The Pugilist

Last night on my way to the National Arts Club, I happened to walk by the home of George Bellows on 19th street. I had no idea he had lived there, though I have walked down these streets too many times to count. Of course I thought of Stag at Sharkey's, his famous painting of two fighters during the period in New York when prizefighting was illegal, when athletic clubs like Sharkey's got around these laws as purported gyms but kept matches going with all the secret excitement of prohibition.

George Bellows, Stag at Sharkey's 1909

George Bellows had been a baseball player before becoming one of The Eight, a group of New York artists influenced by Robert Henri who thought that American Art should lose the influence of European Impressionism and its national glorification of the American West. Henri's book The Art Spirit is an easy and pleasant read, largely forgotten among the many writings on art produced across the 20th century–I definitely recommend it.

We usually separate art from athleticism, which is a mistake and shame because both require an incredible degree of competition on the part of their participants. Artists and athletes both have to see the terrain for what it is, with all the obstacles on their way to the goal, with all the unexpected cleverness of the other participants in the game. It is not just how good you are, but how well you play the game that provides the endurance to be a long-term success.

I know the young director Jay Bulger who is finishing a documentary on Ginger Baker, the genius on drums most famous for his time with Cream. Jay had been a boxing champion when he was younger, and watching him develop the financing, get the interviews with every major drummer alive today, and ensure that the film was true to his vision–even as it shifted–was to observe a passion that withstood every punch along the way. And, I happen to know there were some, though fewer than there might have been otherwise because he knows how to throw a mean punch too.

The Ancient Greeks included sports as a part of the education of a well-bred man. They also learned how to describe objects, ekphrasis, to be able to discuss a work of art. They competed on the field and at the podium, their education grounded in making them succeed at both. George Bellows has a great deal of respect for these fighters, though the faces of the observers suggests a keen awareness of the violence that spectators can embody. Both art and sports are largely a spectator activity, where the audience can be far uglier than any work of art or athletic performance. Art pretends to be refined, as if there were no sweat involved, but anyone who has sat down to write, or stood alone in a studio, or prepared for an audition knows that fear is laced with a will to fight, that nerves are stressed by sensory data, adrenaline pours through the body which begins to move, and as the body moves, the mind sculpts the action.

As a child, I danced. As a teenager, I developed a yoga practice. When I was twenty-three, I bought a punching bag and hung it in my living room. It changed my life.