MOCT

Luckystar Studio

Jim Herrington

Scott Winklebeck

Brandon Minga

Holy Mary Motor Club

Aimless Blades

Spiral Trance

Milwaukee website links

Art Bar

The Pabst/ Riverside/ Turner Hall

Knock out

The Powerful Hand of George Bellows: Drawings from the Boston Public Library Milwaukee Art Museum Koss Gallery Now – March 23 The Milwaukee Art Museum’s spin for the George Bellows exhibition (now- March 23) goes like this: special rare drawings and lithographs, important chronicler of American life in the early twentieth century, highlights include scenes of boxing, racetracks and the glory of rabble-rousing preacher Billy Sunday. I was intrigued enough to visit the Koss Gallery, but not because of any touted aspects of the exhibition: in the ‘40s, I watched my dad enjoy boxing matches on television, and later, when we moved to Kansas City, he invited me out to watch the regional Golden Gloves boxing matches. I guess he thought it was a good way to bond (plus the Moriarty clan lays claim to John L. Sullivan, a shirt-tail relative from our Irish past). It was surreal to watch the sweat fly and blood splat near our ringside seats in a smoke-filled arena mostly populated by men. As years passed, I found myself fascinated by Body and Soul and Raging Bull. When Joyce Carol Oates, one of my favorite American writers, penned On Boxing in 1994, I learned that she and her dad had attended a 1950s Golden Gloves match, too. I’m also fascinated with old-time evangelical preachers, having seen them scream and shout in tents set up in my small Iowa hometown. Elmer Gantry, a movie I re-visit at least once a year, is based on preacher Billy Sunday, who is prominently figured in the works of George Bellows. Bellows’ (1882-1925) focus is primarily power, be it religious, political or athletic in nature. Prior to studying art, he was a star athlete in college where his discipline likely gave him a competitive edge in the art world. In this dark and gritty, near-hysterical political year of 2008, his change! change! change! artist/anarchist message rings familiar. I have a sneaking suspicion that the artist deemed the American masses as sheep in need of a shepherd and figured he might as well be it. The Koss Gallery is crowded with the artist’s work (smartly coordinated at MAM by Mary Weaver Chapin, assistant curator of prints and drawings), but the intimate space helps viewers focus on the cramped turbulence of the American city. The detailed drawings and lithographs remind me of pages in a historical novel punctuated with black and white images, though there is one colorful oil painting from 1916, “The Sawdust Trail.” It is the “star” of the Koss’ central gallery, but it is certainly not the prime example of images depicting Billy Sunday. Compared with the seven images surrounding it, the oil seems ham-fisted and blowsy. Bellows considered Sunday, an athlete who played with the Chicago White Stockings, the “worst thing that ever happened to America,” so perhaps the artist saw himself as a kind of “art evangelist.” Late in his career, he turned to lucrative portrait work (some of it is included in the exhibition) and seascapes; […]