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George Bellows, Modernist Realist
| Article
# : |
20448 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1992 |
1,992 Words |
| Author
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Gail Stavitsky
Gail Stavitsky is an art historian and critic based in New
York who lectures regularly at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
and the Museum of Modern Art. |
Although he was one of the most celebrated and accomplished American realist painters of his time, George Wesley Bellows (1882-1925) has received surprisingly little attention in recent years. The last major overview of Bellows' tragically short yet vigorously productive career was provided thirteen years ago by his hometown museum in Columbus, Ohio, in 1979. During the past decade, articles and exhibition catalogs have focused upon specific themes in Bellows' work, notably the small group of energetically painted boxing pictures for which he is best and almost exclusively known. The time is clearly ripe for a comprehensive reappraisal of this American master's rich and varied oeuvre.
The paintings of George Bellows, a touring exhibition currently at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, provides the most searching, inclusive examination since Charles Morgan's definitive biography of 1965. The show's omission of Bellows' superb drawings and lithographs, however, is unfortunate. Fundamental to an understanding of his career as a painter and tonal master, the prints in particular have often been judged to be among Bellows' best work. But one of the co-organizers of the current show, the Amon Carter Museum, already exhibited a complete selection of his lithographs in 1988. Preferring to focus on "a smaller piece" of Bellows' repertoire, Michael Quick, curator of American art at the other co-organizing institution, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, states that the current show "does not shortchange the classics, however; it offers a broader picture of a more complex artist who was effective in a number of directions."
Jane Myers, associate curator of the Amon Carter Museum, similarly observes that "old chestnuts like the boxing picture Stag at Sharkey's are included; however, Bellows wasn't just all masculine vim and vigor, as revealed by a number of quiet, tender portraits." Intended to challenge myths and raise questions, the exhibition draws attention to the high quality of Bellows' less familiar seascapes, landscapes, and portraits, which constitute the majority of his works. Out of a total of over six hundred extant paintings, around seventy have been selected to reveal the artist's power and range over a twenty-year career, tragically cut short by appendicitis when he was forty-two.
Spectator of Life
Born and raised in Columbus, Bellows began basing his drawings upon reality at a tender age. He subsequently transformed himself from a gangling youth into an all-American star basketball and baseball player whose
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