George Bellows’s Boxers in Print

Abstract

Ashcan artist George Bellows is perhaps most remembered for his widely reproduced paintings of boxers— one even appeared on a U.S. postage stamp issued in 1998. The paintings’ celebrations of the virility of the athletic male body and their dynamic representation of the sport have made them extremely popular since their production in the early twentieth century. Less commonly known is that Bellows was committed to radical politics, and that his images of pugilism were vehicles for pointed social and cultural critique. In addition to exhibiting works in galleries, Bellows published his images in a range of periodicals, from mainstream magazines such as Collier’s , Metropolitan Magazine , and The American Magazine to The Masses , a small-run socialist magazine published in Greenwich Village from 1911 to 1917. When all of his boxing images are read together, it becomes clear that for Bellows, these were not simply formal explorations of the athletic male body, but also sites for his class-infl ected commentary on race, gender, and religion. Moreover, when studied alongside the full range of his production, his magazine illustrations and political cartoons— particularly those published in The Masses —help elucidate the full importance of these themes throughout his oeuvre.