This period in American art doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Bellows and his friends were working in an intellectual framework that had even then been superseded by the modernist developments in Europe. For them, the subject of the work of art was still its primary focus. Modernist art, as it developed from the Impressionists and Cézanne through to Matisse and Picasso and on to abstraction, showed that the work of art itself was the center of the relationship between the artist and the viewer, and that the subject, if there was one, was secondary.
But the fact that Bellows’s direction in art was supplanted to a great degree by modernism doesn’t mean that it wasn’t valuable. This show gives us a welcome chance to go back and look again.
Ken Greenleaf can be reached at ken.greenleaf@gmail.com.
Related:
Growing Maine art, Summer people, Idealist views, More 
- Growing Maine art
Long ago an art critic of my acquaintance remarked that New York was a border town to Europe, and until fairly recently that was true. Artistic ideas would be born in Europe, often France, and migrate slowly across the Atlantic and take root.
- Summer people
Ever wonder why there is so much professional-level art made and shown in Maine, a state with a total population less than that of many minor cities? One answer is that following the fame of people like Winslow Homer, creative types flocked to Maine, often to artists' colonies.
- Idealist views
The path through my various responsibilities has led me to the Portland Museum several times in recent weeks, and along most of the floors. While passing through the Julia Margaret Cameron exhibit of photography I was struck by thoughts about templates created by dominant illusions, and how a consistent sense of an ideal world flowed through Cameron's work.
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In Portland, and around Southern Maine, developing trends hold promise for our changing, but still cantankerously distinct, artistic character to act as a new kind of cultural reflection.
- Homer's home
A hundred years after his death, Winslow Homer is still making waves.
- Art for art's sake
Apparently, I'm one of those artist-types. Except it's not called "artist" anymore. That term is too, well ... artsy-fartsy. It doesn't adequately convey my critical importance to society.
- Looking DuBack
Looking backward, history seems a whole lot more orderly than it does while you're living it.
- Re-structuring
Three large oil paintings overwhelm the lobby at the Portland Museum of Art, introducing the show "Division and Discovery: Recent Works by Frederick Lynch," a beautiful and meditative collection found on the fourth floor of the museum.
- Rhythm in light
Lynne Drexler's artistic path can not have been an easy one.
- Rain check
We have just the thing to cure your summer-vacation blues: Maine, from the inside.
- Interview: Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus on rock-and-roll photography
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Topics:
Museum And Gallery
, Culture and Lifestyle, Jack Johnson, History, More
, Culture and Lifestyle, Jack Johnson, History, Painting, Visual Arts, Cultural Institutions and Parks, Museums, Pablo Picasso, Art History, Cultural History, Less
