George Bellows
George Bellows (1882-1925) was said to have been the most acclaimed American artist of his generation. Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, he played baseball and basketball at Ohio State University. He got an offer to play for the Cincinnati Reds baseball team, but turned it down and moved to New York City to pursue his true love, art. Above is a self-portrait c. 1905.
.jpeg)
His sports background is evident in his work. The drawing above is called Sweeney, the Idol of the Fans, Had Hit a Home Run. It depicts the scene after a small-town baseball game at the turn of the century. Sweeney stands naked in a makeshift dressing room with other players changing around him, basking in the adoration of the men and boys crowding around the open door and window.
Bellows is most famous for his boxing paintings like Stag at Sharkey's, 1909, above. Public boxing was illegal in New York, but it was permitted in private athletic clubs like Sharkey's, located across the street from Bellows' studio.
Bellows made two versions of Stag at Sharkey's. In the 1917 lithograph above, the boxers appear to be fighting nude. In the painted version, their boxing trunks look like painted-on afterthoughts.
Bellows drew a few conventional nudes, like Male Torso, 1916, above.
.jpg)
The Barricade, 1918, was one of a series of World War I paintings exposing German war atrocities and trying to stir outrage in America. The scene shows armed German soldiers in Belgium using naked men, women and children as human shields.
.jpg)
But much of Bellows' art belongs to what was called the Ashcan School – the work of a group of artists who depicted the nitty gritty reality of New York's poor neighborhoods. This is 42 Kids, 1907, showing New York kids swimming in the river.
.jpg)
Similarly, Riverfront No. 2, 1924, shows river bathers. Most of them are naked, because that's the way it was in those days.
.jpg)
We close with Business Men's Bath, 1923. Bellows depicted a man's world at a time when men weren't concerned with modesty around other men.
George Bellows died in 1925 of a ruptured appendix, age 42.
6 comments:
Really interesting posting, Larry. Thanks.
You and Sixpense seem to be on the same page today with posts about artists.
Men were quite comfortable being naked together until the mid-to-late 1950s. Swimming naked at the Y was required, HS and college swim competitions were done in the nude. I still don't understand what changed the whole attitude.
Very neat work. I was curious, though, about the adult male in the bowler hat seeming to leer at "Sweeney".
I only found one description of "Sweeney" that mentions that man: "The shadowy but well-dressed man in the background is likely an owner (or financial backer of a semi-pro team), his visage turned toward Sweeney." They don't mention the part of Sweeney's anatomy that his visage is turned toward.
My dad swam in The Hudson River in the 1920's without a bathing suit. That's how it was. In the early 1960's I swam naked for gym classes ay Hunter College in The Bronx. Women students, in separate classes, were required to wear bathing attire but we were specifically not allowed to do so.
Most country boys, even in the 90s, swam nude in ponds and streams. In swimming pools and such, where girls could see us, we wore suits.
I will admit when it was just us boys we didn't just swim. (We masturbated together and other things like dock and sword fight and wrestle naked and Princeton rub, but never anal. Oral was something a few boys did secretly. If two boys did anal, the bottom was considered a girl.)
So even in the 90s we were still doing such things. But rural areas have grown increasingly strident in homophobia. It's almost colonization from the Southeast and San Diego (home of Trinity Broadcasting Network).
Post a Comment