George Bellows Exhibit at Fogg Brings Old Anti-War Message to Modern Audience

Those seeking solace or distraction from the deafening buzz of television broadcasters discussing the prospects of war will not find it at the Fogg Art Museum, where they’ll instead encounter a wrenching discourse on the atrocities of war and their representation.

“George Bellows: Tragedies of War,” which opens tomorrow, centers around a large painting by early 20th century artist Bellows which depicts the gruesome dismemberment of a Belgian youth by German soldiers.

Entitled “The Germans Arrive,” the painting shows pastoral Belgian village rendered grotesque by the brutality of German invaders during World War I. The painting is on loan from an anonymous donor.

“The Germans Arrive” is surrounded by a series of lithographs that depict German behavior towards Belgian civilians during World War I. The lithographs portray horrors such as German soldiers’ use of Belgian captives as human barricades, rape and the impalement of women and children.

The painting and lithographs demonstrate the artist’s emotional attitude towards a powerful subject matter.

Kim Orcutt, assistant curator of American art at the Fogg, says the lithographs are remarkable because of their formal excellence.

“Barricade,” which features German soldiers gathered behind a human shield of naked Belgian civilians, is both a meditation on war crimes and an artistic study of the human form. Bellows explores diverse body types, posed so as to be reminiscent of classical paintings.

Orcutt, who calls the Bellows work “emotional, provocative and compositionally well thought-out,” says there is a tension between responding to the barbaric events depicted and examining those depictions for their formal qualities.

“It’s hard to look past the subjects and say, ‘He did a good job with that,’” Orcutt says. “But though it’s difficult, it’s rewarding.”

The new exhibit places Bellows in the context of a long tradition of European artists’ portrayals of the ravages of war, including paintings by Edouard Manet, Honoré Daumier and Marie-Anne Collot. One Bellows lithograph in the series, “Massacre of the Dinant,” directly references works by Francisco de Goya, which are also on display in the exhibit.

And yet while Bellows was clearly influenced by the history of European artists grappling with war, his war series diverges strikingly from American artists who came before him.

According to Orcutt, American artists before Bellows overwhelmingly portrayed soldiers as heroic and battle scenes as triumphant.

Pointing to an almost cartoonish Civil War battle scene by American artist Winslow Homer, also featured in the exhibit, Orcutt says Bellows’ style is unprecedented.

“What’s unique about this whole series is that Americans haven’t done this,” she says.

Bellows created his series after reading official British reports about war crimes inflicted on Belgian civilians by German troops. Working directly from these reports, he portrayed events that had occurred between 1915 and 1918.

Bellows produced all of the works in the series within a six-week period in the spring of 1918, adamant to photograph the most difficult of war crimes.

“I had to do it,” he once said.

Bellows was a member of the Ashcan School in the early decades of the twentieth century. As the name of the school suggests, Bellows and his colleagues depicted the grit and filth of the city landscape, developing a new form of urban realism.

According to Orcutt, Bellows was known for his “brash, bold and masculine” paintings, particularly of those featuring muscular boxers and the crowd fixated on them. In his time, Bellows was considered the quintessential American artist, though his work gradually seemed less fashionable and inventive compared to the modern art emanating from Europe.

Bellows created these lithographs and paintings at a transitional moment in art history—but they also marked a transition in his personal life and politics.

Bellows was openly anti-war at the beginning of World War I. But by the end of the war, perhaps because of the very brutalities by the German forces he depicts, he had not only turned pro-war, but had even enlisted to fight.

In fact, the lithographs and five paintings done in the spring of 1918 were utilized at the time as pro-war propaganda, and reappeared for the same reason during World War II.

But in the current pre-war climate, the exhibit may elicit diverse, even contrary responses. For some, the painting and lithographs may once again create a militaristic climate. For others, the exhibit may animate visions of the horrors of war and contribute to anti-war sentiments.

While the exhibition was planned months ago to mark the recent acquisition of the lithographs from the artist’s estate, it remains timely, Orcutt says.

“The acquisition of the lithographs come at a time when war is once again a crucial issue,” Orcutt says. “Seeing these works in the current climate will highlight the ways that art can speak in different voices to different generations, and how we as viewers create new layers of meaning for works of art as we integrated the artist’s intentions with our own experiences and beliefs.”

—“George Bellows: Tragedies of War” opens tomorrow at the Fogg Art Museum and runs through May 11.

—Staff writer Jessica E. Gould can be reached at gould@fas.harvard.edu.