the canvas have portrayed a greatly rambunctious and clamorous night filled with music in the narrow space between Herald Square and the elevated train track. The energetic crowd is full of young women, men and children doing festival activities, created a noisy and exciting atmosphere. I guarentee that audience's first sight would be captivated by the girl with a red dress in the center of the canvas. The pose of that girl, slightly leaning forward, creates a feeling that she is swing dancing to the vibrant music by horn-blowers. Indeed, it is widely known that people usually dance when they are at a fun and exciting event, so did the girl. Around the girl are men grasping horns and improvising a series of terrific melodies, but who gets attention next is the one on the right side of the picture.

He wears a black coat, with his back turned toward the viewers. The thing that makes him stand out in the canvas is not his clothing but his activity. To be more specific, it seems that his clothes blend in the night background; however, his right hand carrying a tickler has captured the viewer's attention. A tickler is a stick attached with a feather at the end (Lobel, 2011, p. 355), and is commonly found in the public carnival masquerade. This can be seen clearly in the annual Carnival in Brazil, where a great deal of young women parade with vibrant clothes, masks and ticklers. However, in this canvas, the intention of the men, absolutely, is not masquerading. From my perspective, the ticklerlooks like the stick of orchestra's conductor moving their hands to the rhythm of music. The man, in the canvas, looks apparently like a real musician guiding his orchestra comprised of horn and trumpet players. Moreover, this orchestra is so special that its components are not only musicians but also dancers with confetti, which was painted by little white dots.

There is another interpretation. According to Micheal Lobel (2011, p. 355), the pose of the man resembles a pose of a painter grasping a paintbrush, trying to create his masterpiece, the blonde opposite him. Nevertheless, whatever the interpretation is, the viewer, surely, will feel the artistic aspect of this figure, and it is clear that due to excitement of the election night, an ordinary person has become a real artist. Furthermore, the way John Sloan draws the pose of each figure is totally different from each other's, which generated a boisterous picture, little bit chaotic but in a positive way. By drawing blurring hats blending to the background, John Sloan has made the viewer imagine the ceaseless line of people beyond the border of the painting. To sum up, the composition of figures in this canvas has made a picture of noisy and boisterous scene in Herald Square; moreover, the pose and the activities of those figures make audiences immersed in a 3D canvas that they not only experience the beauty of the picture but also have the feeling that they are listening to vibrant and provocative sounds by trumpets, horns, and in general, "the orchestra" of the anonymous man.

SENSE OF MOVEMENT

LINES

Not only does John Sloan’s drawing of the figures create an exuberant scene filled with a throng of excited individuals and blaring noise, but also the sense of movement which is enhanced by use of lines. The lines drawn by John Sloan have indeed contributed to the sense of movement in the whole artwork. In the book "John Sloan on Drawing and Painting", Sloan (2000, p. 63) stated that the movement is not only expressed by diagonals and curves but also circles or spirals, and these properties can be realized clearly in the Election Night. On the right of the painting is the diagonal of the elevated rail track. On the left side, instead of in the shape of a straight line, the gaslight is curved to bring the audience the feeling of movement.

The bulb of gaslight is drawn like being twisted and has created a moving lit circle, which intensifies the sense of movement. Indeed, there are some other light sources in the painting that were created in this way such as the shading white and yellow lights under the rail track.

COLORS and BRUSHSTROKE

The sense of movement was also created thanks to another element of the painting, color. It can be seen clearly that the painting itself to some extent is dark. Filled with the black background, the painting has some contrasting light colors such as the red of the central figure's dress, the white of the horns and confetti, and the yellow of the light. Surprisingly, the contrast in color is the factor that made the sense of movement. Indeed, the feeling of movement can be made by, in general, the contrast, Sloan(2000, p. 70) stated. The final element in the picture which heightens the feeling of movement is the brushstroke. The technique John Sloan applied to his painting is the quick brushstroke. The gaslight would be the great example of this technique. Instead of drawing the precise and clear line of the gaslight, Sloan drew it quickly. The light bulb is not "described" in detail, but sketched, looking like a twisted circle. The wall of the rail station was also decorated with the same technique. The brushstroke to color the wall green seems careless and unintentional. However, they are components to create the sense of movement in this piece of art. Not only expressed in the surrounding landscape, the quick brushstroke was also used to convey the movement of human beings in the Election Night. Looking carefully, we can realize that the faces and bodies of election night's participants were not clearly depicted deliberately. Thanks to the technique, people in the painting don’t seem like they are in a firm and steady position but in motion. It looks like they are soaking into the flux of music, dancing with so much energy that they are not able to control their own body.

My friend used to say that this picture, in some senses, is kind of gloomy, not motivated because no exciting things happened there. It took me hours in ITS, doing reasearch, explaining, arguing, offerring those elements above to end a war. The war in my head when I had to defend my points, and fight with that friend, the friend in my mind, who said that: "No! Don't pick this artwork. It is way boring." But I kept working because I believed that this painting, in which the excitement and exuberance was found, would bring me "victory" not only on this fight but also the fight with my writting class :)). I won...(To be continued)

Reference:

Lobel, M. (2011). John Sloan: Figuring the Painter in the Crowd. The Art Bulletin, 93(3),

345–368. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23046581

Sloan, J. (2000). John Sloan on Drawing and Painting (Gist of Art)(4thed.). Mineola,

NY:Dover Publications, Inc.

#ElectionNight #exuberance #NewYorkCity #JohnSloan