George Bellows

-Isaac Choi-

A week ago, I went to National Galary of Art to see the gallery dedicated to George Bellows, our fellow OSU alum. His art work was indeed jaw dropping. His work captures every emotion, motion, and ambiance creating entertaining yet very realistic art work.


His famous Stag at Sharkey’s amazed me because he was able to capture not only the fighters punching motions, but also their emotions, struggles and their desires to win. Also crowd's mixed face expressions creates very active atmosphere. The painting gave me an illusion that I was sitting next to Bellows in a boxing arena filled with noise and excitement.


There was one part of me wondering why I like his art so much. Is it because of his style? is it because of the art subjects? Or is it simply because he is from OSU? 

To learn about his art more, I went to the west wing of the museum where the film about him was playing. Unlike the rest of the museum, the west wing was dedicated to contemporary and modern art. Surrounded by weird looking sculptures and strange art pieces (which looked like they were done by four year olds), I watched the short film about George Bellows and his work. Then I slowly began to understand why Bellows work was liked by many people, including myself. 

Unlike Bellows, many artists at that time began to experiment with art, Picasso's cubism for example. However, as the time went on, artists were too busy with their experiments and their techniques, the subjects of the artists have became invisible to the audience. Too fixated in their theories and their efforts to be unique, the line between good art and bad art was blurred, leaving audiences puzzled and confused. When looking at a modern art piece, the audience can't tell whether the piece they are seeing is a creative masterpiece with genius idea or a crappy art piece that were done by 4 year olds. Too many crappy art pieces nowadays has "meanings" behind, but I can't help but to wonder if those are really artful or only artful just because some pretentious people gave more meanings than they deserve.

Bellows who was concurrent of the inception of this puzzling art period, did not give in to the pressure to be "unique" or "modern." Instead he drew and painted what he saw and how he felt explicitly on canvases. He did not experiment with his art or made his art difficult for his audience. No one has to search for meanings behind Bellow's work, and no one has to doubt his art skills. Bellow's art is simply easy and good.

More artists should be influenced by his work. I hope they began to realize that they don't have to "create" art. Instead of nailing thousands of strawberries on a wall or doing some weird activities to pursue art, artists can simply draw their everyday lives, people they meet, sceneries of their neighborhoods to create beautiful art. George Bellows reminds all of us that we are surrounded by gorgeous art.