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| A picture taken from my trip to New York, January 2013 |
New. York. Just take a second to remember it. Have you got a tingling sensation? A creeping and sudden burst of excitement for no apparent reason? I think George Bellows shared the same sentiment. He could feel there was something special about the city. It was the place to be. So as a 22-year-old in 1904 he moved to New York City and over the course of two decades he logged it like a journalist with a paintbrush.
He recorded the raucous gatherings on election nights in Times Square (named after the leading – and my favourite – newspaper after it moved to the site). He captured brutal and gritty fights that were organised by private clubs when the state declared a ban on public boxing. If Raging Bull (film released in 1980) is the greatest boxing movie of all time, then Bellows is Martin Scorsese's painting predecessor. Just like today's movie makers, he had a fascination with telling the story of gritty New York. He repeatedly painted tenement life on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in front of a backdrop of skyscrapers. Though it was a turbulent time, he could see the strength of the urban poor and that New Yorker resilience. The exhibition starts with this, so you won't want to turn back.
By early 20th Century, New York was the cultural capital of America and Bellows tried to capture the full range of its diverse society. He started to paint the relaxed, fashionable and middle-class who spent their leisure time in New York's parks. There's an oil painting called Summer Night, Riverside Drive (below), where a couple walk down a pathway with their dog in semi darkness. It's in stark contrast to Bellow's darker paintings of New York, but it's equally amazing. I might be bias because I'm a sucker for light captured in a painting, and here the street lamp is like a full moon at night. You can almost feel the evening chill; smell the thickness of the trees and hear the water rippling.
The thing you need to know about Bellows is he was almost obsessed with painting like an Old Master (the great textbook artists we've all heard of). Aside from doing illustrations for news magazines for an income, he tried to do a bit of Matisse with the way he painted in small and short brushstrokes, a bit of Manet by using limited and opulent colours and he was inspired by Titian's famous Sacred and Profane Love (1514). He took what was loved by the old and brought it into modern day New York, almost making himself a master of the new. The New Master.
You're guaranteed a good story at most exhibitions at the Royal Academy (bar the Summer exhibition – come back on 10 June). They don't expect you to figure out what on earth is going on or why you should care about an artist. They invite you into that artist's world. And what makes this one better is it's a city we are still in love with.
Exhibition information
Name: George Bellows (1882-1925): Modern American Life
When: 16 March - 9 June 2013
Where: Royal Academy of Art, The Sackler Wing of Galleries, 2nd Floor, Burlington House.
Room Count: 6
Art Count: 21 works – 38 paintings, 14 drawings, 17 lithographs
Standard ticket price: £10 each
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| Stag at Sharky's by George Bellows, 1909, The Cleveland Museum of Art |
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| Men of the Docks by George Bellows, 1912, Randolph College |
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| New York by George Bellows, 1911, National Gallery of Art Washington |
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| Love of Winter by George Bellows, 1914, The Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Summer Night, Riverside Drive by George Bellows, 1909, Columbia Museum of Art |
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| North River by George Bellows, 1908, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts |
"Try everything that can be done. Be deliberate. Be spontaneous. Be thoughtful and painstaking.
Be abandoned and impulsive. Learn your own possibilities"
- The New York attitude as said by George Bellows in 1920.
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