'Cliff Dwellers'
His career lasted less than 20 years, yet George Bellows (1882-1925) emerged as one of the foremost American artists of his era, garnering praise from both progressive and conservative critics.
A prolific painter and printmaker, Bellows produced various works in different styles simultaneously. His ever-changing art defied traditional norms, delved into new perspectives, and constantly evolved. His work sparked lively discussions, as he succumbed neither to critical nor popular expectations.
Bellows’ art depicted the raw aspects of city life and muted elements of human existence. In particular, his groundbreaking paintings of boxing scenes and urban life, which he created in his twenties, gained widespread popularity and continued to be acknowledged until the end of his life.
“Mr Bellows was blithe,” observed Time magazine in its obituary dated January 19, 1925. “He smacked his lips over life. In art, he belonged to the school of gusto. Wharf-rats, city parks, snowy clustered roofs, great clumping dray horses, seamy faces of dock labourers, pale ladies, prizefighters, gentle landscapes—he painted all with the impulse of a poet and the hand of a realist.”
Projecting hard realities
Born in Ohio in 1882, Bellows moved to New York City as a college dropout. He was mentored by the influential painter and charismatic teacher Robert Henri (1865 – 1929). The leader of the Ashcan School, Henri famously coined the phrase ‘art for life’s sake’ as opposed to ‘art for art’s sake’. Moving away from the romantic ideals of Impressionism, the Ashcan School focused on unabashedly projecting the hard realities of urban life.
Henri believed art should express ‘the spirit of the people of today’. He encouraged his students to carefully observe public places, construction sites, tenement street life, and boisterous demonstrations in the city’s public squares.
He urged them to confront the world and capture what they saw. Driving them into a process of self-discovery, he told them that ‘anything that strikes you as real is worthy of being painted.’ Bellows, like his mentor, revelled in being part of the chaos and disorder of New York City. He infused a pulsating vitality of city life with its tottering tenements and ragged inhabitants into his paintings. He never dismissed everyday events as inconsequential; instead, he drew inspiration from them. His paintings reflected his fascination and encounters with the city’s engineering feats, its construction sites, its restless churning, and its rugged topography. He discarded false symmetries and academic diktats in favour of presenting the world as he saw and experienced it.
“In the 10 to 12 years after his arrival in New York in 1904, Bellows wrenched American painting out of gentility and into the mire of experience,” observed Patrick McCaughey in the Times Literary Supplement. “No American painter equalled his full-blooded response to the power and presence of America in the 20th century... The effort and ambition in the work are nothing less than heroic.”
Urban excitement
While his sharp eyes encountered the dark contours of the burgeoning city, his empathetic gaze did not miss the stark class differences and the struggles of poor people. His ominous and vivid paintings with thick shadows and dark humour evoked the heat of the congested city streets, the dust of the speeding motorcars, as well as the agony and anguish of a divided city.
Bellows’ art, with its rude vigour and honesty, struck a chord with its raw depiction of cityscapes, vibrant landscapes, striking portraits, and street scenes. One of his most famous paintings, ‘Stag at Sharkey’s’ (1909), showed an intense, gloomy, clandestine boxing contest at a time when prizefighting was forbidden. Rendered with vigorous brush strokes, it portrayed two boxers in a dynamic and emotional blur, emphasising the speed and violent action of the sport. Another notable work, ‘Dempsey and Firpo’ (1924), showed a powerful moment in a boxing match, with one fighter knocking the other into the crowd.
“Bellows found sublimity in urban excitements, and was enraptured by muddy, sweaty modern life,” observes Peter Conrad in The Guardian. “At his violent best, he applied paint as if it were a primal fluid: the flesh of his boxers is almost obscenely slick with sweat, and their bloodied ribs look like carcasses dangling from hooks in a butcher’s shop. Men, in the naturalist view, are just cuts of tenderised meat.”
Till the very end, Bellows adhered to the personal dictum: “Watch all good art, and accept none as a standard for yourself. Think with all the world, and work alone.” George Bellows passed away on January 8, 1925, at the age of 42, due to complications from a ruptured appendix.