George Bellows: American Artist

by Joyce Carol Oates

A study of George Bellows' brief but prolific career considers the influences of his early life, examines his more intimate work in portraiture, and offers a perspective on his last work, "The Picket Fence"

Genres: Art, Art History

69 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2000

About the author

Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel Them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).
Oates taught at Princeton University from 1978 to 2014, and is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing. From 2016 to 2020, she was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught short fiction in the spring semesters. She now teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Oates was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2016.
Pseudonyms: Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.

Reviews

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read, but I really wish the pictures of the paintings she discusses were twice the size. It’s hard to look at what she means because the painting reproductions are minuscule. That being said, I did enjoy this book.

[Vincent DiGirolamo · Rating 3 out of 5]

A promisingly oblique look at an important American artist. Early insights give way to rather monotonous descriptions of random paintings paired with extended quotations from the likes of Whitman and Thoreau. The pieces don't really cohere and certainly aren't essential for understanding Bellows' art.