New York 1911

This painting of New York, by George Wesley Bellows, is a dense urban scene rendered with a flurry of gestural marks and a palette that feels both gritty and somehow luminous. I imagine Bellows, brush in hand, diving into this chaos, not trying to replicate it, but to reimagine it. You know, it's easy to get lost in the details here – the figures, the buildings, the signs, the horses! I imagine Bellows really trying to get all this down, what must have been going through his head? Maybe something like: "how to compress the energy of the city into these little strokes?" It's as if each dab of paint is a little observation, a little decision. The paint itself is thick, almost sculptural. It is so physical that it brings a certain tangibility to the canvas, and you sense the cold and snow in those sweeping marks. Think about the way those blocks of colour create an urban cacophony. Bellows shares a sensibility with painters like the Ashcan school, who were dedicated to portraying everyday life. Artists are always talking to each other across time, and paintings like this remind us that we're all just trying to figure out how to make sense of the world around us.