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- [Steven] We're in the Brooklyn Museum,
looking at a painting by George Luks
called "Street Scene Hester Street."
It was painted in 1905, when Hester Street
was absolutely packed with new immigrants,
and that's what we're seeing here.
- [Margarita] Hester Street was the symbolic
and commercial center of the Jewish Lower East Side.
Here, Luks has chosen to depict a market scene.
We see two groups of men who are gesticulating
and conversing with one another.
In the center of the composition, a toy peddler,
who's demonstrating a toy and his wares
to a group of children and to other adults who surround him.
There are other shoppers included, one of whom is a woman
who's wearing a red shawl, carrying a basket.
She's hastening towards the left-hand portion
of the composition as two other men appear
to be moving towards the right.
- [Steven] But even though we understand that that woman
is moving past, the way that Luks has structured
the painting, they are confronting each other,
and it does, to me, refer to the way
that cities bring people together in unexpected ways.
As we continue to move to the right across this frieze
of figures that are so close to us in the foreground,
we can look into a shop doorway.
We see a man there, and then to their right,
a woman who is holding a dead, plucked chicken
and seems to have perhaps just purchased it
from the store behind her.
- [Margarita] In the right-hand portion of the composition,
Luks has also placed a pushcart.
- [Steven] And then in the very lower right corner,
we can see the edge of a basket.
- [Margarita] And there's also this very palpable
sense of congestion.
The sky is visible only in a small blue strip
at the very top portion of the composition,
and the tenements, the actual buildings and structures
that make up this urban environment,
have a sort of oppressive quality to them.
- [Steven] And it's impossible to overstate
the sheer human density in the Lower East Side at this time.
- [Margarita] And there were more than 700 inhabitants
per acre by 1905.
Between 1880 and 1920, more than 20 million immigrants
came to America.
This was the greatest period of mass migration
in American history, and by 1905, the Lower East Side
was home to approximately 500,000 Jewish immigrants,
most of whom had recently arrived
from Eastern and Southern Europe.
- [Steven] And they came because of economic reasons
but also because of political violence,
particularly in the wake of the assassination
of the czar in Russia.
A series of pogroms were inflicted on Jews,
that is, violent attacks on Jewish towns
in what was called the Pale, that is, areas in Poland
and the eastern edge of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.
- [Margarita] And I think it's important to account
for the fact that Jewish immigrants came
not only voluntarily but as refugees fleeing
the state-sanctioned violence.
With the increased arrival of Jewish immigrants
to the United States also came this rising
nativist sentiment, anti-Semitism that became pervasive
in American life and culture during this era,
and I think it's impossible to consider Luks' painting
without taking into account histories
of race and immigration during this period.
We do know that Luks creating a number
of anti-Semitic caricatures for several publications
during the 1890s that preceded his work on this painting,
and like many other writers and artists of his era,
he ventured into the Lower East Side with this kind
of fixation with the Jewish Lower East Side
with immigrants and the neighborhoods that they occupied.
- [Steven] And if you look, for instance,
at the physiognomies that are being depicted here,
Luks is clearly carrying on this anti-Semitic tradition
that had been so common in the press in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries.
- [Margarita] What we know is that Luks talked
about hunting types in the Lower East Side.
- [Steven] This was a moment when there was fascination
with the Lower East Side in more established
and genteel parts of Manhattan.
People would, just like Luks come and visit on market days
to see the hubbub, to see the activity,
to see these exotic foreigners.
- [Margarita] And this type of unidealized subject matter
was what was considered most revolutionary
about the Ashcan School, the fact that they were not looking
to genteel subject matter or genteel areas of the city,
but it is important to think about the unequal
power dynamics that are really implicit
in these kinds of paintings.
It's something that's not readily apparent,
but Luks ventured into these areas
with this express purpose in mind.
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