George Bellows: Modern American Life

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Art

Royal Academy of Arts

Until Sun Jun 9

Stag at Sharkey's, 1909

© The Cleveland Museum of Art
New York, 1911

the Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington
North River, 1908

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Joseph E. Temple Fund
Men of the Docks, 1912

Royal Academy of Arts
Love of Winter, 1914

© The Art Institute of Chicago

Stag at Sharkey's, 1909

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Time Out says

Tue Mar 19 2013

George Bellows is hardly known nowadays, but in America in the 1920s he was far more famous than his exact contemporary and friend, Edward Hopper. Hopper’s vision of cinematic stillness and urban alienation has grown ever more popular but Bellows, as a member of the ‘Ashcan’ group of painters, was attracted to a very different side of American city life. He was drawn to the energy and tumult, the crowds and clamour – from throngs of tenement kids bathing in New York’s muddy East River through heaving midtown traffic jams where horse-drawn carriages jostled the newfangled automobiles, to the picnicking middle-classes flocked across Central Park lawns. Indeed, if Bellows is remembered at all today, it’s for ‘Stag at Sharkey’s’ – one of several thrillingly action-packed paintings of boxing matches that made his name in 1909.

Certainly, it’s a doozy of a painting, capturing the pulsating violence of the clandestine prize-fighting scene (boxing was illegal at the time), with the pugilists reduced to sinuous, twisted knots of meat. No wonder Francis Bacon was such an admirer. Not just the boxers, but the baying and leering spectators, the thick, gestural paint handling – the whole thing radiates a kind of warped, exhilarating energy. Later on, too, in numerous lithograph commissions for left-wing magazines, Bellows displayed an almost Goya-like ability for caricature and physical depiction, portraying the demented fury of rabble-rousing Evangelist preachers, or the awful inhumanity of Southern racists burning an African-American man alive at the stake.

Even when he wasn’t painting crowds of people, there was often still a lurking sense of violence or chaos to his work.

In his studies of Penn Station being built, the construction site becomes something hellish and nightmarish – a blasted wasteland, a gaping, fiery wound in the surface of New York. And there’s a similar sense of confronting the raw face of nature, peeling back the veneer of civilization, in his numerous paintings of the limits of Manhattan island, looking off into the snowy wilds just beyond the Hudson River.

Yet, oddly, when it came to depicting the greatest violence of all, World War I, the results are something of a disappointment. Perhaps because he never actually visited Europe, instead basing his work on foreign accounts and propaganda reports, his quartet of vast war paintings is pure grand guignol – aiming to shock America into support for the war with images of evil, spike-helmeted Huns maiming helpless Belgian prisoners and civilians. Today, though, the pieces simply come off as a weird combination of stilted grandiosity and over-the-top schlock.

There’s a return to form towards the end of his life – or rather, to a completely different sort of form. His late, bucolic scenes, painted in high-register colours and with strange perspective effects, feel woozy, ethereal, even slightly surreal. Though he declared himself baffled by European modernism, it’s tempting to speculate where his art might have led – had he not died of peritonitis aged 42. Still, there’s more than enough in this fantastic exhibition to rehabilitate him, and to surely establish his status as one of America’s greatest and most visionary artists.

Gabriel Coxhead

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Venue details

Name:
Royal Academy of Arts
Address:
Burlington House
Royal Academy of Arts Piccadilly
London
W1J OBD

Phone:
020 7300 8000
Website:
www.royalacademy.org.uk
Opening hours:
10am-6pm daily, until 10pm Fri (last adm 30 mins before closing)
Transport:
Tube: Piccadilly Circus
Map
1. Burlington House
  - Burlington House
    Piccadilly
    London
    W1J OBD
  - 020 7300 8000
  - www.royalacademy.org.uk

Event phone:
020 7300 8000
Event website:
www.royalacademy.org.uk

Categories:
Art

George Bellows: Modern American Life 2013

Date Time Price information
Sat May 25

10:00

£11, £8 concs
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Sun May 26

10:00

£11, £8 concs
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Mon May 27

10:00

£11, £8 concs
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Tue May 28

10:00

£11, £8 concs
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Wed May 29

10:00

£11, £8 concs
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Thu May 30

10:00

£11, £8 concs
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Fri May 31

10:00

£11, £8 concs
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Sat Jun 1

10:00

£11, £8 concs
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Sun Jun 2

10:00

£11, £8 concs
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Mon Jun 3

10:00

£11, £8 concs
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Tue Jun 4

10:00

£11, £8 concs
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Wed Jun 5

10:00

£11, £8 concs
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Thu Jun 6

10:00

£11, £8 concs
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Fri Jun 7

10:00

£11, £8 concs
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Sat Jun 8

10:00

£11, £8 concs
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Sun Jun 9

10:00

£11, £8 concs
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Comments & ratings

(1 rating)

What a revelation ! Bellows work is astounding. He recorded everything from the gentry of New York at leisure to the gritty reality of boxing matches , to people laboring in winter and much more. Rarely have I been drawn in emotionally to so many works in one place.His vivid use of colour , light and shade, and bravado with night scenes is just brilliant. The characters in his paintings are so engaging and the atmosphere he transmits through his work , no matter what subject , is tangible. This exhibition is so rich in delights. Do not hesitate to see it. One visit , for me, is not enough.

John Rollin Mon Mar 18
Rated as: 5/5
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