Bellows' Christ

Besides its demonstrations, the New Society is holding its fifth annual exhibition--two hundred examples of painting, drawing and sculpture by the so-called radical group of 48 who broke away from the principles of the Academy. The exhibition is striking enough, Goyaesque in coloring and generally bizarre in conception.

There are major contributions by Rockwell Kent, George Luks, Randall Davey, John Sloan, Maurice Sterne, Gari Melchers, William J. Glackens, George Bellows.

The piece de resistance for the critics was Bellows' Crucifixion. There, set amid violent lights and shadows, with "portentous storm clouds swirling over Calvary," a gaunt, muscular, physical Christ depends from the cross. The sweet Christ, the mild Christ, the frail Christ are not there. He is a tremendous peasant fellow. His muscles bulge. His members are large, cumbrous, powerful, those of a toiler, of a great struggler. On his face are the passing marks of the death agony, the last contortions of pain passing in the peace of unconsciousness.

"It has not been so before" is the universal cry. "Whence comes the Christ? Is he a fitting leader for us refined and sanctimonious folk?" Bellows' Christ makes no reply. Bellows says he did not strive for an outlandish effect, a strange interpretation in painting the picture.

Meanwhile the artistic laity, the pillars of Art, rush to attend the exhibition. Those who saw the "varnishing" of Bellows' Christ include Mr. and Mrs. Walter Damrosch, Conde Nast, Frank Munsey, Paul D. Cravath, Thomas W. Lamont, Herbert B. Swope, Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Pulitzer, Mrs. Vincent Astor, Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Mrs. John H. Hammond, Mrs. August Belmont.