BY SHEILA WICKOUSKI

For THE FREE LANCE STAR

The retrospective of George Bellows' works is about more than one man's life as an artist. Focused on Bellows' meaning more then his methods, the exhibit is about the shaping of the American mind at the beginning of the 20th century.

While Bellows pays homage to artists he admires, it is his bold personal vision, in tune with the tenor of his time, that pervades his realistic works. By portraying the gritty contrasts in social classes in the growing metropolis of New York City in the early 20th century, he joined the company of the political and social reformers of his age.

Breaking with the conventions of society portraiture, he chose his subjects from the impoverished inhabitants of the Lower East Side. While his "Little Girl in White (Queenie Burnett)" in her charming white dress is in honor of James McNeill Whistler's works in white, Queenie is, in reality, a laundress. The people in his "Cliff Dwellers" are akin to the tenement inhabitants described in social reformer Jacob Riis' "How the Other Half Lives."

Far away from bucolic landscapes, he documented the city's grittiness and growth with "Pennsylvania Excavation," proof that the original Beaux Arts Penn Station emerged from a raw hole in the ground.

Bellows fit his style to his subject. The leisure life in "A Day in June" is reminiscent of William Merritt Chase's work--pleasant and genteel with lyrical colors. "Election Night, Times Square, 1906" is crowded, dark and filled with political innuendos.

Having turned down a career as a professional baseball player, Bellows understood the energy in sports. He attended boxing matches, which at that time were illegal in New York City except in private clubs between members (loophole: fighters could be members for a night). Known for his boxing paintings, and maybe not as well noted for his horrific scenes of Belgian victims being massacred in World War I, Bellows found a common thread of violence in both.